Rick Harrison of ‘Pawn Stars’ hosting Marco Rubio fundraiser

By Kyle Roerink

Tuesday, May 19, 2015 | 1:17 p.m.

The head honcho of the Las Vegas-based TV show “Pawn Stars” will host a birthday party fundraiser for GOP presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio.

Rick Harrison and his wife, Deanna, will host the bash May 28 at their home, along with Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, who is Rubio’s Nevada campaign chairman.

Harrison has been a vocal critic of President Barack Obama and has appeared on conservative TV shows. The Marco Rubio for President campaign paid for the invitations.

The Florida senator is a frontrunner in the GOP primary hunt that has five other mainstream candidates: U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina.

The birthday party dovetails with news that one of the state’s top political consultants, GOP operative Mike Slanker, will run Rubio’s campaign in Nevada.

Slanker, who operates consulting firm November Inc., was a behind-the-scenes architect of Gov. Brian Sandoval’s landslide victories and is known for his fundraising, advertising and messaging skills in campaigns.

He was a confidant of former Nevada Sen. John Ensign and former political director of the NRSC — formerly the National Republican Senatorial Committee — a group tasked with raising millions for GOP Senate campaigns. He ran Rick Perry’s 2012 campaign in Nevada.

The addition of Slanker to the Rubio campaign will be a big boost for the presidential candidate.

Slanker knows the inner workings of Nevada’s political dynamics and will inevitably try to highlight Rubio’s working-class and Latino roots in a state that boasts a 27 percent Hispanic population.

Nevada is one of seven key swing states in the general election.

Rubio campaign spokesman Alex Conant confirmed the news about Slanker with the Washington Examiner.

“Mike’s first priority will be running our campaign in Nevada, under the leadership of our Nevada chair, Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison,” Conant told the Examiner. “We intend to compete in all the early states because Marco is a new generation conservative who can unite the party and inspire the country.”