The Dayton Double Standard

Let’s face facts.  Minnesota Democrat Mark Dayton is governor because he ran against his Republican opponent Tom Emmer’s decades-old DWI charges.  Never mind that Emmer was not convicted of the charge, in incidents that occurred when Emmer was 30 and 20-years-old, respectively.

The 2010 argument against Emmer went that, since he was once charged with drunk driving, he was forever disqualified from holding public office.

Democrat-front group Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM) ran television ads against Emmer in the summer of 2010, dredging up the DWI incidents.  ABM even went as far as to imply that Emmer was somehow responsible for the death of a man in 2007 [read the ad's transcript.]

Funded in no small part by members of the extended Dayton clan [Andrew Dayton ($1,000), David Dayton ($50,000), Mary Lee Dayton ($250,000), Alida Rockefeller (Dayton) Messinger ($500,000)], ABM’s slander of Emmer set new lows in Minnesota politics.  But for Minnesota’s Democrats, the ads also set a new standard that DWI charges disqualify one for public office.

Mark Dayton wanted to be seen as taking the high road, at one point in 2010 calling for a "cease fire" on negative campaign ads.  In fact, Dayton is joined at the hip with ABM, having adopted the campaign slogan "For A Better Minnesota."

Yesterday’s revelation that the interim CEO of the state agency MNsure, Scott Leitz, was charged with drunk driving back in August now puts this standard to the test.  Leitz registered a blood alcohol content of 0.18 percent—more than twice the legal limit—in a 2 a.m. traffic stop on August 17^th.

The MNsure board (all Dayton appointees) knew of Leitz’s arrest when they hired him back in December.  Somehow, this information was kept from the public for over seven months.  According to the website of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD),

Minnesota currently requires the use of ignition interlocks for all repeat and first time offenders with a BAC of .16 or greater.

So the charge against Leitz is a serious one.  The 47-year-old’s indiscretion was not “youthful,” but occurred just last year.  Drunk driving has been portrayed as a public health concern, with 114 related deaths in 2012 in Minnesota.  As head of Minnesota’s health insurance exchange, Leitz serves as one of the state’s senior public health officials.

Based on that logic, Leitz has to go.  However, Dayton issued this statement yesterday, quoted in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

“My as­so­ci­a­tion with Mr. Leitz be­gan, af­ter the MNsure Board hired him as the act­ing CEO last De­cem­ber,” the governor said in a writ­ten state­ment.  “From ev­er­y­thing I know, Mr. Leitz has pro­vid­ed MNsure with ex­cel­lent lead­er­ship and has great­ly im­proved its ser­vices to the peo­ple of Minnesota.”

In 2010, Democrats told us that a DWI charge was automatically disqualifying.  Four years later it’s all “second chances” and “trains running on time.”  Sorry.  Either the standards apply to everyone, or not at all.  There’s a word for that.