When Anoka County sheriff's deputies raided the Ham Lake home of Christine Gunhus during the early morning hours of August 30, it looked like a blow for good government. After all, it was Gunhus, the political director for the re-election campaign of Republican U.S. Senator Rod Grams, who was allegedly involved in an underhanded effort to sabotage the candidacy of Senate hopeful Mike Ciresi. The intrigue began in May, just before the DFL's state nominating convention, when some 150 party activists received a series of pseudonymous e-mails denouncing Ciresi as insufficiently liberal to carry the party's mantle. The four screeds, which attacked Ciresi for representing "anti-union" and "anti-environmentalist" corporations in his work as a trial lawyer, were signed with the name Katie Stevens, a self-identified DFLer and "committed progressive." As it turned out, neither the Ciresi campaign nor anyone else knew of or could locate a flesh-and-blood Katie Stevens. After some sleuthing, though, the Ciresi campaign made a potentially incriminating discovery: Gunhus's name, along with those of two other Grams aides, were listed in... More >>>