Pawlenty responds to Dayton

During an interview this afternoon on WCCO Radio, Gov. Tim Pawlenty was asked about former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton, who earlier in the day had called on the governor to reimburse taxpayers for a weekend trip to Germany. Pawlenty attended the 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy. Here's what the governor had to say on the radio:

"Of course Mark's running for governor, so you've got to put it in context.

But he probably didn't know, and if he would have called we would have told him, that the trip didn't cost the taxpayers anything out of pocket, in the sense that there's a military plane that went to Germany that carried the delegation to the security conference. It was going any how, so there was no additional cost of me taking a spot on that plane, as I did last year.

And when you're the commander in chief of the Minnesota National Guard, and you're going to deploy soldiers -- like we are tomorrow night at the St. Paul civic center, a thousand soldiers going off to Iran (Editor Note: Pawlenty said Iran on the air. His spokesman said he misspoke and corrected himself on the air later) and a month from now another thousand going to the middle east to fight in the war -- it helps to have an understanding of those issues, the dynamics, the security issues. And I get asked about it in my role as governor by families, by reporters and the like. So, there is value in doing it."

A word of clarification from the governor's spokesman:

Tim -

Just a note that the Governor made a misstatement in the part of the radio interview you posted on Polinaut.

He meant to say "Iraq" when he said "Iran."

We're going to make that correction on the air in a few minutes.

Thanks,

Brian McClung

Director of Communications

Office of Governor Tim Pawlenty

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