Dry Minnesota humor...

Kron v. Nelson:

"If the people in my district had voted for slavery, and if the vast majority had, and I was representing them, the answer is 'yes,' I would have voted for it," Nelson said at a Feb. 27 board meeting. " 'Cause that's my job. My job is to represent the people in my district."

The video was posted to YouTube late last week, prompting four citizens to speak out against Nelson at a board meeting Tuesday, and spurring the commissioner to apologize "if I offended anyone in any way," Nelson recalled in an interview Wednesday night.

He said that he remained committed to heeding majority will, but added that if the people in his district advocated slavery, he would have no choice but to resign. "That is a hypothetical that everyone knows would never occur," Nelson said. "But, absolutely, I could no longer represent them."
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Nelson's comments came during a board debate over a proposed county smoking ban. He said then that he opposed the ban because most of his constituents wanted him to -- and that he had always followed the will of the people he represents.

It was a philosophy that he had espoused many times before, said Commissioner Bill Kron, who, emboldened by a then-recent viewing of the anti-slavery film "Amazing Grace," decided to pose the slavery question. Though not captured on the YouTube clip, Kron recalls saying to Nelson: "There are some issues of conscience where the majority may not be right; for example, would you have voted for slavery if the majority of your constituents would have?"

Asked to describe the immediate response at the Feb. 27 board meeting, Kron said that he and his colleagues were "stunned into silence."When we broke for lunch," Kron recalled, "we said, 'Did he really say it?' "

On Wednesday night, Nelson accused Kron of drawing parallels between smoking and slavery.