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Minnesota State Representative Duane Quam and rival Jamie Mahlberg spent the first half hour of Monday's debate without any inconvenience, with no rough drama.
The four-term Republican and his Democratic opponent passed the microphone back and forth every 30 seconds. There were no insults or loud voices – neither candidates nor the handful of potential voters sitting in neat rows inside the Rochester Public Library.
And then, just before the end of the evening, someone asked a question about inflation.
"Would you favor an automatic increase in the general education formula to match the rate of increase in the consumer price index of the previous year?", Launched the question of l & # 39; audience.
The rules of debate established by the League of Women Voters dictated Quam to answer it first. An engineer who served for eight years in the House of Representatives of Minnesota, he presented a brief and detailed argument against the general principle of education financing formulas, and passed the microphone to his opponent one last time before things happened. do not get weird.
"I've seen systematic divestment in public education," Professor Mahlberg, a psychology professor, who was never a candidate in an election, said. "I think we can do better than that, and we can start doing better than that by just ensuring that the formula increases over time."
She smiled and turned to her left while waiting for the next question.
She did not see that Quam's hand slid across the table.
Everything happened in about a second.
Quam's left hand went over a notebook and behind Mahlberg's plastic cup.
This made a small detour around her elbow and went to the microphone that she still held at chest level.
Then he pulled the right pickup from Mahlberg's fist, like Excalibur from the Arthurian stone, and returned it to him.
"Thank you!" He said.
A stir has gone through the public. Mahlberg turned his head and looked at his empty hand. "Oh," said the moderator. "I see that a rebuttal is needed."
Quam was more disconcerted as he embarked on his second effort to explain his opposition to the formulas of inflation. "I want to finance success, not failure," he said. "The formula built in funding failure."
Mahlberg listened to this in silence, like everyone else in the library.
"I was really in shock," she told the Washington Post. "I just wanted to make sure I kept calm."
She does not remember feeling angry or embarrassed. "Just a disappointment," she says. "How would anyone feel a victim of this disrespectful behavior? Disappointment for my current representative.
When Quam finished speaking, he leaned back on the table and turned on the microphone. Mahlberg looked at him briefly but did not take it. When he continued to hold it, she looked away.
An amplified crack went through the library a moment later. Mahlberg turned to see that Quam had just dropped the microphone to her. The moderator laughed nervously when Mahlberg scanned the device, posing inert behind his name plate.
She finally took it and answered the next question. She sent him back to Quam, and he to her, and the debate ended without further incident.
Mahlberg said she did not talk to her opponent afterwards. She was surprised to discover the next day that she and Quam had been converted from Rochester's public video stream into GIF and YouTube, symbols of a national debate about the behavior of the men in power.
"The physical incarnation of the male and arrogant legislator," a tweeter put it.
Quam did not respond to The Post's requests for comment, but apologized in a statement to a Rochester newspaper, The Post-Bulletin.
"I respect Jamie and my actions at the forum last night did not reflect that," he wrote. "Unfortunately, my timed responses put a strain on my nervousness and I was not as gracious as I should have been while we shared the microphone. My sincere apologies to Jamie and I look forward to continuing a positive campaign. "
Mahlberg said she had never noticed any aggression from Quam before the debate and refused to speculate on what had caused it at that time.
And while some Democratic groups are now broadcasting the video and raising money, the candidate said she did not plan to do it herself.
"I'm finally focused on my campaign," she told The Post as she headed for her first class this morning. "We have 27 days before the elections."
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