Know Your RPMs: A Field Guide To Minnesota Republican Factionalism

(This is the first edition of the Guide. The most recent edition is here.)

As the current Brodkorbian-Kochian phase of the Fall of the House of Sutton unfolds, I thought it might be useful to take a stab at detailing what most local Establishment media journalists, who are either ignorant as paint or fearful of losing their precious access to GOP powerbrokers, have neglected to explain: The existence of the factions that have for years been jockeying for control of the Republican Party of Minnesota and the politicians running under their banners.

This refusal to delineate the factions and agendas of the Minnesota GOP’s most prominent players and their conservative fellow travelers makes for incoherent (as well as flat-out wrong) reporting on the key issues that affect Minnesota. For example as Sally Jo Sorensen of Bluestem Prairie explains, when Tony Sutton claimed in his farewell letter as RPM Chair that shifting responsibility for the recount from the gubernatorial campaign to the party was what the RPM gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer had wanted and not Sutton, no local establishment journalist dared contradict him even though the evidence undermining Sutton’s claims was so obvious Stevie Wonder could have seen it. Ms. Sorensen isn’t afraid to mention who is allied to whom (and who hates whom) here. Understanding this helps to understand Minnesota Republican politics, where the bigwigs in the factions carry more weight than do their stooges in the legislature.

The two main factions in the Minnesota Republican Party are the Sutton/Brodkorb/Seifert faction, and the Emmer/Tea Party/TheoCon faction. There are other, smaller groups that make or break alliances as the need arises, but the Sutton and Emmer factions are the main two to be reckoned with. One of the smaller factions, the anti-gambling CAGE faction led by Annette and Jack Meeks, has been at times allied with, and fought against, both of the big factions; conversely, the pro-gambling faction also has ties to both sides. There are individuals, such as Michael Wigley, with a foot in both camps; he backed Emmer for governor in 2010, but he’s also been close enough to the Suttons and Coopers to be given a now-defunct Baja Sol franchise as part of the Sutton-Cooper efforts to turn Baja Sol into a moneymaker turkey farm capable of providing income to Republican operatives and fellow travelers. And of course there’s the powerful group of Twin-City-suburban and Rochester-area state Senators, the Gang of Four, but their agenda is usually more about preservation of the party and its legislative caucus than anything else.

The Sutton faction is the one that is representative of the party establishment and which is generally backed by the Mr. Burns of Minnesota Republican politics, the Cooper family whose billions come from the TCF financial empire; they also (at least until last week) generally have the backing of the top Republican Senators known to Republican detractors like Sue Jeffers as the “Gang of Four”: Dave Senjem, David Hann, Geoff Michel, and Chris Gerlach. The Emmer faction has among it such marginally-electable Bible-banger folks as Minnesota’s own answer to Rick Santorum, Allen Quist.

Follow me past the jump for a chart, by no means complete, of the players, their factions, their relationships, and their desires. Feel free to tell me about any I missed.

