Capitol Retort: Severance; stabbings; so long, Adrian

Editor’s note: Welcome to Capitol Retort, our weekly review of issues in state and national news, with a rotating cast of local characters. Answers have been edited for length and clarity but not unity. Any instances of agreement are accidental.

Question 1: House Speaker Kurt Daudt has complained loudly about Gov. Mark Dayton’s decision to offer sizable severance packages to three commissioners who quit their jobs. What do you think? Big deal? Little deal? Or no deal?

Pat Garofalo, Republican state representative: It’s a big deal. But if the governor wants to give me a severance package to have me leave the Legislature, that would be fine.

Annette Meeks, conservative political analyst: I actually think it is kind of a big deal because you are using public funds. And severance pay is typically given when someone is let go from a job. In this case it sounds like they all voluntarily quit. That just seems a little odd to me. I guess I would say the governor has some ‘splainin’ to do.

Don Betzold, former DFL state senator: It’s a deal. It is hard to recruit some people to come from the private sector to work for a few years in high-level government jobs that don’t pay as much. But I think that the public is rightly concerned about these payouts when they leave. So it’s a deal. It’s between a little deal and a big deal. But it’s a deal.

Question 2: Whether credible or not, the ISIS terror group has claimed responsibility for inspiring a stabbing rampage in St. Cloud. How worried are you that this incident might shove terrorism anxieties and anti-Islamic animosities over the edge?

Garofalo: I am more concerned about threat to public safety than the public’s response to the threat to public safety. The concern is that there is a major attack that affects not only Minnesota’s economy but also culture. The response to a major incident is a secondary issue. Preventing these incidents on the front side, that’s the primary responsibility of government and what we have to be focused on.

Candidly, I am concerned that political correctness is going to result in people getting killed. I worry about that.

Meeks: Oh gosh, I am terribly concerned about it. We have already seen the ugly side that can emerge when people are consumed with fear, and sometimes a lack of information, about other people—especially new Americans. It is one of the greatest concerns I think that most Minnesotans have. We should be working to improve relations and get along better during difficult times rather than turning on one another.

Betzold: I don’t know if it goes over the edge. It does feed into certain anxieties and probably prejudices that some people already have, whether they are founded or not. I don’t think that there is really any connection between ISIS and what happened in St. Cloud. They claimed it, but they are going to claim almost anything. There is no indication that this guy was part of ISIS.

There are people who, frankly, are going to view anybody of color suspiciously, and that is not right. It was a white man [Dylann Roof] who shot up a South Carolina church. So, if people want to attribute this attack to ISIS, or who want to go ahead and reinforce certain prejudices that they already have, I guess that is going to happen. But it’s not right.

Question 3: Star running back Adrian Peterson is out for three to four months with a knee injury. Are the Vikings done before they’ve barely begun?

Garofalo: The Vikings are done regardless because they are cursed. I’m a Minnesota Vikings fan and I have come to accept the fact we are never going to win the Super Bowl. There is some sort of ancient Egyptian, Hindu and/or Martian curse on the Vikings and we just need to accept it and move on.

Meeks: No! No way. Did you see the player of the week is [wide receiver Stefon] Diggs? He was just a rock star Sunday against the Packers. He and the new quarterback [Sam Bradford] seem to have a groove thing going, and I thought, ‘This is wonderful!’ It may be that this is the next generation of Vikings leadership. I’m going to be cautiously optimistic about the future.

I’m sorry for Adrian Peterson. He has really had a rough go of it in recent years.

Betzold: No. I think a lot of people picked the Packers to win last Sunday night and they didn’t. It’s going to take a few weeks to see just how good Bradford is. But Peterson is getting up there in years. And the offensive line wasn’t blocking enough so he wasn’t getting us enough yards in his first two games.

I don’t think he is ever going to be the player he was before because of the age and the knee injury. There are other players that are coming in. They won’t do as good a job as he was doing, but the NFL has gotten away from the running game and it’s more of a passing game, anyway. So we’ll see. But it’s not the end for the Vikings.