Former Sen. Mark Dayton promised Monday that if elected governor he would increase state funding for K-12 education each year in office.

Where would the DFL gubernatorial candidate and heir to the Dayton fortune find the money?

“It’s very simple: Tax the rich,” he said.

He said the wealthiest 10 percent of Minnesotans pay only three-quarters of their proportionate share and the wealthiest 1 percent pay only two-thirds, while the middle class is burdened with the tax load.

“If the wealthiest 10 percent paid the same in income taxes as everyone else” there would be $4 billion in additional revenue, Dayton said.

He said Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty and his supporters have created a regressive tax structure, left the state’s roads and bridges to crumble and, by cutting aid, left municipalities to cut services left and right.

“The solution is raise taxes, but not on everybody,” he said.

Dayton added that the Republicans will muddle his message to make voters think he wants to raise taxes across the board.

Dayton was at The Trumble’s Restaurant on a trip to visit the state’s 87 counties in 87 days. He said Freeborn County was his 35th county in 27 days. About 20 people attended. He was headed to Mower, Fillmore and Winona counties next.

Local aid, jobs and taxes

Dayton compared deferred payments to school districts — a measure exceedingly used by state lawmakers to reach a balanced budget — to stealing.

“If I borrow your wallet and say I will give it back when I feel like it, that’s not borrowing. That’s stealing.”

He also commented on how class sizes in Minnesota have grown larger and how he wanted to fix the unequal funding between outstate school districts and suburban school districts.

Grand Meadow Superintendent Joe Brown was at the meeting.

“A child is a child, regardless of their zip code,” Brown said.

Brown and Dayton began a conversation on the need to review the corporate tax structure. Dayton said when he was commissioner of economic development under DFL Gov. Rudy Perpich the Fortune 500 companies in the state were satisfied with the tax structure.

He said he visited a Nike plant in China with 5,000 workers who made equal to 67 cents an hour. He said 250 pairs of hands touch each pair of shoes.

“Those jobs are coming back,” Dayton said, “so we need new ways of attracting jobs.”

While on the campaign trail, mayors who are Republicans have come to him and, though not intending to support his campaign, nonetheless say “Pawlenty has broken the financial trust” between cities and the state, Dayton said.

Dayton also talked about the importance of funding all-day, everyday kindergarten. He said Minnesota is one of nine states that don’t provide such funding.

Health care

Dayton, who served in the U.S. Senate from 2001 to 2007, said the federal government cannot afford to insure all citizens without insurance. He said it would be less expensive to pay for the health care itself.

He said as governor of Minnesota he would work to take “profiteering” by insurance and drug companies out of the state health care system and have the Department of Health directly helping people.

“Get insurance out of the business of not paying for the people’s health care,” Dayton said.

In the national debate, Dayton favors the single-payer route.

Post-secondary education

Dayton said colleges in Minnesota are crucial to students and to the communities that host the colleges. Having well-educated people creates a multiplier effect for the economy. However, he said the state has the third-highest tuition of any in the nation, and the University of Minnesota’s revenue from tuition recently surpassed its revenue from state aid.

“Tuition hikes are a federal failure as well as a state failure,” Dayton said.

He said graduates find themselves staggered in debt. For instance, people want doctors to work in small towns, but with so much debt they are forced to seek the high-paying medical jobs in larger cities to pay off student loans.

Primary

Dayton said he will run in the primary election regardless of whether he wins the DFL nomination. He said party leaders, through the system of delegates, too often want to dictate the candidate, rather than opening the nomination system to democracy.

He said he could not speculate on who would win the DFL nomination, but he did say three other candidates have said they will run in the primary regardless of the nomination.

He said he likes the bill moving the primary to August and out of September and said he favors calls to move it to the first Tuesday in June, when more people have time to address political matters.