By Mike Kaszuba

Within hours of their comments on a new Minnesota Vikings stadium, the latest thoughts from House Majority Leader Tony Sertich and House Minority Leader Kurt Zellers were being circulated last week to the media by a Vikings official.

On the surface Sertich and Zellers – who would play key roles in any plan at the Legislature to move the stadium forward – seemed to be suggesting at a local chamber of commerce breakfast that support for a stadium was building. Sertich was quoted as saying that the stadium might be inevitable because "stadiums always get built." Zellers was quoted as saying that members of his House Republican caucus "are in support of getting something done." But is that really what they said? Sertich and Zellers say no, and contend that their actual comments were much more nuanced. "My comment wasn't that our caucus [favored a stadium]," said Zellers. "I said that there might be a few members in our caucus that were interested in having something happen on a stadium. "The chance of us writing out a check – something that looks like a financial contribution to a stadium – is not going to happen," said Zellers. "It would have to be something creative. I'm not sure what that is." Sertich said he too was taken out of context. "It was artfully done to parse my words," he said. "There were a lot more 'ifs' in it. "We should first decide if we're going to build a stadium or not. If we decide to build a stadium, it's cheaper to do it now," said Sertich. "[But] there are members on both sides of the aisle that won't put a single cent [of public money] into a stadium. "That [statement attributed to me] looks like I'm saying it's cheaper to do it [now], so we should build a stadium. I never said [that]," he added. "The priority right now is balance the budget, create jobs and then we deal with the other issues down the road." So what happened? Lester Bagley, the Vikings spokesperson who forwarded the comments, said he was not at the breakfast and acknowledged that it was "probably a little premature" for him to circulate the quotes before seeing whether they accurately reflected Zellers' and Sertich's position. He said he received the quotes from the TwinWest Chamber of Commerce, which represents Minneapolis' western suburbs, and said that he was at first struck by how the comments seemed to show legislative movement toward a new stadium. "It sounded like they were generally positive and, you know, when anybody says anything positive" the Vikings try to highlight the comments, said Bagley. "I probably stirred something up I shouldn't have, but that's the way it goes. I thought it was positive."