It seems almost silly to offer any sort of commentary on the political fortunes of a made-for-TV spokesmodel when it's such an ugly time to live in Minnesota.
I won't offer commentary on the future of police/community relations, who is at fault for where we are today or why things that have happened in the last 24+ hours are confusing. It's not as black and white as many people want to see it. I'll leave it at that.
That aside, I did a little further examining of Tawnja Zahradka's campaign after posting my initial thoughts of the cable access sexpot. All that did was muddy the waters of Forest Lake.
As I noted in my previous post, Tawnja touts that she is a victim of sexual harassment. I have no reason to doubt the claim. And I don't.
As I scoured her campaign website, and eventually her campaign's Facebook page, I was a bit surprised. She has made plenty of videos, it's what she does best, after all, and she makes it clear more than once in videos that she's a victim of sexual harassment and discrimination. At least once she claims that she lost everything she spent two decades building as a result, and lost her career as a spokesperson because of it. She also claims that this loss inspired her to pick herself up and dust herself off, to start anew.
And that new start is winning elected office. At the federal level. After two decades of pimping German restaurants and any other business that paid her to do so.
As I noted previously, I've found nothing about this failed lawsuit, a lawsuit that failed because of, she claims, "sexual harassment laws that are designed to protect the harassers-which they did."
I can only assume that this harassment occurred when she was an "executive producer" of MCN6. Tawnja has a ton of her videos posted on YouTube, and in 2015 she posted an MCN6 interview where she is touted as the cable access station's executive producer. The most recent videos are form three years ago, and the last several videos don't seem to feature Tawnja, but they're segments much like Tawnja peddled for two decades, and they appear to be segments produced for the benefit of the vast MCN6 viewership.
It appears that, if she started a legal battle in late 2017, as she claims, that she must be referring to her work at MCN6 as the source of harassment, as all indications are that's where she was working three to five years ago.
So what's the point?
I'd say, first, that if she was a victim of sexual harassment, it's none of our business. Maybe it becomes our business if she sues a cable access TV station. Maybe it's our business only if she wins the lawsuit and the quasi-public entity is held accountable.
But it's definitely our business if she's going to tout her being a victim, time and again, and claim that the system is protecting the guilty, and that she was a victim, of both harassers and the law. If fighting for women like her is an important issue of her campaign, and a major reason for her campaign -- as she claims -- then you've got to give us more, Tawnja.
You can't just say you were a victim, the system is rigged against victims and then ask us to support the change you seek without giving us some explanation as to how the system failed you. I haven't found that, at least not yet, and I doubt that explanation exists.
If you claim that you're going to improve public safety, you had better offer a plan, or at least ideas of how to begin to improve it. If you're going to promise lower taxes, it rings hollow if you never explain how. If you're going to claim you are fighting for victims of sexual harassment, and hold up yourself as an example, why are we supposed to simply accept that the laws are stacked against victim's like you? I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea how harassment laws work. Prove it to us, Tawnja, and give us details that show you know what you're talking about.
There's something else that bothers me. Tawnja claims she lost her two-decade career due to this harassment. First off, shilling for local businesses on cable access TV for two decades is hardly a career. If you made money doing 30 minutes of commercials on cable access TV, that's damn impressive. But it's not much of a career.
Second, if your skill set is so great, why haven't you parlayed that two decades of pitching local restaurants on cable access TV into a commercial voice over career? Or video production for local businesses that want to run commercials on their websites and social media channels?
It's unfortunate that Tawnja's long association with MCN6 seemingly ended due to harassment, but without details as to why that chapter of her life is such an important part of her campaign, her candidacy seems rather manufactured, much like that smile she has flashed for more than two decades.
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