The conservative activist who helped eliminate the Iowa straw poll will quit his role as head of an influential right-leaning blog at the end of 2015. Rumors of Erick Erickson’s departure from the conservative RedState blog had spread for months, and the polemicist offered a formal explanation on Monday about his exit.
“For years I have said RedState is my second wife and my third child. But after ten years of getting up at four o’clock in the morning and staying up past midnight and spending all day checking emails and responding to people, I really just want my one wife. And I want my third child to be grow up [sic] and be all it can be without being in my shadow,” Erickson wrote on RedState. “Right now, RedState is me and I am RedState. It’s time for Erick to be Erick and it is time for RedState to have its own identity.”
Erickson has been a lightning rod of attention during the GOP presidential primary season. He lent his loud mouth on the radio to destroying the Iowa straw poll. Once it disappeared, he told the Washington Examiner that he hoped his tombstone would read, “Killed the Iowa Straw Poll.”
Besides running his own radio show, and guest hosting for conservative personality Rush Limbaugh, Erickson turned his annual RedState Gathering into a must visit for several GOP presidential hopefuls courting conservatives in August. When Erickson disinvited Republican front-runner Donald Trump for his comments made about Megyn Kelly following the first GOP presidential debate, Erickson alternatively received praise and criticism from fellow conservatives. But his decision to disinvite Trump exposed some fault lines in the conservative movement that became magnified as the campaign season has moved forward.
On Monday, Erickson wrote that he, “wanted to be done the week after the RedState Gathering, but they asked me to stay till the end of the year and I agreed.” He will not vanish from the blog or media entirely and explained that he intends to continue posting at RedState. He also wrote that he has a book coming out early next year, and expects to maintain his radio duties as planned.
