Marcus Kelley featured in Arizona Guardian

Marcus Kelley, my former co-host on Roundtable Politics, was featured in the Arizona Guardian after being hired as an assistant to Andy Biggs in the State Legislature. Here are some excerpts (to read the full article you must be a Guardian subscriber):

Sen. Biggs hires Tea Party activist to run his office
By Dennis Welch
The Arizona Guardian

It wasn't long ago that Tea Party activist Marcus Kelley was slamming state lawmakers on the popular political blog, Sonoran Alliance...

But that didn’t stop him from landing a new job in the state Senate when Sen.-elect Andy Biggs, a Republican from Gilbert, hired him last month as his new assistant.

Biggs, who chairs the influential Senate Appropriations Committee, says he’s known Kelley for about 10 years but wasn't aware of his previous political activities when he hired him.

After the election, Biggs says he needed a secretary and someone suggested Kelley for the job. He seemed like an ideal candidate, Biggs said, because he had had law degree and worked in Congress.

Kelley's political activities went well beyond his work on Sonoran Alliance. He hosted a political talk show called Grass Roots Politics, which was produced by a Tea Party Organization called United We Stand for Americans.

Kelly also worked on the failed campaign of a Tea Party candidate who was trying to unseat a incumbent GOP senator in the primary last year.

But before Kelley started at the Legislature he was trashing it. In one post he likened Democrat and Republican lawmakers to "drunken sailors" and boasted of his dislike for the Legislature.

"I have an anti-legislative bias because they've showed a lack of spine," he wrote on Oct. 29th, less than a week before the November elections. "They failed to stand up to the Governor, past and present, on multiple occasions. They've spent WORSE than drunken sailors."

Kelley showed a particular distain for Republicans whom he believes betrayed the party's conservative values. In particular, he had problems with the governor as well as Sen. John McCain, whom Kelley refers to as "Juan McAmnesty" because he doesn't like his stance on illegal immigration.