Senate candidate Kennedy paying blogger Brodkorb $4583 per month as "part-time consultant"

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Filed under: Minnesota Politics

Perhaps the most interesting item in this Minnesota Monitor profile of Minnesotademocratsexposed.com blogger Michael Brodkorb is Brodkorb's admission that he is paid $4583 per month--which works out to four bucks less than $55,000 per year--to be a part-time press consultant for U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kennedy's campaign.

Brodkorb frequently cites his role in Kennedy's campaign when posting items about the U.S. Senate race that polls show Kennedy is losing by a wide margin to DFL challenger Amy Klobuchar. And while the MDE blog is appropriately regarded as place where no attack seems too petty or vile when it comes to belittling Minnesota Democrats, Brodkorb should also be credited with providing a forum for some of the most spirited, and occasionally enlightening, political debates regarding state political issues and candidates. DFL empathizers frequently weigh in to defend their side.

But Minnesota Monitor raises some good points about how difficult it is for a paid consultant to keep his work completely separate from his partisan blog. And another DFL-leaning blog, Mn Publius, recently published a report from the campaign of Michelle Bachmann showing that Brodkorb was paid $5500 for work on her campaign. Brodkorb didn't acknowledge this conflict when posting an item on MDE about Bachmann's race with DFL challenger Patty Wetterling for the U.S. House seat Kennedy is vacating to run for the Senate.

Posted by Britt Robson at September 27, 2006 12:22 PM

« 9/27 Morning Communiqué | Main | Elephants on West Seventh »

Comments

It's not just the money - the rate of Brodkorb's posting specifically on the Senate race has almost doubled since his announcement of the "consulting gig," instead of decreasing as he said it would. The point was to demonstrate that he is in no way independent of the campaign, but rather conducts his blogging about the race with a great deal of coordination with the campaign. Yet, like his employer's claims of independence from President Bush, he still maintains a public facade of independence, which allows him to successfully shop campaign talking points to the media as "independent" stories.

You've missed the point a bit.

Posted by: MN Campaign Report at September 27, 2006 1:41 PM

Britt, a lot of those "disclaimers" were added well after the post originally went up.

Brodkorb (with a "b") is a paid political activist doing campaign work. He has a blog. I can think of no way in which he could possibly separate those two things.

As for the "lively" debates, Brodkorb is deleting "liberal" comments right and left, as screenshots at Norwegianity show (and I just left a comment to see if it would get deleted after hearing so many others talk about how they got flushed from Brodkorb's comment threads).

Minnesota Democrats Exposed appears, for all intents and purposes, to be a wholly-controlled subsidiary of the Minnesota Republican Party, and the media should so note that when writing about Brodkorb's "scoops."

Posted by: Mark Gisleson at September 27, 2006 1:55 PM

I didn't miss anything, I just chose to emphasize a different aspect of the Monitor story.

As for MDE deleting comments, I am aware that that occurs and I personally don't agree with the reasons for some of the deletions, or the apparent filtering of certain words that cause one's post to be immediately excised. But anyone who says that people who disagree with Brodkorb don't have a voice on the MDE blog don't read it. The discussion in the comments is lively and occasionally informative.

Finally, my original post had Brodkorb taking in $4583 per week from Kennedy rather than $4583 per month (I always had the yearly math of $54,996 right though). It also had Brodkorb's name spelled Brodkorp. Both were my errors and I appreciate people informing me of them before they stayed posted for very long.

Posted by: Britt Robson at September 27, 2006 3:10 PM

City Pages wouldn't know anything about "petty" or "vile" attacks.

The only new revelation is the amount of Brodkorb's compensation. If it were some fraction (say, $458 per month), would that make him independent? What is the cutoff?

The issue is whether he is doing something else for the campaign that is worthy of the compensation. For a race that ends in November, the "yearly math" is meaningless. It is not unusual for political types to make what seems like a lot of money in a short burst, as an election approaches. And Brodkorb is a talented researcher. Here are a couple facts in his favor:

1. There are other campaigns/entities for which he works part time.

2. There are other races, where he does not have a consulting relationship, that he writes regularly about. Remember Attorney General Entenza?

If you want to determine whether he is paid to blog, ask him for a rate card (good luck) and a description of what he does for the Kennedy campaign and other clients. Maybe the "scandal" is the other way around -- he is charging too little. The campaigns with which he doesn't have a consulting relationship are getting valuable research for free. Or maybe there is no scandal at all and he is just one of those rare individuals who does what he loves for a living -- and does similar stuff on the side for no money because he loves it so much.

I am not sure what deleting liberal posts has to do with supposedly being paid to blog. Maybe this is just a general gripe session about Minnesota Democrats Exposed.

Posted by: Peter A. Swanson at September 28, 2006 7:12 AM

I cannot understand how those that make comment in this section can complain about deleting "liberal" comments right and left when City Pages does this all the time.
In fact, the DU web site is famous for deleting any comments that do not march instep with their ideology.
Therefore, this is a complaint that has now ground to stand on, so get over it.

Posted by: MPL at September 28, 2006 2:58 PM

Peter--
Are you trying to tell me that salary size doesn't affect independence? Would you sacrifice as much of your otherwise free time for an employer who pays you $10,000 as you would for someone who pays you $100,000? Especially if you had the ever-flexible definition of being a "part time" employee? Or, to take it another way, does $4583 per month from Kennedy provide Brodkorp with more "free time" to slag Democrats than if Kennedy was only paying him $2000 a month for the same work?

If you don't think the size of the paycheck matters, you're either being disingenuous or you write more intelligently than you think.

Finally, you're right: The discussion about deleting or not deleting posts on MDE doesn't have anything to do with being paid to blog. It began because I noted the lively discourse in the comments section of MDE, and purposefully went "off topic" from the "paid to blog" theme because I wanted to send a message that I don't consider MDE evil incarnate. Perhaps that's a bit too nuanced for your jerking knee.

Posted by: Britt Robson at September 28, 2006 7:50 PM

City Pages deletes comments or sections of comments based on issues of libel, unnecessary invective, and stupidity, with a minimum of caprice.

Corey Anderson
Online Editor

Posted by: Corey Anderson at September 28, 2006 8:43 PM

I go back to my question: What is the cutoff? What dollar amount would allow Brodkorb to be independent in your eyes?

Political types make their money in even-numbered years in the Summer and Fall. So the $55,000 _yearly_ figure is meaningless.

Posted by: Peter A. Swanson at September 29, 2006 7:19 AM

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