Candidates mingled with office-crashers at ad hoc town hall

Pat Igo, Jamie Denton. Photos courtesy the candidates

When health care reform protesters packed the St. Paul office of U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum Friday, at least two GOP office-seekers were in their midst: Republicans Pat Igo, a candidate for St. Paul school board, and Jamie Delton, who is again seeking the Minnesota House seat in District 65B.

Friday’s event was a fairly rowdy affair, with loud verbal jabs at McCollum (who was absent) and at least one physical poking of her staff.

Igo and Delton were in the thick of it, but in interviews with the Minnesota Independent afterwards, both men showed a soft-spoken side.

Igo is running for the seat left vacant after Tom Conlon, the school board’s lone Republican, resigned July 6 to run an inn in South Carolina. (Indeed, with Conlon gone, neither St. Paul nor Minneapolis has a Republican in elective office.)

Igo didn’t have to go far out of his way to attend the event: A real estate agent in the neighborhood, he lives upstairs in the same building (Selby Avenue’s historic Blair House) that houses McCollum’s congressional office.

Afterwards some people approached Igo to thank him for his speech, though he said it simply came about because McCollum staffer Josh Straka asked for someone to speak for the nearly 100 who had assembled in the close quarters of McCollum’s reception room. He told the Minnesota Independent:

“We’re all citizens of the Fourth Congressional District. We may not get our questions answered but we just want to be heard. … It was handled very well. Granted there was some passion there. … The rep [Straka] did a pretty good job of keeping some control here, but still, nobody’s questions were answered. There were a couple plants in there also. They wanted to argue the points. The guy stood up [and] said, ‘I don’t know why we’re having this meeting. None of you in this room even voted for Betty McCollum.’ … I just thought to myself, what difference does that make? I didn’t vote for her and I’m not going to vote for her again either.”

Delton, who said he learned about the event via a Facebook friend, was less sanguine about Straka as a stand-in for McColleum, who he said “should have sent a more knowledgeable representative” if she couldn’t be there herself.

Delton’s purpose in being there was to tell McCollum to oppose the current health care bill: “She should argue against it in Congress to the American people on our behalf as Minnesotans.”

Asked what he would do about health care, Delton cited the World Health Organization (WHO) as saying the United States should have more hospital beds and cut health care costs by half to be in line with other countries.

“This will be another additional cost that we do not need,” Delton said. “What Obama’s trying to get away with is putting us in debt.”