Michael Brodkorb's threatened lawsuit is costing taxpayers

Michael Brodkorb's lawsuit against the state of Minnesota has cost the state $46,150 so far, according to the Associated Press.

Brodkorb was fired by the Senate last December after his girlfriend, Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, resigned her position following a confrontation with her fellow Republican legislators. Koch and Brodkorb were both cheating on their spouses.

Brodkorb formerly served as communications chief for the MNGOP Senate caucus, and was a top power broker in the party. He has since threatened to file lawsuits against the Senate for defamation and gender discrimination, although he has not formally sued. More >>

Former MNGOP boss Tony Sutton raised the party's credit card debt

An internal review committee formed to look into the Minnesota Republican Party's finances found no "theft" at the MNGOP but uncovered evidence of mismanagement.

The committee's members -- Pat Anderson, Scott Dutcher, Kelly Fenton, Randy Gilbert, Jeff Johnson, Terry McCall, Bron Scherer, Rick Weible, Joe Westrup, and Mike Vekich -- did not perform a full audit of the party's finances. Instead, the committee investigated a few specific transactions and found the party's internal procedures lacking.

Members discovered "instances of misreporting both internally and externally, a lack of adequate internal financial controls, examples of questionable decision-making and a lack of accountability and transparency," according to the report, released yesterday.

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Chalk it up as a small victory for the Party of Fiscal Responsibility.

Just a night before today's scheduled eviction hearing, MNGOP chair Pat Shortridge announced that his party won't become homeless after all.

In a statement released last night, Shortridge said the MNGOP has "reached a confidential agreement with our landlord, Hub Properties, that will allow us to fulfill our obligations to them."

Hub "will request a continuance of tomorrow's hearing and we expect to have a final agreement in place within a week," the statement adds.

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Dean blasted the MNGOP after party leadership demanded St. Cloud students cancel his scheduled appearance.

Bradlee Dean isn't taking the news that MNGOP leadership is demanding St. Cloud State Republicans cancel his scheduled on-campus appearance lying down.

Yesterday, on his radio show, Dean put the MNGOP on blast, saying that if he were a state Republican leader, he wouldn't want himself speaking to young conservatives either.

Alluding to the Koch-Brodkorb scandal, Dean suggested party leaders don't want him talking about morality because they're so mired in immorality themselves. He characterized the students' willingness to host him in spite of the MNGOP's threats as a sign they can see through the party leadership's charade.

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The MNGOP wants to keep itself far, far away from Bradlee Dean.

MNGOP leadership has issued a stern ultimatum to St. Cloud State College Republicans -- cancel Bradlee Dean's on-campus speaking engagement and concert, scheduled for tonight, or you'll have trouble finding Republican jobs in the future.

While working for the MNGOP doesn't exactly sound like a sun-drenched picnic these days, it still seems this should be an easy choice -- after all, who in their right mind wants to listen to Dean talk about how the homosexual lifestyle 'literally kills' gays or speculate about how Trayvon Martin was "gang bangin'" the night he was shot dead?

SCSU Republicans, that's who. The Strib reports organizers have no plans to cancel tonight's event, despite the fact that failing to do so means they might not have the chance to become Minnesota's next Michael Brodkorb.

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Torgerson claims the GOP's 5th District convention was like a circus -- literally.

Earlier this month, Minneapolis criminal defense attorney Lynne Torgerson dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination to take on Congressman Keith Ellison this November. It looks like Ellison's opponent with be Chris Fields, who won the party's backing during the 5th District convention on April 14.

While that might not really qualify as news -- after all, Fields faces extremely long odds in his bid to unseat the popular Ellison -- Torgerson's bizarre account of the proceedings at the aforementioned Republican convention is worth sharing.

She claims, for instance, that 5th District Republicans were at first reluctant to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, then only did so after a man wearing a clown suit with a hat resembling a flag came forward. The clown, who Torgerson says wore the hat "to desecrate our flag," led delegates as they finally recited the Pledge.

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The MNGOP is like that too-broke-to-pay-rent roommate we all had in college.

Talk about a bad tenant!

Politics in Minnesota reports that Massachusetts-based Hub Properties Trust has filed paperwork in Ramsey County to evict the MNGOP from the Capitol Office Building space the party had been "renting."

We say "renting" because in an internal party memo leaked to Politico earlier this month, MNGOP chair Pat Shortridge disclosed that the party hadn't paid its rent for months. Yup, that'll get you kicked out every time.

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Former MNGOP chair took a baseball bat to the party's now-broken balance sheet.

Late last year, the MNGOP announced that it was a whopping $2 million in debt.

The party's dire financial predicament led to Tony Sutton's resignation as the chair of the party. Sutton was replaced by Pat Shortridge, but the damage was already done, according to a Politico analysis of the balance sheets of state Republican parties published yesterday.

Though many state GOP parties are in bad shape financially, "no state party may be in worse shape... than the Minnesota GOP," Politico's Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns write. "Thanks to a disastrous previous regime, they had over a million dollars in debt and a negative balance in their federal account as of the end of February."

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Michael Brodkorb's social media rules: exposed

​After Republicans took control of the Minnesota Senate and made Michael Brodkorb communications director for the caucus, Brodkorb sent out a memo laying out the rules of social media.

Addressed to "all staff," the memo begins by explaining that caucus members have a stake in the Minnesota Senate Republican Caucus' reputation. Social media, Brodkorb wrote, allows the party to promote its message to "hundreds, or even thousands of people, in a matter of seconds," but puts the party at risk when "missteps on these platforms" allow enemies to "poke holes" in the party's credibility.

So Brodkorb created seven rules for using social media, including one directing users to go through their Facebook and Twitter accounts and "clean up any potential controversial material."

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"Give me half a mil, or the MNGOP is coming down with me!"

​Pass the popcorn. This is 'bout to get interesting.

Yesterday, attorneys representing former Senate employee Michael Brodkorb filed a notice of claim against the state of Minnesota, a precursor to a possible lawsuit against the state for improper termination. Today, it emerged that Brodkorb's legal strategy will be to argue that some of his female colleagues who have also bonked superiors kept their jobs.

The Star Tribune reports that "Brodkorb's legal team is prepared to dig deep into the romantic lives of legislators and staffers."

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