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A little while ago I got a call from former candidate for Hennepin County Attorney and all around good guy, Andy Lugar. I don’t recall the specifics of the conversation but the short version is that Mr. Lugar wanted to set up a lunch for me with former Senator Mark Dayton to talk about his support of Hillary Clinton for President. Of course I was pleased to do so.

So, this afternoon Mark Dayton, his staffer Heidi, and I had lunch at Joe’s Garage in Minneapolis (by the way, I recommend the pesto chicken sandwich). I got there a little early, so as not to keep a former Senator waiting, and plopped down in a seat with the latest City Pages. A few paragraphs into an article about some local public access TV star with Conan O’Brien hair I glanced up from the page to see the Senator approaching. Let me say this, Mark Dayton has never looked so relaxed. I’ve seen Senator Dayton a number of times but this was the first time I’ve seen him in a pair of jeans and looking sincerely relaxed (the image to the right isn’t from today). When I interviewed Mark late last year I asked him what he planned on doing now that his term was over and he quipped, “trim my body and dry-clean my brain.” Well, he let me know that he had lost 21 pounds since leaving office and on the night of the State of the Union he watched Borat. So, the dry-cleaning and trimming seem to have gone well.

After being seated the waiter came over to the table to ask us if we wanted something to drink and Mark, forever the politician, looked him in the eye, asked his name (Steve), shook his hand and said, “Nice to meet you, I’m Mark.”

Before we turned our attention to the requested subject of the interview I couldn’t help but ask about his recent announcement that he would be running for Governor in 2010. Asking about why he chose to announce he gave his previously stated answer that Susan Gaertner had been introduced as the only DFLer currently running in 2010 at the Olmsted County dinner and Senator Dayton wanted everyone to know that she’s not the only candidate. As he puts it, “politics abhors a vacuum.” He elaborated for a few moments on the fact that, as he put it, the “executive branch is more decisive whereas the legislative is more reactive” and that the former is much more his style. While remaining incredibly skeptical of the political realities of a Dayton run, I can say that an executive position would play to his strengths to a much greater degree than the Senate ever did.

As our food was arriving (I think the secret of Senator Dayton’s weight loss may be the Atkins diet as he ordered a cheeseburger with double cheese, no fries, and removed the bun from the burger when it arrived) I finally allowed the conversation to move to the reason for our lunch: Mark’s active support for Hillary Clinton. Keep reading below the fold to find out why he’s backing the Junior Senator from New York.

My first question was what Senator Dayton was doing to support Senator Clinton’s bid for the White House. He and a group of other politically active Minnesotans (such as the aforementioned Andy Lugar) have volunteered their time to go to various functions and do some outreach for the Clinton campaign. Obviously this sort of interview is a manifestation of that outreach. Mark continued on to talk about how he is going to make his “Iowa debue in Debuke” (I promise that the pun came off better in person) tomorrow as he travels south to campaign in the critical primary state.

Continuing on the subject of Iowa it became a little bit more apparent why high-profile politicians like Senator Dayton would be actively campaigning for a primary contender in a state that has one of the latest primaries in the country: we’re just north of Iowa. Work here, in one of the closest population centers, can drive money and volunteers south to help out in the primary. But, Senator Dayton noted, if on February 5th there’s still a “three-way horse race” Minnesota will become an important playing field and the groundwork better have already been laid. Mark also explained how his work isn’t just about Hillary but also building the energy and engine to topple our Senior Senator, keep Tim Walz in office, kick Michele Bachmann out of office, and keep the DFL majority in the State House (his list).

My wonkiness had steered the conversation towards political strategy so I caught myself and steered the discussion back towards why Mark felt the Senator was his choice for the White House. First he made the requisite statements that he would be “happy and proud” to support any of the other Democratic candidates (I think he sincerely meant it) and then launched into a discussion of her merits.

Senator Dayton’s first point was that he had the pleasure of seeing Senator Clinton in action. He cited her extensive experience in foreign affairs (more than any other candidate, he asserted) due not only to her work in the Senate but also as first lady (according to Mark she visited 82 different countries as first lady). He cited her “life-long commitment to making a real difference in real people’s lives” such as healthcare. He cited her hands-on approach to problem solving and her ability to bring people into the fold through her extensive network.

But the reason that caught my attention the most is when Senator Dayton began talking about Senator Clinton’s extensive experience. This was a point that we talked about quite a bit but I found the discussion of her experience most interesting when it was approached from the context of her being in her husband’s shadow. I posed the question of how Bill affects her prospects and the response I got wasn’t what I expected. Mark made the case that she would be able to begin where President Clinton left off. That, essentially, her time as the first lady acclimated her and familiarized her to the workings of the White House. This knowledge of the inner workings of the White House would put her in a position to be a more effective policy-pusher than anyone before her. Her extensive network would allow her to bring more people into the works, her gravity would give her the opportunity to bring notables into the cabinet (Dayton noted what a great cabinet he saw when he watched the Democratic Presidential debates, with the exception of Gravel), and her hands-on approach would get work done, or so Mark says. Senator Dayton even said, “I will be disappointed if after 8 years she doesn’t have a better Presidency than her husband; she’s eminently capable of that.”

Despite being a mild Barack supporter and a mild Hillary skeptic, I honestly found this to be a very compelling argument. At this point Senator Dayton turned around and casually said, “Hey Steve, could I please grab a coffee, thanks.”

We also touched upon Senator Clinton’s incredibly unpopular Iraq authorization vote. Mark said that he’s glad to see her make a push for the de-authorization vote (a vote which I see as wholly political and purely symbolic) but that he understands why she voted for authorization after all, he said, “hind-sight is 20-20.” I pressed here by noting that he and a handful of other Senators had the fore-sight to vote against the measure. Mark talked about this for a while, but it essentially boiled down to his assertion that they (the Senators) were lied to by the administration. He gave the stunning example of being in a top-secret meeting two weeks before the invasion with Condi Rice and George Tenet and being shown aluminum tubes proving the existence of the Iraqi nuclear program. He talked about Senator Bill Nelson later complaining that administration officials had told him that Iraq had missiles capable of hitting the coast of Florida. As he said, “we were lied to, the American people were lied to, and Congress was lied to.” In short, it was a bad decision made on even worse information that was paraded around as fact by a dishonest President. Fair enough, but I still don’t think that quite explains how Mark figured it out and Hillary didn’t… oh well.

I ended the interview by asking the former Senator to summarize why he supports Hillary Clinton for President in one sentence. A superficially constrictive request, but one that he likely has to present to many people given his busy event schedule. His answer: “She’d be the best President for the Democratic causes that I believe in and for the country.”

As we walked back to our cars we chatted about who the most potent Republican Presidential candidate might be and after thinking about it for a while we concluded that it’s a great time to be a Democrat.