Brodkorb’s recipe: thick skin and a sharp tongue 

Senate Republicans’ comm director remains a polarizing figure

The only people who don’t have an opinion about Michael Brodkorb are those who have never met him.

The man who serves as communication director for the Minnesota Senate Republican Caucus and deputy chairman of the state Republican Party has been described, variously, as a “principled conservative,” a purveyor of “vile hatred,” a “gifted communicator,” a “sanctimonious jerk,” “passionate and effective,” “an ideologically challenged partisan” and, until earlier this year, one of the most politically influential bloggers in Minnesota.

If only his critics knew: Brodkorb, who turns 36 on Dec. 23, is a dedicated husband and father who admits to having Andy Williams, REM, Perry Como, Motley Crue, the Beach Boys, Amy Winehouse, the Go-Gos, Ray Coniff, John Denver and four different versions of “What a Wonderful World” on his iPhone - because, he says, it’s the song that he and his wife danced to at their wedding.

As a Senate staffer, a party honcho and a former pro-Republican blogger, he pulls no punches in identifying what he sees as the failings and foibles of Minnesota DFLers, yet he is so fiercely protective of his family that he will say only that he and his wife, who works in Target’s corporate headquarters, have three “young children,” explaining that a lot of people strongly dislike him and he sees no reason to expose his family to the vitriol.

“I have a tremendously thick skin,” says the fast-talking Brodkorb, who seems always to be four thoughts ahead of himself, with scarcely enough time to verbalize one before the next one erupts. “I’ve learned to develop that.

“Here’s how I see it: Politics is not a tickle competition - it’s a contact sport. It’s serious business, and it can be rough.”

His caucus office in the State Office Building is minimalist in the extreme. A TV perched high on a metal filing cabinet is tuned to Fox News (”I like to have it on in the background”), and his desk holds little else besides two computers, an iPhone and a framed photo of Brodkorb with his two daughters, taken last summer in Iowa. An Ansel Adams print hangs on one wall; on another is a cork bulletin board, empty except for a smiley face that someone has created using pushpins.

On a website promoting his candidacy for deputy chairman of the state party - a position for which he declines to draw a $90,000-a-year salary, instead directing that the money be funneled back into hiring and training permanent field staff members - Brodkorb describes himself this way:

“Aside from being a proud husband and father, I am an unabashed pro-life, pro-family, pro-Second Amendment, anti-tax and spend, lifelong platform Republican. I pledge to be a fearless conservative voice for our party who will challenge Democrats head to head. My goal is very clear: I want to build our party and win elections!”

Brodkorb says he grew up in an “apolitical household” in Forest Lake, where he was exposed to little if any political discourse. It wasn’t until he left home to study political science at the University of Minnesota-Duluth that his simmering interest in politics - which he says was fueled by a Scholastic paperback about the American presidency that he ordered and read over and over as a child, until the book finally disintegrated while he was in college - rose to the surface.

And when he volunteered to work on then-U.S. Sen. Rudy Boschwitz’s unsuccessful 1996 campaign against Paul Wellstone, he was a goner.

“That’s what made me fall in love with it,” he says. “That’s when my interest in politics reached the stratosphere.”

He started his infamous blog, Minnesota Democrats Exposed (MDE), in 2004, but he initially blogged anonymously, quickly becoming a must-read for political junkies from both parties.

Brodkorb unmasked himself in early 2006, shortly after he was named as the defendant in a libel lawsuit filed by Blois Olson, a former staffer at Politics in Minnesota and, at the time, a public relations executive. Olson sued Brodkorb for alleging in his blog that Olson criticized the congressional campaign of Coleen Rowley because she did not hire his PR firm, New School Communications, and failed to disclose as much when he issued his criticism.

A district court judge dismissed the lawsuit the following year, saying Brodkorb’s blog had the same legal protections as newspapers and traditional broadcasters against lawsuits by public figures.

And Olson and Brodkorb went on to become, if not friends, then at least non-enemies.

When Brodkorb quit writing for MDE this summer after becoming deputy chairman of the state party, Olson paid tribute to him as “one of the most politically influential bloggers in Minnesota,” noting that the two men had “a history”: “It was an incident that on some level we both personally regret,” Olson wrote on MinnPost.com in August. “On another level, we are both better and smarter for the experience.

“From my view on the Democratic side, I think Brodkorb has matured. … To date, Brodkorb is the best Minnesota example of partisan discipline that never violates Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment for Republicans: ‘Thou shall not speak ill of another Republican.’”

“Michael is very effective at what he does,” says Ben Golnick, former executive director of the Minnesota GOP and now head of Golnick Strategies, a St. Paul public affairs consulting firm, who has known Brodkorb since 2005. “I think if any DFLer would admit it, they’d love to have someone of Michael’s caliber on their side.

“Yes, the other side loves to hate him, but if you look at the six or eight biggest political stories over the last two election cycles, Michael’s played a role in all of them. He was right in the middle, either breaking the stories or playing a key role.”

Golnick recalls walking through the State Office Building when Brodkorb was writing for MDE and seeing the blog on the computer screens of not just Republicans, but DFLers. “He’s a very passionate person, and a lot of people on both sides of the aisle will tell you that,” Golnick says.

Brodkorb says he’s had the chance to move his career - and his family - to Washington, but he’s never succumbed to the allure of the place.

“Me being in D.C. - it would be like a little kid working in a candy factory,” he admits. “It would be too much overload.”

He says he’s happy right here in Minnesota, thank you, where he finds politics fascinating, the residents thoughtful and well-informed, and the challenge of helping more Republicans win in the 2010 election invigorating.

“I’d love to be remembered as someone who was passionate about politics,” he says. “It’s like Teddy Roosevelt said: I don’t want to be among those cold and timid souls who have never tasted victory or defeat.”