Governor Pawlenty Responds

'I've Gotten the Crap Beat Out of Me'

Posted 1:14 a.m., June 6, 2004

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Here at the Kevblog, fairness is highly valued. And since, last week, I wrote a pretty tough column about Gov. Pawlenty's rather friendly treatment in the media since he took office, despite some pretty serious issues that have arisen, it seems fair to give the governor a chance to respond.

I'm suffering from no delusions here--to my knowledge, the governor has not read my column. But I had the opportunity while attending a Humphrey Institute breakfast Friday to ask him personally and directly the basic question raised by my column.

What follows is a partial transcript of our exchange, which came during a question-and-answer period that followed his speech at the event.

Regrettably, because my table was a fair distance from the governor, my digital voice recorder made a bit of an echo-laden mash of the words he spoke--and I didn't take any handwritten notes. So I can include only those portions of the exchange that are audible on the recording, or that can be reliably and accurately paraphrased. Such paraphrases are set off in brackets.

You'll still get the gist of what the guv had to say. Because I've already had my say in the column, I present the governor's views here without further commentary.

Featherly: [Gov. Pawlenty,] it's been interesting watching press coverage of your gubernatorial career here in that you haven't been vigorously challenged on a number of things that have come up--the $54,000 you got from Mr. [Elam] Baer, the idea that you didn't know what happened with Mr. [Rick] Stanek's past, and you haven't been vigorously challenged on not performing your function as negotiator-in-chief during this last legislative session.

You've had a fairly long honeymoon here. And I wonder, what do you attribute that to and do you expect it to end?

Pawlenty: [Sentence indecipherable] (Kevblog note: That's a bummer, because I remember Pawlenty's first reaction was pretty funny. But his initial quick-witted response is obscured on the recording by laughter generated by the question and subsequent laughter produced by his own witty retort.)

I don't know what world you live in, or what paper your read or what news you watch but I feel like I've gotten the crap beat out of me. [Audience laughter]

Click on the Internet and click on the available coverage on those topics and it's significant. You'd have to have lived on Mars to have not followed it.

So, have you lived in this state long? [More audience laughter]

Featherly: Well, let's just compare it to the coverage that might have come to [former Minnesota governors] Mr. [Arne] Carlson or Mr. [Jesse] Ventura.

Pawlenty: Well, let me just respectfully disagree. I feel I'm pretty aggressively [indecipherable]. If you look at the coverage of the session during the budget debate, every day, there was some story about how the budget cuts that we were making was affecting this person or that program or this family.

You would be hard-pressed to find any positive coverage about our position and how it was going to [indecipherable].

[Several additional sentences indecipherable]

So, I'll just leave you with this thought. You go back on the Internet and read that news coverage, negative or positive during the course of the last year, I'm willing to bet you'll find [we've gotten fairly roughed up] in the press.

-- Kevin Featherly

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