Over at Across the Great Divide, my friend Charlie Quimby notes a Stalinesque airbrushing out of former Minnesota Free Market Institute president and senior fellow David Strom in Who Shot David Strom?:
Also, the Internet Archive pages for MnFMI have been purged. You can't view the old staff photos showing Strom and his wife Margaret Martin with Craig Westover, the sole remaining eminence at what now appears to be the Pat Anderson for Governor Institute.
Both the MnFMI About page and the Pat Anderson bio ("Pat currently serves as President of the MN Free Market Institute") on her campaign site would give credence to that, and to recent conversations I've overheard in which people try to puzzle out the relationship of Anderson and Westover to the MnFMI.
Perhaps the pages could both be updated to help people out. Anderson herself is forthcoming about the end of her tenure at the MnFMI on October 15:
Her departure is regularly mentioned in news stories, so updating both websites shouldn't be a shocker to anyone watching the pages (unlike the disappearance of Strom that so worries Mr. Quimby). Her column in MinnPost--touting the global warming skepticism of a recent MnFMI speaker--clearly states she's not longer with the think tank.
Some venues, however, get it wrong, as WCCO did on November 2.
And as for Craig Westover, he might be ale to lend a hand with updating both sites. A cache of Anderson's campaign Facebook page:
Pat Anderson for Governor of Minnesota welcomes Craig Westover, Communications Director for the campaign. Craig is a well know conservative writer, a (former) columnist for the Pioneer Press and a Senior Policy Fellow for the MN Free Market Institute.
Politics in Minnesota also reported on the hire:
Craig Westover, the former conservative blogger and columnist whose picture piloting a sailboat earned him the nickname Captain Fishsticks, is now guiding the media and communications ship at Pat Anderson’s gubernatorial campaign.
Westover, who was dubbed Captain Fishsticks during his blogging days by Nick Coleman of the Star Tribune, earlier this month became Republican Anderson’s full-time, paid communications director....
...Westover is still a senior policy fellow at the Minnesota Free Market Institute, but he no longer receives a paycheck from that organization. Anderson is the former president of the Free Market Institute.
Certainly an arrangement to recall the next time a Minnesota Republican snarks about Mn2020 founder Matt Entenza or any of his paid campaign staff--none of whom are fellows at the think tank he founded that we know.
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