Emmer Lands In Ol' Mexico, Met by Servers and a Bag of Pennies

Tom Emmer, the endorsed Republican candidate for MN Governor made a stab a damage control Wednesday. Last weekend Emmer emerged from a restaurant in St. Paul with tales of restaurant servers making $100,000 a year while the owners scrape by on leftovers. The problem he pointed to on Saturday was minimum wage laws. While he didn’t actually say the words: “ I want to cut minimum wages for servers”, he argued that minimum wages interfere with the “market” and presumably make things harder for owners who are the gooses with the golden eggs. (You can see the video here.)

Emmer’s gullibility at believing that that servers are making more than owners (in reality the average MN server makes $19,000 a year), and his suggestion that minimum wage laws are the problem, the implication being that it’s elimination or reduction would be some kind of solution, has caused quite an uproar in these parts. Emmer’s reaction has been to parse out his statements and deny wanting to cut wages. Today he took that message to Ol’ Mexico, a restaurant in Roseville.

Video from The UpTake: Activist Robert Erickson dumped a bag of 2,000 pennies on Emmer's table, effectively ending the event.  The action connected Emmer's statements on the minimum wage to his anti-immigrant views, as many Minnesota servers are immigrants - both documented and undocumented. More: MinnPost | TwinCities.com

This event was billed as a stop on Emmer’s “listening tour” around the state. Part of his campaign is to have these little events where people tell him what they think and he listens. It was just such an event last week where someone told him that servers are making $100,000 a year, and he listened. Today he was going to listen to the servers and they showed up in force.

The meeting started with a little speech by Emmer, he denied wanting to cut anyone’s wages. He claims he never said he did, and that cutting minimum wage would be a bad idea in midst of a recession. Emmer’s problem manifested itself immediately when his opening statement drew a round of laughter instead of applause. The problem wasn’t that people weren’t listening, it’s that they weren’t believing. Emmer kept repeating over and over again that he didn’t want to cut anyone’s wages, and never said he did, but many in the crowd just weren’t buying what he was selling. Now Emmer I’m sure would have you believe that the crowd was being irrational, and not listening to what he was saying. But to believe that we’d have to pretend that Emmer is not a radical Republican who tried to eliminate minimum wages in 2005. We’d also have to pretend that Tom Emmer is not a dyed in the wool Republican, and that Republicans have been historically anti labor, low wage, trickle down champions. And most of all we’d have to pretend that he didn’t actually say what he actually said last weekend. But there you have it anyways. I guess some in the crowd suspected Tom Emmer was being a little disingenuous.

Server after server took the microphone to tell Emmer they couldn’t afford to have their wages cut, Emmer would occasionally deny wanting to cut wages, and round it went. There were some Emmer sympathizers there, but oddly they couldn’t offer much in the way of support. Two former restaurant owners, one who used to own T Wrights in Minnetonka years ago spoke up, but not exactly in Emmer’s defense. One complained that Emmer wasn’t making himself clear about tax credits, and the other just told the story about how he went out of business. One young man got up to tell how he’s worked as a server in five other states without minimum wage laws and he made more money there because people tip better when they know servers aren’t making any money. He also bemoaned the plight of owners who put all their money back into the restaurant and would have even more money to put into the restaurant if they didn’t have to pay such high wages. You’d have to be kinda dense to take this guy seriously, and even Emmer didn’t seem to appreciate his comments because the guy was arguing for lower wages and Emmer was trying to deny his sympathy with that position.

Emmer’s performance included no real information or insight into any ideas or plans for dealing Minnesota’s issues if he gets elected. The statements he did make were more perplexing than reassuring. He wants restaurants to make more money but he wants the food to be cheaper. He believes minimum wages keep people from making more money. Someone screwed up last Saturday regarding the $100,000 a year server salary, but it’s not clear who that was, if it was Emmer or someone else. The most bizarre encounter was when a young man questioned Emmer about his previous attempt to abolish the minimum wage in 2005. First Emmer said he has problem with minimum wage laws, but he didn’t want “go there” today. Then he explained that he’d attached the proposal to abolish minimum wages as an amendment to some other bill. In other words, yes- he tried to abolish minimum wages, but he didn’t want to talk about that. I guess he was there to listen not talk. Emmer’s response to the minimum wage question then took an even more bizarre turn when he announced that later that day, after trying to abolish minimum wages, he voted for a bill to increase the wage to $9.50 an hour! (Currently $7.25) Did anyone know that? I half expected someone to toss a flip-flop at him but it didn’t happen. At any rate no one seemed to be impressed since it’s kind of intuitively obvious that even if Emmer did vote for $9.50 an hour minimum wage hours after trying to abolish minimum wage is was some kind of weird Republican maneuver that probably kept the wage lower if anything. I must confess I have no idea what vote he’s talking about, but let’s not pretend we don’t know he’s a Republican.

Emmer complained about not getting a fair shake from the media, you can’t believe everything you read in the paper, but you can believe everything you read on his website which is emmertruth.com or something like that. And he bragged about the fact that he was there. He took a lot of credit for showing up to his own campaign event. He’s not running from anyone, if someone wants to talk to him he’s there. He did go over to the folks who had been his most vocal critics after his microphone died and talked to them for 5-10 minutes. The only people who seemed to be impressed by the fact that Emmer showed up were the media who have faithfully regurgitated this bravado in most of the coverage I’ve seen this evening.

The most theatrical incident was a young man who walked up and dumped a bag of pennies on the table Emmer was sitting at and shouted something about Minnesota not being a racist Arizona. This protest had nothing to do with wages and servers but was a complaint about Emmer’s support for Arizona’s immigration laws. I will tell you now, although this was certainly the most interesting thing to happen in course of an hour, it was in no way “frightening”, not the least bit. Emmer was startled, but the demonstrator was hanging out in the parking lot afterwards and talking to reporters. I tell you this because I’ve already seen this incident referred to as “frightening”. Leah McLean on KSTP claimed the guy (who’s name is Robert Erickson by the way) threw a bag of change at Emmer. I guess you can’t believe everything you hear on the TV either.

Paul Udstrand is a photographer working in Minneapolis.