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'World of Warcraft' Candidate For Maine State Senate Wins Election
Teancum writes "Colleen Lachowicz, candidate for the State Senate District 25 of Maine, won the election yesterday against her opponent Thomas Martin. This race was notable in part because her World of Warcraft character that was mentioned earlier on Slashdot, where the Maine Republican Party turned her game playing into a significant issue. It is also notable that she was able to raise a total of $6,300 in campaign contributions from gamers who came to her defense in her successful campaign. The Maine GOP even tried to block these contributions where Lachowicz was cleared of any wrong doing and the investigation was dropped."
FOR THE HOARDE
Apparently you can run the state of Maine from your parents basement.
...is apparently running for Senate. According to my sources, that's enough money to buy 4.8 million gold!
Noob
An assassin is not a rogue... well, depending on who is being assassinated.
Fortunately she is very well qualified. It actually sets a nice precedent. Video game playing, as a hobby, should not reflect poorly on someones character or ability to hold a position of public office. From now on everyone will remember how this tactic backfired. Thank you Ms.Lachowicz.
For the Horde!
Change that... gotten stupid. In the mad rush to distinguish themselves and demonize the opponent, campaigning in this country has just gotten ridiculous. One of the reasons that Romney lost was that he kept saying things about Obama that simply weren't true. The problem supporting Romney became trying to figure out what was correct and what was just flaming bat guano. He destroyed his own credibility (well his campaign manager did it, but Romney let him.) Of course in past elections, the bull pucky would have stood, but so many people have ways of validating claims now and there were so many independent fact checkers this election that BS on both sides got shot down in record time.
We live a diverse and interesting society. The fact that Conservatives want desperately to take the nation back to 40s is interesting but more than a little brain dead. By the way I distinguish social conservatives from fiscal conservatives. I'm talking about mostly Fundies, folks from smaller more agriculturally based communities, you know pretty much the entire middle of the country outside of big cities. If you look at the red and blue distribution, it should be clear. Maybe in a generation, the impact of technology will have stomped so hard on "Traditional Values" that it'l stop being the source of so much mischief in our society.
If she's ever successfully put together a 25-player raiding group, building a consensus of 18+ in the Maine Senate might not be that difficult of a transition.
Getting the other senators to understand a Suicide Kings style of vote management might be a bit trickier, though.
...please make an in game avatar dead on the ground somewhere so Santiaga can viciously v-bag it repeatedly.
While some of the comments may not be the best thing in a political arena, there's a lot worse things that I have seen people say or post out in the wild. Also points down for the other candidates advertising committee for stating DPS stands for deaths per second. If you are going to criticize someone on their comments at least know what they are referring to.
I'm stuck on the contributions here, help me out.
Receiving $6,300 from a bunch of WoW players receives challenge.
Receiving $11mil from a super PAC goes unchallenged (and undisclosed for the most part).
What's going on here? The solution to corruption seems to be "more corruption".
Politician's need to learn about the Streisand effect. Had they never attacked her for playing world of world craft I'd of known nothing about her or even much cared. I'm sure this is true also for younger people in her state.
When they decide to attack her on this front they pretty much mobilized a larger portion of the young voter demographic for her than she would of otherwise gotten. Even though she herself brought it up the decision to attack her on this front brought it from being an irrelevant and kinda amusing factoid to front page news on many sites and news sources.
I for one actually like the idea of a game player making it into office, regardless of their political affiliation.
People seem to forget that most people running for office are too busy to be down to earth or able to understand the common person. Once you get rich and powerful reality does not hang around for long unless you make a concious effort to keep it there.
Maybe we should recognize that virtual worlds are second homes to many people, and often are preferred to everyday life. Should we set up voting booths in virtual worlds, and let people transition entirely to the digital worlds? It's not like they're going to miss out on anything by not physically standing in line for seven hours.
A better metaphor for American politics would be hard to find.
if nobody else got caught, how do you know anyone else was doing it?
hope and pray?
Now, if you'll excuse me, my panda has to get back to farming.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well done, and congratulations to her. Disgusting scare tactics and gutter politics are offensive, and it's good to see positivity win for a change.
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
Hehe...
Your a member of the GOP and your trying to win your local election but then you have the GOP sabotaging all your efforts.
Why would you join that party? I've dropped out just because the tank was too lightly geared. But at least he wasn't pushing aggro on the healer.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
She gets recognition just because she plays WOW? Talk about pandering to a specific target audience with this story no matter how pointless it is.
Hate to break it to everyone, but her playing WOW doesnt make her a better person or a better politician. Of course nerds will love the news because it somehow lets them validate their gaming habits as noteworthy or cool just because a politician plays it also.
I play WOW and I couldnt give a shit if she plays and won or not because it doesnt matter even in the tiniest possible way.
That Blizzard nerfed the rogue class so much for MoP, that her time was better spent running for public office.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
They just call it "the blow" for short.
I could have camped the 25th District, but I heard the drops suck.
Someone who runs for office happens to play something that is easily available to the public. I might be jumping the gun here, but this huge revelation can only mean one thing:
It is the end of the world
of Warcraft.
My friends and family have pretty much all been avid gamers since the Atari days. What in the 7th level of hell does that have to do with anything other than gaming?
While I wouldn't vote for a Democrat on general principle, I fail to see how her playing WoW is a detriment. I'd go further and suggest that it gives her a feel for how normal people tend to use the internet and means she's probably more in touch than the average government denizen.
The Justice Department is investigating claims that she used a +7 charm spell the night before the election.
Speaking of gold farmers, she can get busy taxing them.
And tax the people outfitted in purple, while you're at it. They have greater ability to pay and can use their power to abuse the little guy.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Apparently you can run the state of Maine from your parents basement.
Yeah, didn't you know about the command for that? Open up the console and type, '/RunForMaineSenate'.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Not every player plays for the end game loots. There as a very large demographic of people who use the game a s social media.
As a friend once observed: "WoW is the world's largest IRC client...."
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Thomas Martin you nub
"where the Maine Republican Party turned her game playing into a significant issue."
I feel the kingdom of stormwind is unfairly taxing me 5% of auction house gains. What is she going to do about this?
Is she going to just sit there and run daillies each day, or join epic 25 man?
Apparently she is already a master of CC and kiting. But Horde are OP anyway.
When this story broke I immediately thought back to my days in the 80's playing D&D and the fear evangelical Christians had of the game. I even remember being chased, yes chased, out of a friends house by his crazed father. I'd no idea at the time but somehow there was a growing fear that D&D lead to devil worship. Or something. I do recall there were even news reports along this line.
So now, put into a political context, this fear has been reanimated by the Maine GOP to accuse their opponent of being 'not one of us' at best and an agent of evil at worst. WoW is the new D&D! Clever. Fits the GOP play-book, however, it didn't work. Rather like a lot of the GOP play-book isn't working anymore.
It's worth it to know that in the years since I'd discovered the source of the Christian fear of RPG games. The comics of one Jack Chick. Wonderfully illustrated but deeply paranoid, his comics are familiar to any fundamentalist church goer. The D&D issue can be found here...
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.ASP
Now I'm going to look up her toon and see what server she plays on and tell her she rocks and to GAME ON.
The GOP really lost the election because they're not gamers of any kind - as a matter of fact, they don't know what that is at all
and are pretty much dorks when it comes to technology (IMHO), WOW included...
if she won in 2006 I'd be happy, today, it's meh.