The Capitol is buzzing about Gov. Pawlenty's out of town travels after an MPR report found he's been out of the state one out of three days a week so far this year. The governor's communications director Brian McClung issued a rare rebuttal to the story saying it's misleading. He goes to great strides to say the majority of the travel was on the weekend even though the MPR story did note that most of the campaigning was on the weekend. The Press Corps are generally very frustrated that the schedule we are given often doesn't reflect what the governor is actually doing on any given day. Most days it just says "no public events" when he has a very eventful day planned.
We've been looking into what the governor has been doing when he's in St. Paul and who he has been meeting with-- events that are not on his published schedule. Quietly (maybe a questionable PR strategy to keep it so quiet) Pawlenty has been meeting wtih dozens of rank and file lawmakers. Democrats and Republicans. But one important group has been missing from his schedule: DFL legislative leaders. They control the Capitol after all. Speaker Kelliher and Majority Leader Sertich say they haven't met with the governor at all this session. Yet, the governor has been spending lots of valuable time having breakfast meetings with all sorts of lawmakers. We'll give you more details about who he's been meeting with behind closed doors and why in my report tonight on Almanac.
Update: I just heard from an angry Brian McClung who yelled at me that Democrats are lying to the press and we're taking it as "gospel." He says Speaker Kelliher met with the governor on Feb. 6th (that was before the session actually started though) and Feb. 13th. I have double checked with the speaker's office and they did verify that Kelliher did meet briefly with Pawlenty and other legislative leaders on the possible NWA merger and that meeting slipped her mind. A good clarification from the governor's office, but Mr. McClung does not need to berate and belittle a reporter when trying to make a point. I would say I have been nothing but fair to this governor and we have a fine relationship. In this instance McClung acted very unprofessionally. A good reminder on good communications: don't kill the messenger.
