Not content with losing by using the services of Dave Thompson and David Strom, the Lee Byberg campaign announced yesterday that Minnesotans for Marriage Deputy Campaign Manager, former Bachmann Chief of Staff, consort of midget wrestlers and country music promoter Andy Parrish will advise the Republican campaign to unseat Blue Dog Democrat Collin Peterson.
Oh, good.
The Valley News Live (and nowhere else) reports in Karl Rove-Style Consultant Puts Collin Peterson in his Cross hairs:
Lee Byberg, the Republican-endorsed candidate for Minnesota's 7th Congressional district, will be taking advice from GOP strategist Andy Parrish. Parrish will carry the title of general consultant.
Andy Parrish is known for his Karl Rove style tactics. He has deep roots in Minnesota politics.
In a news release sent out Tuesday morning, Byberg's campaign included this biography of Byberg.
Over the past decade, Parrish has served Minnesota from grassroots efforts to St. Paul, and then on Capitol Hill, as Rep. Michele Bachmann's Chief of Staff.
In 2006 he ran Bachmann's campaign, guiding an effort that made Bachmann the first Republican woman to be elected to federal office from Minnesota. Parrish's leadership of her 2010 re-election campaign earned him the nickname "Maestro." The campaign produced a record-setting $13.5 million in fundraising for Bachmann, along with 420,000 calls to voters and 40,000 doors knocked-on in the final five days before her decisive victory.
"Andy Parrish is a superb campaign strategist, and I am thrilled that he agreed to guide our campaign strategy," said Lee Byberg.
A Nexis All-News search reveals that Andy Parrish has never been compared to Karl Rove, although Rove did appear at a Bachmann fundraising during the 2006 race for the open seat vacated that year by Mark Kennedy, who went on to be crushed in the United States Senate race by Amy Klobuchar.
Outside of the Byberg press release, Bluestem could find no published evidence of the use of the nickname "Maestro" to describe Parrish. GOP insiders that Bluestem contacted could not recall hearing it, although one openly speculated that the name might well exist inside Parrish's head.
Given Parrish's recent tweets against Ron Paul, state senator Julie Rosen and a supporter of U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hegseth, it's surprising he can work Peterson into the busy schedule of innerparty ratfucking he's conducting. He's a busy man and he's orchestrating something. Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Helicopter String Quartet," perhaps?
Will Parrish work in the tradition of Byberg consultants like Dave Thompson, who ran for the state senate and supplied communications support for the MNGOP in 2010, in addition to aiding the Byberg campaign?
Parrish now serves as the deputy director of Minnesotans for Marriage. In a newspaper interview last week in Fergus Falls last week, Parrish said that gay marriage doesn't exist. Indeed, if one closes one's eyes, claps one's hands, and repeats "I don't believe in gay marriage," it might disappear entirely. Bluestem has called this a Tinkerbell moment.
The addition of Parrish to Byberg's staff should amp up the Anti-gay Tinkerbell factor already present in the Seventh. Peterson was an original sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, and voted for DOMA in 1996, telling the Star Tribune that "'I don't believe in it. Period,' he said." (Matt McKinney, "Defense of Marriage Act; Bill opposing gay marriage is creating political unrest // Same-sex marriage is a major tug-of-war issue between gay activists and politicians who oppose such unions," June 24, 1996, Nexis All News, accessed May 16, 2012).
Peterson voted against repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell in December 2010, and the Box Turtle Bulletin reports that Peterson was one of just 16 Democrats who voted on May 9 to bar the Department of Justice from opposing DOMA.
Log Cabin Republican activist Eva Young claims that Peterson told LGBT activists lobbying against FMA that no gays live in the Seventh.
And there you have it: the Byberg and Peterson campaigns can duke it out in a Tinkerbell contest, while Parrish also tries to save the dolphin exhibit at the Minnesota Zoo, regardless of how many dolphins end up dying there.
Minnesota political blog fodder doesn't get any better.
Image: A bottlenosed dolphin. What's that you say about biological exuberance, Flipper? Really?
Related posts: Marriage bigotry road trip makes pit stop in Fergus Falls Daily Journal newsroom
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