It was one year ago that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” had its first profile of Pat Garofalo, a man with a history of demonizing Democrats and liberals in general with highly partisan rhetoric, gleefully trolling the opposite side of the aisle to an extent that he has compared the Minnesota state legislature in which he has served since 2004 to pro-wrestling, and defining his own antics as those of a traditional “heel” wrestler. (Oh, if only Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson would show up and brain this jagoff with a steel chair…)
On social media, Garofalo seems to relish that role, where he has taunted liberal bloggers for having names that sound too similar for slang terms for vaginas, related environmentalists’ distaste for mining companies to his own for Planned Parenthood, wished for a meteorite to hit a gathering of people watching cat videos to kill them all, and his most famous moment, perhaps, when he gave his humble opinion of what would happen if the NBA went out of business, “Let’s be honest, 70% of teams in NBA could fold tomorrow + nobody would notice a difference w/ possible exception of increase in streetcrime.” He apologized for that last one after being widely criticized, insisting that he in no way meant for his statement to be racist, and himself is not racist (Sure…)
Now, just being an unflinching ***hole for his own entertainment isn’t the only way that Pat Garofalo is an utter bastard… he also does so in terms of his policy suggestions and votes. Like say, the time back in April 2015 that he made the suggestion to lower the minimum wage for waitstaff who get at least $4 an hour in tips, lying and claiming it was needed to save restaurants from going under after Minnesota voted to raise its overall minimum wage to $9.50 an hour. Heaven forbid the blue collar people in the service industry get any kind of an increase in wages, right? I mean, especially after the countless times that Garofalo voted against minimum wage increases during the greatest period of income inequality our nation has seen in the past century. Maybe it’s not the waiters he hates, though, and just the waitresses if you apply his vote against Equal Pay laws to grant women equal pay for equal work.
But Minnesota’s House of Representatives has no term limits, and District 58B is aligned to be conservative enough that Pat Garofalo still wins even in presidential years comfortably by double digits. That held in 2016, when he faced no challenger in the GOP Primary for his seat, and still won re-election with 65% of the vote over Marla Vagts. He’s currently watching the Trump administration with baited breath, and trying to avoid salivating at the announcements by Donald Trump that the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines are approved, or that he would have the Dept. of Justice “investigate massive voter fraud”. (For the record, the Bush administration had its Department of Justice do the same thing, and found virtually none over a decade. Garofalo is effectively getting excited that taxpayer dollars will be wasted on something as useful as a unicorn hunt.)
We’ll continue to keep tabs on him after he’s had a relatively quiet year, but we doubt that’s going to last.
One Year Ago, February 9th, 2016: Pat Garofalo (MN)… Original Profile
Two Years Ago, February 9th, 2015: Tom Mullins (NM)