Player	Faction	Friends	Enemies	Agenda	Noted For
Tony Sutton	Sutton/Seifert	Michael Brodkorb, TCF Coopers, Ben Golnik, Mike Parry	Tom Emmer, Allen Quist	Whatever enriches Tony	Thuggery as RPM Chair, being bad with money
Bill Cooper Sr. & Jr. (TCF Coopers)	Sutton/Seifert	Tony Sutton, Bridget Cronin Sutton, Michael Brodkorb, West Metro business types	Tom Emmer, Allen Quist, TheoCons in general	To dominate in politics and general business as they do in banking	TCF empire, bankrolling Suttons at Baja Sol
Michael Brodkorb	Sutton/Seifert	Tony Sutton, Amy Koch, Mike Parry, Luke Hellier, Ron Carey, Ben Golnik	Tom Emmer, Allen Quist	Oozing his way to the top	“independent” blogger pose, launching smears, mistreating his wife and kids, being Tony Sutton’s deputy chair and communications director, being Amy Koch’s Senate employee
Amy Koch	Sutton/Seifert	Michael Brodkorb, Tony Sutton	Tom Emmer, Allen Quist	Defending marriage from gay people	Tool of Sutton and Brodkorb, wrecking her own marriage by dallying with a male Senate employee
Annette Meeks, Jack Meeks	CAGE/Freedom Foundation/ CAE	Tony Sutton, Bridget Cronin Sutton	Tom Emmer	Opposing gambling	Rumors that they’re Minnesota’s own micro Abramoff; Annette was Emmer’s running mate but they did and do NOT get along
Michael Wigley	Varies; backed Emmer in 2010, but friendly with Sutton/Seifert	Tony Sutton, Bridget Cronin Sutton, TCF Coopers, Tom Emmer	Anyone wanting to make rich people pay taxes	Getting richer through tax dodging and Baja Sol franchise	Founded anti-tax Minnesota Taxpayers League, had now-defunct Baja Sol franchise
Robert Cummins	Emmer/Quist	Tom Emmer, Allen Quist	Tony Sutton, Michael Brodkorb, gay people	Using his Primera money to turn Minnesota into a Evangelical Christian theocracy	Dumping tons of money into RPM and anti-gay group coffers
Jeff Larson, Daniel Puhl	Sutton/Seifert	Tony Sutton, Marty Seifert, Ben Golnik, Mary Igo	Tom Emmer, Allen Quist	Cash on the barrelhead	Feeding from the RNC 2008 trough well into 2011, then getting cushy Republican National Committee gigs in DC
Ben Golnik	Sutton/Seifert	Tony Sutton, John Gilmore, Mary Igo, TCF Coopers	Tom Emmer (with a passion)	Taking money from Emmer’s 2010 campaign and spending it without oversight	Founded Count Them All Properly with Tony Sutton, a group ostensibly devoted to pushing Emmer’s campaign in the 2010 recount, but whose accounting remains murky to this day
Mary Igo	Sutton/Seifert	Tony Sutton, Bridget Cronin Sutton, Ben Golnik, TCF Coopers	Tom Emmer	To run a slush fund with no accountability	Chairs Count Them All Properly (see entry for Ben Golnik)
Gregg Peppin	Sutton/Seifert	Marty Seifert, Tony Sutton, John Gilmore	Tom Emmer	MNGOP powerbroker, Sutton/Seifert consigliere	Running GOP candidate consulting firm P2B Strategies, being married to Joyce Peppin, being a Sutton/Seifert consigliere
Andy Brehm	Sutton/Seifert	Marty Seifert, Tony Sutton, John Gilmore	Tom Emmer	Sutton/Seifert consigliere	Founding the Churchill Society, being a Sutton/Seifert consigliere
Jen DeJournett	Sutton/Seifert	Tony Sutton, Marty Seifert, John Gilmore	Tom Emmer, Twila Brase	Being a female powerbroker in the RPM	Director of conservative women’s group VOICES, backstabbing Twila Brase
John Gilmore (aka @shabbosgoy on Twitter)	Sutton/Seifert	Tony Sutton, Ben Golnik, Gregg Peppin, Jen DeJournett	Tom Emmer	Powerbroker and leader within RPM	Drunken harassment of Muslim women
David FitzSimmons	Emmer/Quist	Tom Emmer	Tony Sutton, Michael Brodkorb, breathalyzers	Religious Right powerbroker	Running Emmer’s gubernatorial campaign, getting busted for drunk driving
Bill Walsh	Emmer/Quist	Tom Emmer, Allen Quist	Tony Sutton, Michael Brodkorb, weathervanes	Burrowing into state bureaucratic machinery, wrecking Department of Education	former RPM executive director, on-again off-again tenure on Emmer’s 2010 campaign
Mark Buesgens	Emmer/Quist	Tom Emmer, Allen Quist	Tony Sutton, Michael Brodkorb, breathalyzers	Serving as Emmer’s consigliere	SD 35 representative, being one of Emmer’s 2010 campaign chiefs, drunken driving
Dick Day	Emmer/Quist	Tom Emmer, Allen Quist	Tony Sutton, Michael Brodkorb, Mike Parry (his Senate District 26 successor). Latinos	Bringing racino to Minnesota, walking in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s bigoted footsteps	Hating Latinos, duking it out with the Seifert-Brodkorb faction
Chris Johnson	Emmer/Quist	Tom Emmer, Allen Quist	Tony Sutton, Michael Brodkorb, Ted Boosalis (anti-racino Republican)	Bringing racino and other gambling to Minnesota	Duking it out with anti-gambling Republicans
Dave Senjem	Sutton/Seifert (Seifert more than Sutton); Gang of Four	Marty Seifert	As of 12/14/11: Michael Brodkorb, Amy Koch, and their allies	As of 12/19/11: Backing gambling, replacing Koch as Senate Majority Leader	Former Minority Leader; powerful state Senator from Rochester; lowering the boom on Koch and Brodkorb with fellow Gang of Four members
Geoff Michel	nominally Sutton/Seifert; Gang of Four	Varies; Marty Seifert	As of 12/14/11: Michael Brodkorb, Amy Koch, and their allies	As of 12/19/11: replacing Koch as Senate Majority Leader	Deputy Majority Leader (and current Acting Leader); powerful state Senator from Edina; lowering the boom on Koch and Brodkorb with fellow Gang of Four members, then lying about it
David Hann	nominally Sutton/Seifert; Gang of Four	Varies; Marty Seifert	As of 12/14/11: Michael Brodkorb, Amy Koch, and their allies	As of 12/19/11: replacing Koch as Senate Majority Leader	Powerful state Senator from Eden Prairie; lowering the boom on Koch and Brodkorb with fellow Gang of Four members
Chris Gerlach	nominally Emmer/Quist; Gang of Four	Varies; Tom Emmer	As of 12/14/11: Michael Brodkorb, Amy Koch, and their allies	As of 12/19/11: (maybe) replacing Koch as Senate Majority Leader	Powerful state Senator from Eden Prairie; lowering the boom on Koch and Brodkorb with fellow Gang of Four members
David Thompson	His own little world	Varies	Sane people, educated people, scientists (apparently especially biologists, as evolutionary theory is the cornerstone of biology), non-greedy people	Becoming RPM Chair, which he’s wanted for quite some time	Right-wing radio gadfly, formerly of KSTP, now state Senator
David Sturrock	Who knows?	Varies	Varies	Being the kingmaker (or at least a kingmaker)	Current RPM Secretary-Treasurer (and hopefully won’t have anywhere near the accounting problems his predecessor Sutton did); has ties to national Republicans
Sarah Janacek	Whoever seems the strongest at any given moment	Varies	Anyone who tells or values the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth	To be the female Brodkorb: To say anything, true or not, and get away with it	Co-running Politics in Minnesota mag; using Facebook page as smear conduit; lying about Paul Wellstone’s Williams Arena memorial event and not paying a price for it

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