Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer gave his first one-on-one interview since the election to WCCO radio's Michele Tafoya this afternoon.

Worth knowing? Tafoya donated $120 to Emmer's campaign.

Tafoya disclosed she made donation at the top of the interview, without much elaboration. "I want people to know that right up front," she said.

Hot Dish contacted Tafoya and her producer before the show about the donation and received a call back from program director Wendy Paulson. Paulson said Tafoya's actions did not violate any company policy. She would not say whether Tafoya's on-air disclosure came at the behest of WCCO bosses.

As for the interview itself, Emmer launched few major fireworks. He did address allegations that GOPers hope to extend the recount into the next session to keep Gov. Tim Pawlenty in St. Paul.

"I'm in charge," Emmer said, adding: "Anybody who would talk now about just using the process for delay or some other – I think that's entirely improper and I wouldn't be part of it. So they can talk all they want, that's not what we're going to do."

He ardently defended the recount as an automatic process that his campaign did not initiate.

"This is nothing that Tom Emmer or our campaign has asked for," Emmer said. He went on to describe Mark Ritchie's timeline as "aggressive."

"Counting 2.2 million ballots in six days may be a little bit extreme. We'll see if it can happen."

Emmer's description of alleged Election Day irregularities raised some eyebrows from Dayton's recount team.

"You've got machine malfunctions in unusual numbers all over this state," Emmer said. "You've got ballots that are apparently not secured at some point in time. You've got questions in Hennepin County where there were 200,000 ballots that were double counted. These questions need to be addressed and they will."

Denise Cardinal, spokester for Dayton's camp, retorted that the Hennepin County glitch was "found and fixed in less than an hour – and since then, the canvassing of Hennepin county found there to be no systematic issues." She said the unsecured ballots claim is "unsubstantiated" and the machine malfunction comment "undermine[s] an election system that has proven itself time and again."