Parry, a relative newcomer to politics, won his seat in the Minnesota state Senate in a special election in February 2010 and then won re-election that November. He’s the owner of a pizza restaurant in Waseca.

Parry is facing a host of potential competitors for the GOP endorsement, but on Monday received the support of GOP State Party Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb, who resigned to advise Parry’s campaign.

MPR reports that State DFL Chair Ken Martin slammed Parry as “an angry, ultra conservative Tea-Party Republican more concerned with pandering to the right wing and special interests than he is with working to improve our state economy, create jobs or build a more prosperous future for middle-class families.”

Parry’s become known in Minnesota politics for his liberal and incendiary use of Twitter. He created a minor national incident when he was running for his current seat and tweeted that President Obama “is a power hungry arrogant black man.”

Another tweet at the time read, “What’s with the Dems and Pedophiles?”

During the 2011 state government shutdown, Parry tweeted that he thought Gov. Mark Dayton should resign.

“With all due respect, Mondale and Carlson need to stay in their rockers unless they can get Dayton to do the right thing. … RESIGN!” he tweeted.

That led to a strong rebuke from the editorial boards of newspapers in his district.

On the legislative front, Parry proposed a constitutional amendment on Minnesota sovereignty.

The bill would have made Minnesota the first state to require a two-thirds majority vote in the legislature to approve federal laws affecting the state. “Minnesotans enjoy inherent, natural, God-given rights,” the bill read, and “Citizens of Minnesota are sovereign individuals, subject to Minnesota law and immune from any federal laws that exceed the federal government’s enumerated constitutional powers.”

The DFL has released a video of this week’s statement by Burnsville Republican Sen. Dan Hall on school integration. “I watched Minneapolis get destroyed, so I not only didn’t want my kids in the school system,” he said. “I took them out of Minneapolis because they ruined our neighborhoods with integration and [de]segregation.” Hall made his remarks during debate about a move by Minnesota Republicans to repeal school integration laws, specifically a decades-long program that aims to diversify schools in the Twin Cities metro area and Duluth.

The video concludes with the text, “When the vote was taken, every Republican agreed with Sen. Hall and voted to cut desegregation funds.”

A move by Minnesota Republicans to repeal school integration laws resulted in heated debate about the decades-long program that aims to diversify schools in the Twin Cities metro area and Duluth. During a floor debate on elimination of desegregation programs Thursday, Sen. Dan Hall, R-Burnsville, said, “I watched Minneapolis get destroyed, so I not only didn’t want my kids in the school system. I took them out of Minneapolis because they ruined our neighborhoods with integration and [de]segregation.”

The K-12 education omnibus bill in the House and Senate would take funding from integration and desegregation programs in the Twin Cities and Duluth and shift them to statewide programs for literacy. The bill also repeals the unfunded portions of Minnesota law dealing with desegregation.

Sen. Scott Dibble (DFL-Minneapolis) has significant problems with the bill. “Let’s talk about how segregated many of our communities still are,” he said. “Minneapolis over the last 40 years has been intensely engaged in desegregation and integration. With this bill, all that is now knocked away without any hearings.”

Dibble said the bill would harm college-readiness programs, college and career centers and magnet schools which have helped foster diverse learning environments, improved opportunities for minority students, higher adult incomes for low-income students and low-income students completing more years of higher education.

“I fear what we see here the is the politics of envy and division and protecting our own,” he said, “not the ‘one Minnesota’ we hearken back to.”

Freshman Sen. Hall’s statement on the Senate floor seemed to back up some of Dibble’s concerns. Hall backs taking the integration funds and using them for statewide literacy programs.

“Well, I don’t speak up too often, but this one has pushed my buttons. I am a product of the Minneapolis school system, completing all of my years, all the different schools,” said Hall. “I graduated with a 6th grade reading ability. I struggled my whole life. We need to teach kids how to read.”

“I watched Minneapolis get destroyed, so I not only didn’t want my kids in the school system… I took them out of Minneapolis because they ruined our neighborhoods with integration and segregation.”

He said he applauded the teachers and coaches he had growing up, but said, “The system is broke. My best friends are minority, they think integration in foolish. It’s a ploy to get more money.”

He added, “Treat everyone equally and with respect. Right down the line I teach my kids. I teach them every day we treat everyone with respect. It’s disrespectful to tell my friends, my minority friends that they can’t make it without extra special help.”

The K-12 education omnibus bill passed the Senate on Thursday by a party-line vote. A bill with a similar repeal of desegregation programs passed the House as well. Both are headed to conference committee to hash out any differences before heading to Gov. Mark Dayton.

Update: The DFL has now posted video of Hall’s statement on YouTube.

Rep. Michele Bachmann “sincerely” wants to know: Is President Obama trying to buy votes in minority communities using funds from a class-action settlement against the U.S. Department of Agriculture over discrimination against African American farmers?

