World Of Warcraft Raiding May Damage State Senate Elections In US
Recently a Democratic candidate for a Senate seat in the state of Maine has some people talking about World of Warcraft. Colleen Lachowicz, the 48 year old social worker from Waterville, Maine won her primary back in June. In a push back from the Republicans they are bringing her online personality into the mud slinging. Collen Lachowicz has a level 85 orc rogue as well as a paladin. Some candidates and other republican representatives are saying that this hobby could be damaging for her chances to get elected in the State Senate.
The main argument from the Lachowicz Auchwitzers (patent pending) is that a State Senator should not be spending their time between two worlds. That the fantasy world is removing her too far from the real one. On an attack site http://www.colleensworld.com it says,
“Colleen Lachowicz is a Democrat candidate for Maine State Senate. In Colleen’s online fantasy world, she gets away with crude, vicious and violent comments like the ones below. Maine needs a State Senator that lives in the real world, not in Colleen’s fantasy world.”
The real concern from most of these activists against Colleen Lachowicz say that the game takes up too much free time. Although the game has been out for a decade and the class has been available as long as that, the argument from a press release from the State Republican Party says that “studies have found that the average World of Warcraft gamer is 28 and spends 22.7 hours per week playing.” They are using the average to describe the play time experience of Colleen Lachowicz and it has some voters rethinking their vote. Quote from a voter, “I think I would prefer it if politicians spend their time doing other things. Call me old fashioned I guess.”
Colleen Lachowicz has followed up on these statements from the Republic State press releases stating the following:
“What’s really weird is that the Republicans are going after my hobbies instead of talking about their record while they’ve been running Augusta for the last two years. Instead of talking about what they’re doing for Maine people, they’re making fun of me for playing video games. Did you know that more people over the age of 50 play video games than under the age of 18? As a gamer, I’m in good company with folks Jodie Foster, Vin Diesel, Mike Myers, and Robin Williams. Maybe it’s the Republican Party that is out of touch.”
What’s even more weird is that the Republican Party is not actually attacking the part of the blog that would seem to be the most damaging. Multiple posts in an online blog for World of Warcraft has Lachowicz talking about how she slacked off at work all day and how much more she would rather be playing WoW. Also violent words like “who would have thought that a peace-lovin’, social worker and democrat would enjoy that[stabbing things]?!”
The election is a month away. It will be interesting to people on both sides of the US party line to see how things like these will effect policy and elections in the future. Every day we are growing up into a world that understands video games more and more. Yet there are still cases of something like this, an online personality in a video game, hurting the real life chances of someone in the spotlight.
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