On Monday, we reported that Randy Demmer, one of the 4-pak contending for the GOP endorsement in the Fighting First, had pocketed session per diem money for May 7 and May 8, when he took excused absences from the Minnesota House of Representatives to fly to DC and sit at the feet of Tom Cole and Karl Rove at the NRCC's candidate school.
Early this morning at IDHA, our friend and pesky WSU alum DJ Danielson posted Demmer takes per-diem to attend candidate school in D.C., misleads public about votes missed. Oh my.
Here's what Demmer had told Edward Felker of the Post Bulletin last spring about the day's he missed work in St. Paul:
Demmer said that while he took a leave of absence from the state House during his trip, he said that he was not on any conference committees and that bills brought up for a vote those days were not final. “I missed two or three votes, and those bills are coming back around,” he said.
Illustrating the post with screen shots of the House vote board, Danielson methodically goes through the 18 roll call votes Demmer missed during his two-day partisan educational junket. Check it out.
D.J. concludes:
Tell me, Randy, how do you get “two or three” out of 18.
There are so many themes arising from all of this and I apologize for not being able to keep this post within any focus.
- Taking a trip to D.C. for further political ambitions during session while constituents should have their representative in St. Paul.
- Taking full per diem as a House member while doing the aforementioned activities.
- Misleading the public (really, I could use the word “lying” here, but I prefer not to go there) about how many votes were missed while on the junket.
- Downplaying the role of state representative. Doesn’t each member have an election certificate? Does Rep. Demmer like being considered a “backbencher?” How is that perception a good one when trying to prove ability to head to Congress? Should he just go ahead and no-show other days he may consider to not be important, such as those early on in session when very little official action is taken?
I suppose considering his lackluster fundraising thus far, that $154 could be used toward the $20,000 he had to loan his campaign.
Amen, Brother DJ, amen.
Demmer Frontrunner?
That might as be what the headlines state as recent attacks in prominent DFL blogs have increased against Randy Demmer. Have they done some polling that suggests this? It would certainly explain why they have centered all their attacks on Demmer.
In a recent posting on mncampaignreport.com they center on Demmer for taking per diem (a common practice among legislators). What they fail to report is that nearly twice as many DFLers took the full legal limit of per diem than Republicans. (Legislators in Greater Minnesota tend to take more in per diem than their urban counterparts due to—well it is pretty self explanatory).
No where did they mention any other legislator taking per diem which does the raise the questions: Do Democrats in the First District know more than the voting public?
Posted by: tony | October 29, 2007 at 10:21 PM