Because he’s a candidate, that’s why.
Scott Jensen (photo, left) isn’t a stupid man. He’s a man who wants to get elected governor of Minnesota, and because he’s running as a Republican, he thinks he has to say stupid things.
Jensen, 67, grew up in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. (No joke, that’s a real town, details here.) His dad was a lawyer and state legislator.
He spent a year at a Lutheran seminary in Saint Paul, then earned a B.A. and M.D. from the University of Minnesota, followed by a small-town medical practice.
Wikipedia says he “was a Bush Fellow of leadership and policy studies at the University of Minnesota … a professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School … a member of the Citizens Alliance Bank board, serving as the audit committee chair … was the 2016 Minnesota Family Physician of the Year … served on the school board … chaired the local Republican Party … was elected to the Minnesota Senate … [and] was regarded as moderate” (read bio here).
Does that sound like someone who believes Minnesota schoolkids are given litter boxes to pee in? If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. If he believes that, I’ve got a bridge to sell him. But I don’t believe for one moment he actually believes that.
He said it, though. While campaigning, he asked listeners, “Why do we have litter boxes in some of the school districts so kids can pee in them, because they identify as a furry? We’ve lost our minds.”
Governing is serious business, and he’s not serious. He’s repeating a silly internet rumor (read story here), something serious leaders don’t do. He either didn’t fact-check or is lying, also something serious leaders don’t do.
But that’s not the only outlandish thing he’s said. In May he said “the state’s Democratic secretary of state should go to prison for his running of the state’s election system, without providing any evidence that he’s done anything illegal” (see story here). That remark was vicious and incendiary, could get someone hurt, and should disqualify him from public office.
He’s also an anti-vaxxer who promoted false conspiracy theories about Covid-19, and falsely claimed on Fox TV that Covid-19 death figures were inflated (see details here). That prompted complaints to the state medical board, but I guess doctors can get away with saying things like that even though it’s terrible medical advice, because the complaints were dismissed.
Even if you ignore Jensen’s extreme policy proposals, such as banning abortions without rape or incest exceptions, Minnesota voters shouldn’t elect him governor and probably won’t. Recent polls show him at about 43%, which is what Loren Culp — who isn’t serious either — got in Washington State in 2020. But unlike Culp, Jensen isn’t a dilettante or political neophyte. He knows better.
He’s saying what GOP candidates have to say these days to win over the Trump voters dragging what a formerly serious political party into a swamp of lies and crazy conspiracy theories. In his case, that apparently includes saying schools make kids pee in litter boxes.
I couldn’t sell out like that. No office is worth sacrificing my reputation as a serious and truthful person, or being known as a buffoon. I have to believe he does it because something snapped in his brain somewhere on the way from what he once was to what he is now.