Bachmann posed the question in an appearance on the radio show of Andrew Breitbart, a tea party activist who forced the resignation of Shirley Sherrod from her job at the USDA by distributing a video of Sherrod that was selectively edited to make her look like a racist. Sherrod was a recipient of some of the class-action funds after state and federal government declined agriculture grants to a community farm she and her husband ran. The case, Pigford v. Glickman resulted in almost $1 billion in payments due to discrimination.

On Breitbart’s show, Bachmann accused the settlement against the USDA of fraudulently distributing the money to people who didn’t face discrimination (an accusation that has been hotly disputed), but then went on to lament that other communities might file a class-action lawsuit for discrimination as a result.

“There’s calls to give out more, quote, discrimination money to Native Americans who claim they were discriminated against by the USDA, but it doesn’t end there. They want to also have a class of, quote, women farmers who were discriminated against and another class of, quote, Hispanic farmers who were discriminated against,” she said.

Bachmann then accused the Obama administration of buying votes. “There a real question, a sincere question that: Was this really about vote buying? Because before election cycles, that’s when the demand comes to pay out these claims in order to get support.”

“And our president, Barack Obama, filed a piece legislation to fund this Pigford case when he was running for president,” she said. “And at that time we saw the black community in the southern part of the United States turn to Barack Obama rather than Hillary Clinton. There’s a lot of implications here.”

Bachmann told Fox News she’s “shocked” by the claims of racism within the tea party movement. “Racism is a very serious charge, because it’s ugly,” Bachmann said. “…These are serious charges, so people need to back them up.”

Here’s Bachmann on Fox:

Minnesota Public Radio’s Bob Collins took note of a sign

The Star Tribune‘s Jim Gehrz took this picture on Saturday. The arrow is courtesy of Bob Collins.

“[T]he media tends to portray the people who are in the tea party movement as toothless hillbillies, as rubes from the backwater who don’t know what they’re talking about,” Bachmann said. “I didn’t see any indication of racial tensions. I didn’t see any indication of being personal, against personal members of Congress. What I saw were people that were fighting for their constitutional liberties and fighting for our country. And I think it’s a tremendous affront trying to castigate people who are fighting for our country as somehow being racially motivated. I didn’t see that at all.”

Here’s the full interview with Bachmann:

Pastor Dennis Campbell

Granite City Baptist Church raised some eyebrows this weekend when it bought an ad (pdf) in the St. Cloud Times that questioned whether Muslims are a “threat” to America. “How do Moslems seek to take control of a nation?” the ad, which features a photo of Pastor Dennis Campbell, asks. “Moslems seek to influence a nation by immigration, reproduction, education, the government, illegal drugs and by supporting the gay agenda.”

The ad is part of a string of incidents in St. Cloud that troubles human rights advocates. Within the last year, pornographic posters depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammed were put up on St. Cloud telephone polls, and Muslim students in St. Cloud area high schools have reported religious harassment.

Last week, MPR reported on several racist Facebook groups that were created by St. Cloud high school students. “I hate the Somalians at Tech High,” was one such group. Kyle Adams, a former student at St. Cloud Technical High School (he was kicked out for repeatedly using racial slurs) told MPR, “I was raised in believing that this country was founded upon a white Christian nation and the belief of racial separation.”

The Granite City Baptist Church ad seems to mirror some of that anti-Muslim sentiment. “What happens when Moslems take over a nation?” asks Campbell in the ad. “They will destroy the constitution and force the Moslem religion on the society, take freedom of religion away, and they will persecute all other religions.”

(Hat tip, Lower Case.)

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank

On two days over the weekend, Tea Party Patriots hurled anti-gay epithets at Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the openly gay chair of the House Financial Services Committee. The insults came as several black members of Congress had racial slurs shouted at them as they headed into the Capitol and one Tea Partier spit on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo. Frank said that Republicans should distance themselves from the Tea Party activists and he laid much of the blame with Rep. Michele Bachmann.

On Saturday, Frank told TPM:

I do think the leaders of the movement, and this was true of some of the Republicans last year, that they think they are benefiting from this rancor. I mean there are a couple who–you know, Michele Bachmann’s rhetoric is inflamatory as well as wholly baseless. And I think there are people there, a few that encourage it.

“If this was my cause, and I saw this angry group yelling and shouting and being so abusive to people, I would ask them to please stop it,” Frank added. “I think they do more harm than good.”

Among the epithets shouted at Frank were “faggot” and “Homo Communist,” and one protester told him to “go homo to Massachusetts.”

Frank told the Hill this weekend, “Any movement in which the intellectual leader is Michele Bachmann is obviously going to be problematic.”

Among the tweets erased by Parry was a May 27 comment about President Obama:

“read the exclusive on Mr O in Newsweek. He is a Power Hungry Arrogant Black Man.”

Another tweet read, “What’s with the Dems and Pedophiles?”

And another erroneously interpreted voting laws: “Only those serving overseas can vote absentee!”

At the Republican endorsement convention in Faribault, Parry said he wants “a senator that is not worried about being politically correct. Welfare is meant to be a safety net, not a hammock.”

Parry did not immediately return the Minnesota Independent’s request for comment on the scrubbed tweets.