I've received several emails since the MNGOP emailed out a press release last week about Mark Dayton's teaching years.  I'm happy to see the story I broke is getting some attention as it goes to the heart of Mark Dayton's honesty and integrity.  (I'll also keep in mind my hero Ronald Reagan's saying: "There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit.") 

Mark Dayton's current website biography (authored by Senator Mark Dayton,) still deceives voters by saying he taught in NY City Public Schools for two years.  He did not and the documents referenced in my blog post on September 9th, which the MNGOP linked here, show that he taught for 16 months (and I'm even generously spotting him summer months as well as 3 months while he was sub-teaching.)  He quit during the middle of his second-school year.  He returned from Christmas break and threw in the towel for "personal reasons." 

16 months is not two years...20 months?  Sure...round it up.  16 months?  No.  Senator Dayton, you're lying about your teaching experience and you've been lying about it for decades now.

Lying on your website is one thing....lying in the official record of the United States Senate is another.

Check out this from the official biography Senator Dayton submitted to the United States GPO office:  (emphasis mine)

(Link is here- can't be embedded)  http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CDOC-109sdoc29/pdf/CDOC-109sdoc29.pdf

After working as a hospital orderly for three summers during high school he thought he wanted to become a doctor so he completed pre-med course requirements while at Yale. 

However, Mark decided medicine was not the right fit for him so after graduation he took a job teaching at P.S. 65, a tough school on New York's Lower East Side, and lived part of the time with a family on welfare. With 3 years of teaching under his belt followed by experience as a counselor for runaways, then as chief financial officer of a Boston social service agency, Mark felt a call to public service.

 

 

This particular document is stamped with "Authenticated U.S. Government Information."  Authenticated by.....Mark Dayton?  The official biography includes a slew of "tributes" to Senator Dayton before he left the Senate.  (It's kind of nauseating to read the musings of the mutual-admiration-society of the U.S. Senate...)   Many of the "tributes" paid reference Dayton's teaching years, Senator Tom Harkin reinforced the lie that Dayton taught for three years.

After graduating from Yale, he could have gone on in the family retail business. He could have coasted on his family wealth, but he chose a very different course. He chose to work as a teacher for 3 years in a pretty tough public school on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

 

This is verifiably untrue.  Will Mr. Dayton work to correct the official record of his time as a U.S. Senator?  He cares about school-children, he just doesn't care about the history books that they'll read someday.

Mr. Dayton lies about the amount of time he spent teaching, because it's the only "real job" the man has EVER had.  It's been documented that he donated some 10% of the budget to the social service agency in Boston where he worked as a "street worker".   He's bought most of his jobs. 

When you have SO LITTLE true substance on your resume....then throwing out that you were a teacher in the largest public school system in the country lends some gravitas.  Who would ever question the intentions of a teacher?  (I have- he did it to dodge the Vietnam draft.)  The problem is Mark Dayton keeps lying about how long he taught and apparently nobody in the Minnesota media establishment seems interested in correcting the record.

I think the Dayton campaign jumped so fast on this story because they know that this goes to the integrity, honesty and character of Mark Dayton who is viewed as some sort of "saint" for his liberal do-gooding.  He's a true-blue bleeding heart...that's undeniable....but one with his fingers crossed behind his back while boasting of his past.