The big news among conservative bloggers in Minnesota this past week is that one of our own, my NARN colleague and longtime friend King Banaian, is running for the Minnesota House in District 15B. 

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring compares Haws’ record with Banaian’s game:

A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of working with King, Rep. Laura Brod and Rep. Matt Dean on what essentially is a vision statement for Minnesota. The central theme to that document was essentially to get government out of the way so that Minnesota’s entrepreneurs would unleash their creativity in creating a more prosperous Minnesota.

That meant lowering taxes, shrinking the regulatory burden Minnesota puts on small businesses and keeping unfunded mandates to a minimum.

I’ve known King long enough to know that he’s a man of gravitas and a great public policymaker. When I look at Rep. Haws’s record, what I see is a man who is a reactionary and a man who votes too often for status quo policies.

Central Minnesota needs a visionary leader. The only man fitting that description is King Banaian. That’s why we must elect King this November to represent the residents of HD-15B in the Minnesota legislature.

This is, obviously, a major initiative among conservative bloggers.  Knocking off an incumbent gravy-monger, even in a year that should have a big conservative tailwind, is never easy.  We have to all pitch in and help out any way we can.

In the interest of helping, I’m going to present King with ten bits of campaign advice that should, with any luck, smooth his path to Saint Paul:

10. Find a winning message, repeat it relentlessly to every voter in Saint Cloud.  That’s the easy part.  Heck, every blogger’s got a winning message for their candidate, right?

9. Easy on the Radiohead.  Seriously.

8. Find a snappier way to explain “The Austrian School” to the layperson.  Perhaps given you’re in Saint Cloud, “The Oktoberfest School” would be a good start.

7. Get a couple of barrels of that Armenian brandy, and apply, er, liberally throughout the district.  Seriously.  Yummy.  That was some good breakfast brandy.

6. Carry the NARN tradition of the Speed Round to candidate debates.  Hilarity will ensue. Hilarity means votes.  Maybe.

5. Don’t even think about using Joy Division to intro your stump speeches.  Dude.

4. Go for the gutter.  Counterintuitive?  Work with me, here.  You know how one classic bit of Radio 101 advice is “smile as you talk – it helps your voice?”  Same deal here.  Most politicians are frighteningly uninformed and inarticulate. You have to drag them into some semblance of sounding literate.  That’s never been KB’s problem.  Quite the opposite; he can actually explain how fed policy works.  And if he doesn’t work to pull his level of discourse toward a more general audience level, he’s going to get 100% turnout among wonks.  Between the economic-wonk base of knowledge and the mental pull toward the ‘Bottom”, everything should even out about right.

3.  Ixnay on the Oxsay.  This is Twins country. Just saying. 

2. Think of a snappy name for your lit drop.  I’m thinking “The Caucusus Caucus”.  You’re welcome.

1. Enlist a couple of liberal whackadoodles to start the “Dump Banaian” blog.  We all know that it was the doop-di-doos that gave Michele Bachmann her margin of victory in 2008.  Every point counts.  You’re an economist with Eastern European ties; perhaps you could pull some surreptitious strings and get George Soros to pony up for it.

There y’go, KB.  Go to it!