Republican rivals for governor Jeff Johnson and Tim Pawlenty had sharp words about each others’ accomplishments during Friday’s pre-primary election debate on MPR. Pawlenty says Johnson has been in politics most of his adult life and pretends he’ll get something done. “For Jeff to say he is the champion of the conservative cause in Minnesota, all it is is talk, and eventually you gotta walk the walk, you can’t just talk the talk — and he is a poser,” Pawlenty said. GOP-endorsed candidate Johnson fired back the grass roots has no interest in Pawlenty. “There’s a lot of disappointment in your governorship,” he told Pawlenty. “That’s not to say that you didn’t do good things. You did some good things, but you had a chance. You had your opportunity.”
Pawlenty and Johnson differed sharply on ways to address gun violence. Pawlenty says make the background check system available to those who want it, identify those with mental health problems, beef up school security and ban bump stocks. “We should make sure that anything that converts a gun into a machine gun is also illegal, and I think most people support that, including most gun owners,” he says. Johnson responds banning bump-stocks won’t stop school shootings — the root causes are family breakdown, mental health issues, school discipline policies and “our pop culture is drenched in violence. Those are tough topics, but those are the things we should be talking about rather than new gun restrictions.”
Johnson and Pawlenty each questioned the other’s loyalty to President Trump. Pawlenty said, “To be blunt about it, Jeff called him a jackass.” Johnson responded, “Big difference between saying that and saying he is unfit to be president and you essentially shouldn’t vote for him.”
The primary election is one week from Tuesday.