A Democratic state senate candidate in Maine has come under fire for her online alter ego, a level 85 orc named Santiaga who stalks the ashen lands of Azeroth.
Colleen Lachowicz is a World of Warcraft (WoW) enthusiast and Democratic politician who has, via Santiaga, expressed her fondness for pwning (WoW speak for "the act of dominating an opponent").
Maine Republicans have created a website, colleensworld.com, to highlight the candidate’s most controversial comments made in her "online fantasy world," ABC News reported:
It turns out that Santiaga has said some not-so-nice things about Republicans, including conservative tax icon and promoter of the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" Grover Norquist. Santiaga commented that she "may have to go and hunt down Grover Norquist and drown him in my bath tub."
Republicans in the state maintain that their criticism of Lachowicz is not about the fact that she plays the game, rather it’s based on the comments made by her alter-ego.
"This is not about her playing video games, this is about the comments she made while gaming," David Sorenson, communications director for the Maine Republican party, told ABC News, referring to the comments about Norquist, as well as things said about other Republicans. "These are all things that are unbecoming to a state Senator."
Lachowicz has also expressed pleasure as being able to "kill stuff without going to jail." It is not immediately clear from the context whether she is talking about WoW or IRL (gamer code for "in real life").
Perhaps most damningly, the candidate wrote in 2005 that her "productivity has never been the same … since I starting checking dkos at work," a reference to the Daily Kos, a left-wing blog of middling quality whose founder, Markos Moulitsas, blamed Sarah Palin for the shooting tragedy in Tucson, Ariz.
Leeroy Jenkins could not be reached for comment.