This is usually the opposite of how these things work, but I saw a press release this weekend about a magician/comedian who is promoting his appearance in Boulder as being an odd confluence of his Republican roots with a liberal town.

Las Vegas based magician/ comedian Keith Stickley sheds the glitz and glamour from his Las Vegas show, and opens his new show “Magic: Unplugged” Thursday, August 18 at 7pm in the Carsen Theatre, inside the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder, Colorado.

Unlike many magicians who rely on trick boxes, gaudy costumes, smoke, and mirrors, Stickley’s “Magic: Unplugged” has been designed to break this stereo-type of the magician, and offers its audience something a bit different…

…One may never expect that the former State Chairman of the Nevada College Republicans, a conservative through and through, would be a performer in the stereo-typical left-wing world of show-biz. But bucking the trend, Stickley is determind to not let his colleagues leftist political views hold him down. “It can be a real challenge, especially at social events”, Stickley says, “I took a bit of razzing from my showbiz friends in Vegas when I was in the newspaper almost daily during my tenure as State Chairman working on the Bush/Cheney ’04 campaign.”

I assume this is a tongue-in-cheek press release, but I found it interesting that he would be using politics to promote magic and wizardry (though I guess Rush Limbaugh does that, too). Usually it’s the politicians who want Hollywood actors to promote them on the stump, but Stickley hopes that politics will promote his magic act.

A Republican guy doing a magic show in a Democratic town! Unless the magic involves turning Boulder into a red city, the shtick isn’t so slick. Besides, there’s already a guy who can fold himself into a box in Boulder; he does pretty well even though nobody knows who he voted for.