Minnesota government employee unions are running very, very scared of the proposed “Right to Work” constitutional amendment, which voters favor by a 55-24 margin.  And in those rare union strongholds represented by Republicans in the Legislature, they are coming out in force

Gary Gross was at a town hall in Saint Cloud, whose two House and one Senate seat have all gone GOP (including the 15B seat held by my friend and radio colleague King Banaian).

There were approximately 100 people in the room, with approximately 60-70 of those people union members. AFSCME had a strong presence at the meeting. AFSCME was clearly visible in their bright colored logo on the back of their windbreakers.

Several times, Rep. Gottwalt mentioned how union members, many of whom are nurses, have told him that they want the choice of whether to be in a union or not. At one point, a person in the audience suggested that Rep. Gottwalt was lying, saying that it was convenient that these union members didn’t have names and that they wouldn’t come forward.

Some of the discussion apparently got pretty ugly:

After that, the meeting went downhill fast. When Rep. Gottwalt attempted to respond to a different question posed by a union member, a different union member interrupted, asking “Are you wearing your legislator’s hat or your Coborn’s hat”? When Rep. Gottwalt replied that he’s no longer employed by Coborn’s, the man who interrupted quickly apologized.

That was the first time union members in the audience interrupted. It certainly wasn’t the last time. In fact, union members in the audience made interrupting the rule, not the exception.

In fact, the most confrontational moment came when Rep. Banaian was answering another right-to-work question. Jerry Albertine interrupted, saying “Don’t sit there with your hairspray and your tie, you’ve never worked labor, and say you know what the unions are about.”

That was a statement Rep. Banaian forcefully responded to, saying that he’s a college professor who’s paid union dues to the IFO [Inter-Faculty Organization, the faculty union for MNSCU faculty] for over a quarter century.

This sort of thing is of a piece with the DFL’s only apparent strategy this cycle; find some inchoate chanting points to repeat endlessly, regardless of truth, and repeat them until you get enough dumb people to take the ideas to the polls.

More on that last tomorrow.  Probably. .