Senate caucuses name leadership staffs

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Sheehan and Brodkorb keep their posts in GOP majority

In naming their leadership staff, Senate Republicans have chosen to dance with those that brung ‘em.

The key staffers who have plotted the remaking of the Senate Republican Caucus in recent years will be running the show when they take the majority in January. Campaign guru Cullen Sheehan will continue as the caucus’s chief of staff. Indefatigable GOP political operative and deputy state party chair Michael Brodkorb will continue in his role as communications director.

The rest of the leadership staff positions announced Thursday were mostly filled out with current caucus staffers.

“It’s a very strong group,” Sheehan said. “Senate leadership felt it was important to have people who bring stability and knowledge of the legislative process as we move into a new era.”

Similarly, the Senate DFL has leaned on long-time caucus mainstays in reorganizing its downsized staff.

Republicans haven’t had a majority in the Senate since the start of the partisan era. The Conservative Caucus, the precursor to the Senate GOP Caucus, last held sway in 1972.

The Senate groups’ reliance on current caucus staff stands in contrast to the choices of the new House caucuses, which broke with many of their staffers from last session. That chamber’s Republicans hired a number of caucus alums from years gone by who had been away, like Chas Anderson and Jodi Boyne; DFLers went with a number of Capitol neophytes, like Zach Rodvold and Carrie Lucking.

The one new face for the Senate GOP is Kevin Matzek, who had been serving as the House Republican Caucus’s executive director. Matzek will now take over as the Senate Republican’s legislative director.

Even though staffers like Sheehan and Brodkorb are technically returning veterans, they are also the most critical pieces of a new wave that has swept through the caucus in recent years.

The Senate GOP, after decades languishing in the minority, has cleaned house at the staff level and among the ranks of veteran senators in the last two years. Sheehan, who has been working for the Senate for a year, is widely thought to bring a deeper level of political skill than his predecessor, Dan Wolf, who was best known for his administrative acumen. Brodkorb has also been a political force since joining the caucus in 2008 after working for the Minnesota Republican Party and the WeberJohnson political consulting shop.

“They have the kind of political skills that you don’t often see at the Legislature,” noted one Republican insider.

Sheehan has run two statewide political campaigns in the last three years. He was campaign manager for U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman in 2008 and for Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer earlier this year. His other high-profile jobs have included a stint as executive director of the Iowa Republican Party.

Brodkorb’s resume is already a long one: He is a partisan researcher par excellence who was a major thorn in the side of DFLers when he wrote the Minnesota Democrats Exposed blog. He got his start at the Legislature as a legislative assistant to Sen. Gen Olson; from 1999 to 2002, he handled special projects for Senate Minority Leader Dick Day. He was also the minority staffer in charge of redistricting efforts, a role he will now reprise as part of the majority. From the Legislature, Brodkorb went to work for the state GOP as research director and later communications director.

Other GOP staff highlights:

• Legislative director Kevin Matzek spent several years as a House GOP staffer in the early part of his career. He worked for Reps. Rich Stanek and Erik Paulsen from 2001 to 2002. He then became the administrator for Rep. Steve Smith’s public safety committee, and later filled the same role for House Ways and Means Committee chair Jim Knoblach. Matzek turned to lobbying for a time (director of government affairs at Hospitality Minnesota) before returning to the Legislature as the House GOP’s executive director.
• Daniel Mickelberg will stay in his role as caucus research director; he has also been the lead aide on taxes and finance. Mickelberg is regarded as having perhaps the most institutional knowledge on the Senate leadership staff. One bit of relevant experience: He worked on the Stadium Task Force for Senate GOP research.
• Adam Axvig, Koch’s leadership assistant, won plaudits for his work as a Senate campaign field director this year. Axvig is acquainted with Sheehan from working in communications on the 2008 Norm Coleman campaign. He was also a webmaster at the St. Paul-based Minnesota Free Market Institute.
• Leadership assistant Maureen Watson brings organizational experience from her days working for the city of St. Paul when Norm Coleman was mayor.
• Emily Boyer, Senate President Michelle Fischbach’s leadership assistant, was Fischbach’s legislative assistant when the GOP was in the minority.

On the DFL side:

• Tom Kukielka, a 32-year caucus veteran, will serve as chief of staff for Minority Leader Tom Bakk. He replaces Michelle Kelm-Helgen, who served in that capacity for former Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller and is now working on Gov.-elected Mark Dayton’s transition team.
• Kukielka will be replaced in DFL Research by Chris Runquist, who was committee administrator for Senate Taxes when Bakk chaired it.
• Jackie Wegleitner will continue in the position of assistant director of DFL Research.
• Beau Berentson, who has been a media relations specialist for the Senate DFL, will be the new communications director, replacing Gary Hill.