A press release announcing resignation of Big Stone County Republican Chair Jack Whitley has been posted without comment on the Jeff Backer for MN House Facebook page. Clinton, MN., and Republican activist Brent Jacobson (pictured above) will serve as acting chair until the county unit elects a new chair in March 2015.

After Bluestem Prairie broke the story of Whitley's extreme anti-Muslim status post on his personal Facebook page, Whitley faced what the Minnesota Daily called "near-universal condemnation" for calling for the mass murder of Muslims gathered at Mecca.

The Backer campaign page posted:

PRESS RELEASE

Brent Jacobson New Chair of Big Stone County Republican Party.Effective immediately, Jack Whitley has resigned as Chair of the Big Stone County Republican Party.Brent Jacobson of Clinton has replaced Whitley and will serve as Acting Chair of the Big Stone County Republican Party until a new chair is elected in March of 2015.

Here's the screenshot:

The genesis of a news story

Bluestem began to monitor Whitley's page after he and Backer interacted on Facebook about the legislator's 2015 session priorities, with Whitley urging Backer to make the "repair" of "immoral" laws his most important legislative goal over education, transportation and other bread and butter legislative issues.

We documented the exchange (including screenshots) in several posts, including the November 8 post MN12A: Jeff Backer tells BPOU chair "to repair" damage from "perverse" laws on top of his list and our November 15 post, MN12A: Jeff Backer's backers troll new representative about Emmer COS, priorities.

Since Whitley has deleted his Facebook page, the screenshots in our posts represent some of the only remaining documentation of the interaction on social media between the former party chair and Representative-elect Backer.

Backer's legislative priorities were a point of contention in a series of letters to the editor exchanged by College Republican activist Nathan Schmid and then-candidate Jeff Backer. Bluestem followed the exchange in three posts: Young conservative activist supports McNamar since Backer wants to repeal marriage equality, published on October 19; Jeff Backer & Nathan Schmid dispute Republican student's presence at endorsing convention, posted on October 26; and, MN12A: Backer and College Republican activist continue to exchange words in the Morris Sun.

Although the vote for marriage equality by defeated state representative Jay McNamar (DFL, Elbow Lake) was noted in Backer's campaign literature, newpaper ads and fundraising letters, Backer told MinnPost Briana Bierschbach that voters brought the issue up as he doorknocked the district. Bluestem fact-checked that statement in our November 11 post, Backer tells media voters brought up marriage equality; his campaign materials say otherwise.

We'll be curious if Backer ever makes a personal statement on this episode in Republican leadership in "The Bump."

Photo: Brent Jacobson serving as Big Stone County chair in "Winter 2009-2010" via KDIO Radio. A longtime Republican activist, Jacobson appears to be an engaged and positive member of his community, serving in leadership positions at the Bonanza Education Center for many years. As of 2013, he remained on the board of the environmental education center run in partnership with Big Stone Lake State Park.

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