GOP: DFL has used sensational and disgusting imagery on legislative mailings

Republicans are fighting back against the DFL's complaints over legislative campaign mailings.

On Thursday, the Republican Party highlighted a DFL-sponsored mailing that depicts Republican Kirk Stensrud, who is in a tight race to regain the suburban seat he lost in 2012, as a "school thief" dressed in black and carrying a weapon.

The DFL also used images of "a clenched fist in front of a cowering child and a person sharpening a straight razor," in its mailings in Minnesota House races, the Republican Party said.

In a statement, Republican Party chair Keith Downey decried the "misleading and sensational mail from the Democrat party."

"Minnesota Democrats have to use these tactics because their ideas don't work," Downey said.

The Republican Party's ire comes in the wake of three days of Democratic and non-partisan complaints about Republican-sponsored mailings that go after DFL members for backing measures that had bipartisan support. One of the mailings addresses expungement and the other focuses on a drunk driving law.

The DFL House Speaker Paul Thissen said the Republican complaints suffer from false equivalency.

Images capture, "people's attention and it frames the issues up," Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, said, "What they are saying about the bills are false and misleading."

Thissen noted that, unlike the Republican mailers, no independent group has complained about the DFL literature pieces.

With control of the Minnesota House in the balance, the DFL and Republican Party have been flooding targeted districts with mail, hoping to find an edge with voters.