Kudos for House Minority Leader Melissa Hortman

for her comment

“I hate to break up the 100 percent white male card game in the retiring room, but I think this is an important debate,”

Cross posting from Women Rights and Issue Forum

https://www.democraticunderground.com/11389918

The DFL’s leader in the state House of Representatives is not apologizing for a crack about white men during a floor speech that led at least one Republican colleague to demand on Tuesday she resign from her leadership post.

“I hate to break up the 100 percent white male card game in the retiring room, but I think this is an important debate,” House Minority Leader Melissa Hortman of Brooklyn Park said during a House session Monday evening.

Hortman then praised several speeches by female colleagues, including several women of color, that some members missed as they relaxed in the lounge-style room reserved for members just off the House floor. Hortman said in an interview later Tuesday that she might have expressed her objection differently, but said, “I’m not sorry for speaking out for colleagues who were being ignored.”

But at least several Republican lawmakers took umbrage. The spat broke out during debate on whether protesters who block freeways or airport and transit access should face stiffer criminal penalties.

“I’m a white male. I respect everybody,” Rep. Bob Dettmer, R-Forest Lake, said after Hortman’s remarks. “But I really believe the comments made by the minority leader were really not appropriate. Minority leader, would you apologize to the body?” Hortman, who is white, replied: “I have no intention of apologizing.” She added that she was “really tired of watching women of color in particular being ignored. So I’m not sorry.”

http://www.startribune.com/top-dfl-lawmaker-s-comments-set-off-house-floor-spat-with-racial-gender-overtones/418193253/

More about the story

When some legislators complained about Republicans’ absence from the House floor on April 3, she went searching for them. She found some in the Retiring Room, where a group of white male legislators was playing cards during a debate on a measure that would legally crack down on certain protests.

“Part of the reason why the card game was so offensive was they had the TV on, not to . They were watching a baseball game,” Hortman said of the group, which included at least one DFL lawmaker. “They weren’t even paying half a brain’s attention.”

http://www.startribune.com/o-reilly-ouster-stirs-up-women-in-workplace-conversation-at-capitol/420160193/