“Let’s see ‘em vote. They’ve hidden behind their desks the whole session,” Dayton said at a press conference at the Capitol.

Two activists who were at that meeting have doubled down on their assertion that Dayton did discuss the subject with them -- at some length, they say.

When a bipartisan group of legislators threw a medical marijuana bill into the hopper during the last month of the 2013 legislative session, it wasn’t intended as an 11th-hour bargaining chip. Anticipating a short session in 2014, advocates said they were trying to set the stage for convincing lawmakers that they should join a growing list of states that allow patients to use the drug to alleviate pain.