Congresswoman Michele Bachmann will be sharing a congressional and campaign staffer with Iowa Representative Steve King. The new hire, Sergio Gor, is well-known in conservative circles as a "sharp operator." Gor is the fourth person in the photo on the right.
The Hill is reporting on the unusual hire in Reps. Steve King and Michele Bachmann to share press staffer:
Staunch conservative GOP Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Steve King (Iowa) are pooling resources to co-hire a press secretary.
Sergio Gor, a Capitol Hill neophyte, was recently hired by Bachmann. He will soon join King’s office as a part-time staffer as well. . . .
. . .Some staffers call the move unprecedented because Gor will be handling press for two different lawmakers, getting paid from their personal offices as well as campaign funds.
According to Bachmann’s communications director, Dave Dziok, Gor is now working solely for the North Star State Republican — but that will change in the near future.
“Right now he’s part-time official and part-time campaign for Bachmann’s office alone. He has not been hired by King’s office yet. Ideally it will work out where his time is divided between both offices,” Dziok explained.
According to a source familiar with the situation, it took several months to get the go-ahead from the ethics committee and the House Administration Committee.
The publication provides a bland resume for Gor:
Gor previously worked for the Washington News Observer, a nonpartisan media outlet that interviews newsmakers on camera and covers major events.
That's a monument to understatement. A brief glance at the results of a google search reveals that Gor recently director of outreach for Americans for Limited Government.
Gor's twitter profile continues to carry this bio:
He also worked as a 2008 McCain "campaign aide assigned to assist Palin's family in Alaska,"and spoke to a conservative breakfast with Hannah Giles, according to a December 16 tweet by Congressman Joe "You Lie" Wilson:
New media guru Sergio Gor and Acorn expose heroine Hannah Giles at breakfast are speakers on extraordinary influence of new media.
Some of those duties put Gor in the vicinity of the ACORN Pimp videos that are now a staple of the right. Here's a press release Gor sent out on behalf of Andrew Breitbart's Big Government Productions about one of James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles' press conferences.
Gor first came to national attention in 2007 as leader of the George Washington University Young America's Foundation chapter that sponsored a Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week that was " targeted by a satirical poster campaign mocking the event as racist," according to the college paper. The incident became a cause celebre for conservative pundits, and Gor appeared on "Hannity and Colmes" with Adam Kokesh.
Developing...
Update: Looking through Nexis reveals even more interesting material. According to Obama Flips the Power Switch for a New Generation, a February 7, 2009 article in the LA Daily News, Gor was then serving as " now a communication analyst for the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C." who got his start as a member of the Young Senators program in Los Angeles:
Created almost a decade ago when City Councilman Richard Alarcon was a state senator, Young Senators has had some 450 high school seniors go through an after-school program of government and political issues beyond what any civics class could ever offer. . . .
...Alarcon takes special pride that many of his former Young Senators have gone on to continue their political involvement. Coincidentally, it was a former Young Senator, Sergio Gor, now a communication analyst for the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C., who was a virtual lifesaver for Alarcon at Obama's inauguration.
In 2007, the Washington Post noted that Gor, then a senior at GWU, was from Los Angeles. Born in Malta, he became naturalized American citizen in 2006; he was a White House intern at the time.
One of the commenters here at Bluestem who attended GWU at the same time as Gor notes that the YAF broke off from the College Republicans because the latter group was not radical enough. A couple of articles available at student publications support this notion. A blog post by a College Republican here at the blog of the GW Patriot (conservative online student publication) notes that split:
I say this after having experienced one of the most divisive elections my freshman year between Chris Brooks and Sergio Gor (And their respective "slates"). It was the year that YAF split from the College Republicans over a petty dispute in personal leadership, not over conservative politics. That decision has resonated for several years after and for a time greatly weakened the conservative position on campus.
The writer of The Elephant On My Chest: How CR Chairman Gary Livacari Broke My Heart in the GWPatriot reports about one of the incidents that led to the split; a comment mentions that College Republicans who disagreed with Gor had their own White House internships threatened. A second source, the Daily Colonial, reports on the infighting here. In short, it appears that Gor honed many of his strategic skills in the sort of campus drama that now serves as a training ground for conservative shock media.
Gor seems to be a regular on "The Other McCain" blog. Wonder what's so "private" about this video of Gor introducing Andrew Breitbart at NetRight Nation in March 2009. [end update]
Photo from the American Spectator: Left to right, David Frum, Hannah Giles, Tom Qualter, Sergio Gor, Lynn Vincent. Screenshot: Sergio Gor's twitter profile.
"Coast to coast, LA to Chicago, western male. / Across the north and south, to Key Largo, shill for sale...."
No need to ask -- he's a Smooth Operator.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Apr 14, 2010 at 08:44 AM
I went to GW with this guy. The Young America's Foundation chapter he led is a pretty radical right wing group; they broke off from the College Republicans because they didn't think they were right-wing enough. This year alone, they nailed over 1,000 crosses into GW's main quad in an anti-choice event, protested Megan McCain and Thomas Friedman for coming to speak about "radical" issues like gay marriage and the environment. They always bring "insightful" speakers to our campus like Karl Rove and Tom Tancredo, who got to go on a nice, long racist rant about why our country shouldn't let in any more Muslims or Hispanics.
Posted by: Charlie | Apr 14, 2010 at 10:35 AM