I Don’t Hate America!

Excellent weather today, eh? I was able to sneak out of work a little early to enjoy some time outside.

Yesterday I missed Matt and Sean over at MNPublius on the air on AM950. I had not heard of them appearing before they were on the air, so instead I listened to KTLK 100.3 the other side of the dial.

Unfortunately, instead of hearing the heartwarming and inspiring voice of Jason Lewis (..sarcasm…yeah..), who happened to be on vacation, the show was guest hosted by none other than state House Minority leader Marty Seifert.

Yes, Marty Seifert hosting a radio show for three full hours. Three hours of right wing rhetoric straight from the leader of the tribe. Three hours of nasal-voiced goodness.

In all fairness, he didn’t do too poorly for someone whom I assume has little experience in broadcasting behind the mic. For instance, his transitions were poor and he forgot to give out the phone number the first half hour but he did much better than Michele Bachmann in the same role a few months ago, which Hal Kimball describes as “the worst three hours in the history of radio.” He had somewhat interacted with the traffic, weather and news people and actually took phone calls.

There is another story here though beyond Marty Seifert simply hosting a radio show.

Overall it seemed like a three hour radio infomercial for the House GOP Caucus! You see, those folks are hosting a Republican Straw Poll for the presidential race. I thought all should be able to take part in the democratic process, but apparently in GOP land you can only participate for $100 and a trip to the Rivercenter in St. Paul. A few callers complained about this fact but Seifert gave the excuse that “renting the Rivercenter costs money.”

I can’t remember the date advertised and apparently the GOP doesn’t want people to find out anymore. The official website for the House GOP Caucus is down. The parked page offers links to information on how to start a hot dog franchise, Republican ringtones, the Minnesota Independence Party and information on John McCain for president but unfortunately nothing about a straw poll.

If Seifert had mentioned this event once or maybe even twice I would see no issue, but he brought it up constantly throughout the program. After breaks, after comments from callers and seemingly all other points of the program he continued to mention this $100 event, which can only be assumed to be a fundraiser. It seemed like one of those infomercials for a Ron Popeil product disguised as a talk show. Is this or should this be considered legitimate advertising or open game? I am no expert in state campaign finance law, and I am not making accusations here, but it seems to raise a couple of questions from me:

Did the Minnesota House Republicans pay KTLK for this time? Is there a monetary value to the time given to the Minnesota House Republicans on this program that should be listed as an “in-kind” contribution on campaign finance statements? Since I know so little about this specific subject, I’d love to hear from someone with some knowledge of it.

I may be on to something. Then again, I may be on something.

And no, I’m not calling for a return to the fairness doctrine or anything. Simply put, while my observations may end up being completely baseless, this just came across as quite fishy to me.

(Sidenote: KTLK doesn’t podcast shows with guest hosts. I would like to revisit this show, but I guess that can’t happen.)

[Update] The House GOP site is back up and running.  Get those checkbooks out; the site is advertising the date of the straw poll as August 22.  And no, I did not record the show because while I thought Seifert hosting a radio show for three full hours had the potential to be funny, I didn’t (perhaps naively) think it had much potential to be controversial.[/Update]

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 4:27 am and is filed under GOP, Marty Seifert, 2008, MN House, DJ D.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.