In an exclusive interview with the Labor Review Dec. 13, Dayton thoughtfully answered questions before heading to northern Minnesota for the funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq.
“I’m proud to be one of the 23 Senators who voted against the Iraq war resolution — even though it passed,” Dayton said, recalling that, at the time, 85 percent of the public favored going to war.
Told that the AFL-CIO website reports Dayton casting 67 right votes and only one wrong vote from 2001-2005 — a remarkable lifetime rating of 99 percent — he wondered what the one wrong vote was and questioned whether that one vote was recorded properly.
“I don’t keep track of anybody’s chart,” Dayton hastened to add. “I vote my conscience. I guess that my conscience coincides with that of the AFL-CIO. I’m proud to stand with organized labor.”
Dayton spent the last four years of his six-year term as a member of the Democratic minority in the Senate.
“It’s been a hard six years for organized labor and our friends,” Dayton said. “It’s been an anti-labor, pro-free trade Senate.”
(And, he pointed out, he voted against every one of the so-called free trade agreements.)
Dayton’s efforts, he said, involved “trying to prevent the worst from happening and sometimes unsuccessfully that.”
He said the Republican majority the past four years went “all-out in the fight to give tax breaks to the rich and corporate interests.”
He was only somewhat less harsh on the record of his own Democratic Senate caucus. He recalled the words of his friend and Senate colleague, Paul Wellstone, who famously vowed to represent “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”
“There’s not even a majority of the Democratic caucus who are in the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” Dayton charged.
“What we really need is a Democratic President in two years aligned with a Democratic Congress,” Dayton said.
Even as he voiced his frustration with the Senate’s politics and process, Dayton offered several examples where his work made a difference for Minnesota: helping secure a new generation of F-16 fighter planes for the Air National Guard base in Duluth and $25 million for upgrades there, obtaining funds for northern border security, stopping the state of Mississippi from changing its duck hunting season to allow the slaughter of birds that would return to Minnesota. And on.
“It was a great honor to serve Minnesota in the Senate for six years,” said Dayton. He previously won election as State Auditor in 1990 and ran an unsuccessful campaign for U.S. Senate in 1982 before winning Senate election in 2000.
Dayton announced that he would not seek a second term in February 2005. “I don’t have any regrets,” he maintained. Even now, he added, if someone offered him the chance to serve a second term simply by signing a piece of paper, “I wouldn’t sign.”
The enormous costs of mounting a Senate campaign — and Dayton’s distaste for fundraising — figured into his decision not to run for re-election (an heir to the Dayton department store fortune, he largely self-funded his 2000 campaign).
On the topic of money in politics, Dayton cuts to the chase: “the bottom line is the money. The money is about influencing votes.”
“That’s where Labor’s organizing and numbers and ability to get its message out to its members is just critical,” he said.
With corporate dollars favoring the Republicans, “Labor’s financial involvement [also] is critical,” Dayton said. “Without Labor, it would be a total mis-match.”
“The political muscle Labor provides to friends of Labor is just critical — as Mastercard would say, ‘priceless.’”
Dayton expressed worry, however, that — unless changed — the National Labor Relations Board process will continue to erode Labor’s role in the U.S.
During the last weeks of the heated 2006 campaign, Dayton was nearly invisible in the state. “I wasn’t on the ticket,” he explained. “The best thing I could do was stay out of the way.”
“Minnesota’s done a good job of filling the retirements of mine and Martin Sabo with good progressive Democrats and electing an additional progressive Democrat with Tim Walz in the First District,” Dayton said.
Steve Share edits the Minneapolis Labor Review, the official publication of the Minneapolis Central Labor Council. E-mail him at laborreview@mplscluc.com
Share
In an exclusive interview with the Labor Review Dec. 13, Dayton thoughtfully answered questions before heading to northern Minnesota for the funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq.
“I’m proud to be one of the 23 Senators who voted against the Iraq war resolution — even though it passed,” Dayton said, recalling that, at the time, 85 percent of the public favored going to war.
Told that the AFL-CIO website reports Dayton casting 67 right votes and only one wrong vote from 2001-2005 — a remarkable lifetime rating of 99 percent — he wondered what the one wrong vote was and questioned whether that one vote was recorded properly.
“I don’t keep track of anybody’s chart,” Dayton hastened to add. “I vote my conscience. I guess that my conscience coincides with that of the AFL-CIO. I’m proud to stand with organized labor.”
Dayton spent the last four years of his six-year term as a member of the Democratic minority in the Senate.
“It’s been a hard six years for organized labor and our friends,” Dayton said. “It’s been an anti-labor, pro-free trade Senate.”
(And, he pointed out, he voted against every one of the so-called free trade agreements.)
Dayton’s efforts, he said, involved “trying to prevent the worst from happening and sometimes unsuccessfully that.”
He said the Republican majority the past four years went “all-out in the fight to give tax breaks to the rich and corporate interests.”
He was only somewhat less harsh on the record of his own Democratic Senate caucus. He recalled the words of his friend and Senate colleague, Paul Wellstone, who famously vowed to represent “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”
“There’s not even a majority of the Democratic caucus who are in the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” Dayton charged.
“What we really need is a Democratic President in two years aligned with a Democratic Congress,” Dayton said.
Even as he voiced his frustration with the Senate’s politics and process, Dayton offered several examples where his work made a difference for Minnesota: helping secure a new generation of F-16 fighter planes for the Air National Guard base in Duluth and $25 million for upgrades there, obtaining funds for northern border security, stopping the state of Mississippi from changing its duck hunting season to allow the slaughter of birds that would return to Minnesota. And on.
“It was a great honor to serve Minnesota in the Senate for six years,” said Dayton. He previously won election as State Auditor in 1990 and ran an unsuccessful campaign for U.S. Senate in 1982 before winning Senate election in 2000.
Dayton announced that he would not seek a second term in February 2005. “I don’t have any regrets,” he maintained. Even now, he added, if someone offered him the chance to serve a second term simply by signing a piece of paper, “I wouldn’t sign.”
The enormous costs of mounting a Senate campaign — and Dayton’s distaste for fundraising — figured into his decision not to run for re-election (an heir to the Dayton department store fortune, he largely self-funded his 2000 campaign).
On the topic of money in politics, Dayton cuts to the chase: “the bottom line is the money. The money is about influencing votes.”
“That’s where Labor’s organizing and numbers and ability to get its message out to its members is just critical,” he said.
With corporate dollars favoring the Republicans, “Labor’s financial involvement [also] is critical,” Dayton said. “Without Labor, it would be a total mis-match.”
“The political muscle Labor provides to friends of Labor is just critical — as Mastercard would say, ‘priceless.’”
Dayton expressed worry, however, that — unless changed — the National Labor Relations Board process will continue to erode Labor’s role in the U.S.
During the last weeks of the heated 2006 campaign, Dayton was nearly invisible in the state. “I wasn’t on the ticket,” he explained. “The best thing I could do was stay out of the way.”
“Minnesota’s done a good job of filling the retirements of mine and Martin Sabo with good progressive Democrats and electing an additional progressive Democrat with Tim Walz in the First District,” Dayton said.
Steve Share edits the Minneapolis Labor Review, the official publication of the Minneapolis Central Labor Council. E-mail him at laborreview@mplscluc.com