Maine state Senate Candidate Colleen Lachowicz, 48, has taken some serious heat for her World of Warcraft character, Santiaga, who enjoys cursing and stabbing people.
The Maine Republican Party feels that her online fantasy identity as an, “orc assassination rogue,” calls her ability to hold public office into question. They even created a website dedicated to Lachowicz’s online character called www.colleensworld.com.
The Maine GOP said in a press release Thursday that Lachowicz was leading a “bizarre double life,” with her odd online behavior. In the popular, mainly among teenage boys, role-playing fantasy game, Lachowicz, or Santiaga, is a level 68 fighting green orc with fangs and a mohawk.
Lachowicz has also, under her own name, blogged about her achievements on World of Warcraft at DailyKos.com, sometimes using foul language and refers to how much joy she gets out of stabbing things and having the ability to kill people without going to jail.
“I wish I wasn’t at work! I’d rather be gaming with my guildies! It’s me….Santiaga!,” she wrote in a post.
In another part of the blog she talks about, “being in a Socialist guild,” and talks about her politics including how she feels about conservatives.
“Now if you’ll excuse me I may have to go and hunt down Grover Norquist and drown him in my bathtub,” she wrote.
Lachowicz thinks her gaming habits are completely normal and that she should not be criticized just because she leads a double life online.
“I think it’s weird that I’m being targeted for playing online games,” she said in a statement. “Apparently I’m in good company since there are 183 million other Americans who also enjoy online games.”
The Chairman for the Democratic Party in Maine, Ben Grant also said that Lachowicz was being unfairly slammed for her active online fantasy life and called the attack, “mudslinging” politics.
“Colleen may play ‘World of Warcraft’ online, but it has been far more harmful to Maine people that Tom Martin [her Republican opponent] has been playing ‘Worlds of Hurt’ (at level 90) with their pensions, access to health care, and public schools,” he said. “It’s time GOP grew up and talked about the real issues.”
It is difficult to see how “grow up” and defending an adult’s fantasy role-playing habits fit in the same sentence, but maybe they define things differently up in Maine.
