"Stop spending money," a protester at Rep. McCollum's office shouts

A protester at Rep. McCollum's office shouts, "Stop spending money!" Photo: Stefan Lund

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum missed the commotion in her St. Paul office Friday, when nearly 100 “Tea Party” activists’ announced visit turned into a raucous reception-room rally against health care reform.

Travel — to her son’s wedding on Saturday — prevented the congresswoman from personally greeting her visitors.

They were met instead with decaf tea, sign-in sheets and a staff struggling to keep a semblance of order. “Kill the bill! Kill the bill!” the crowd bellowed, scaring a spaniel being carried in one activist’s arms.

The cacophonous scene got in-your-face at times. “All you do is yell at me. I still don’t have my rebuttal. Where’s your info? Rebut me!” one man demanded.

But for the most part it didn’t get physical. “Tell Betty to start getting on the ball,” said one woman, jabbing her finger at a passing McCollum aide. “No need to poke me,” the aide snapped. “There’s no need to touch me.”

One speaker defended the rabble’s babble: “Everybody treats this as a bad thing, but it’s not.” McCollum’s district director, Josh Straka, replied that he’d like to have an exchange and listen to the man’s views “but I can’t hear them.”

Another thing he couldn’t hear: Someone saying, “Sign up Jack Kevorkian as the new health czar.”

But you couldn’t miss another woman’s sign, which played on Barack Obama’s “Hope” logo: “NOPE to Health Care.” Her shirt sent a mixed message: “Socialism,” then a small American flag and below that the legend “Equal Opportunity Destroyer.”

At the same time, across town, it was a quieter scene as 10 health-reform protesters converged on U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison’s Minneapolis office.

But in St. Paul, even as McCollum’s crowd cleared, there wasn’t much let-up to the dust-up. A cluster of protesters outside the office suite detected a sinister plot in questions on the second page of sign-in sheets that staff had distributed.

“Did you see this? It’s a privacy release form. Why would she need that?” one woman wondered aloud. “Did she get your social security number?”

Another activist had a theory: “It’s Obama’s dissenters list.”

Actually, a McCollum staffer later told the Minnesota Independent, the questions are part of the standard constituent-services form that the office keeps at the ready for visitors — “since we are a constituent services office.”

Cleve Mesidor, McCollum’s communications director in Washington, D.C., conceded that the form wasn’t quite right for today’s visitors in St. Paul. But she explained, the prying questions are required under the Privacy Act of 1974 for all U.S. representatives like McCollum who provide certain constituent services.

The form might have been useful for any who wanted to put their money with their mouths were, Mesidor added. “If they wanted to un-enroll from [government] benefits like Medicare, Medicaid or veterans benefits, we’d have the form on the spot,” she said. “But none of them took us up on it.”

No one took up McCollum’s staff on the iced tea they had at the ready either – four pitchers were sat untouched on a coffee table at the end — maybe because it was decaf.

[Minnesota Independent video shot by Stefan Lund, edited by Paul Schmelzer.]

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