Rep. Mary Franson walked into her first hearing of the day Thursday -- and into a wall of cameras and a crowd of protesters shouting for her resignation.
"Hey, Franson, we're at your door, stop the war on the poor," at least a dozen protesters chanted outside the House agriculture committee, as Franson sidestepped the crowd and entered the hearing room through a side door.
The first-term Republican from Alexandria has been under fire since she posted a video last Friday that compared food stamps to feeding wild animals and making them "dependent."
"My baby is not an animal," shouted Cicely Matz of St. Anthony, who followed Franson into the hearing room and raised her infant high in the air for the committee to see. Matz said she works 40 hours a week and still doesn't earn enough to feed her family without food assistance from the state.
The House Agriculture and Rural Development Policy Finance Committee isn't usually a hotbed of controversy, and committee Chairman Rod Hamilton, R-Mountain Lake, appealed for calm. The committee was meeting to debate a bill about horses and another about ethanol.
"Ma'am, you have a beautiful baby," Hamilton assured Matz, as the protesters filed out to continue their demonstration in the lobby.
Outside, they continued to chant and wave signs with slogans like "Don't Feed the Politicians," and "If people are animals, then Mary Franson is a rat."
Franson sat, smiling and composed, through the hearing and kept her attention focused on her iPad. She refused to speak with reporters before or afterward, but she did take to Twitter to turn the protest into a campaign fundraising opportunity.
