Star Tribune: Dayton tells Shakopee audience they are the rudest

Rachel Stassen Berger
Minneapolis Star Tribune
April 30, 2013

In Shakopee on Monday night, Gov. Mark Dayton found an unfriendly, and in his words, rudely behaved audience.

During one of his “Meetings with Mark,” open forums he has held across the state, he spoke of his belief that lawmakers should get a raise in pay.

As he was explaining why, the audience heckled and interrupted him.

“Let me just finish,” he objected, according to video recorded by the Minnesota Jobs Coalition. “I’ve been all over the state and I’ve never had people behave this rudely. You know, if you want to say something, raise your hand and get a mic.”

Asked about the comment, the governor said on Tuesday that members of the audience did not just disagree with him they displayed “very juvenile kind of behavior,” which reminded him of the 9th graders he taught in a New York City public school decades ago.

“It was rude and if they can’t handle the truth, they can’t handle the truth, but that’s the truth as I perceived it,” Dayton said. He added that the audience applauded when he hushed the crowd, one of the few points of unanimity at the event.

The Minnesota Jobs Coalition, the Republican-led political committee that provided the video, has followed Dayton and other Democrats around with video cameras at public events this year. Tom Erickson, executive director of the Coalition, said that the video clip of Dayton’s comments was edited to amp up some of the volume so that the audience could be heard but not altered otherwise.