Minnesota produces two vice presidents
By John Sundvor
The Forum - 10/03/1999

ST. PAUL - Politically at least, Minnesota and North Dakota have always been joined at the hip. The bond between the two states dates back to a time before they were states.

It is a fact that some Minnesotans prefer to forget. To them, Minnesota has the sophistication of any eastern seaboard state. Minnesota may suffer from its geography, but they would argue that the deficiency is offset by its culture.

The State Capitol, opened in 1905, was created as a testament to the belief that Minnesotans considered themselves at least a step above frontiersmen and sodbusters. Throughout the 20th Century, it has been a state consumed with the idea of being on the cutting edge and a model for the nation.

But in the days before statehood, life was a little different in the territory of 10,000 lakes. Joe Roulette, a fur trapper from what is now Pembina, N.D., made regular trips to St. Paul to carouse and take his seat in the territorial legislature.

With Minnesota preparing for statehood in 1857, the Legislature passed legislation to move the State Capitol to St. Peter. Roulette stole the bill and hid out in a back room of a St. Paul brothel until it was too late to sign the bill into law.

In the years since, North Dakota has not only supplied Minnesota with much of the raw materials needed to fuel its prosperity, it has supplied the state with politicians, as well.

U.S. Rep. Martin Sabo, a Democrat, grew up in northwestern North Dakota. U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad, a Republican, initially called Jamestown home. And Coya Knutson, the only woman ever elected to Congress from Minnesota traced her roots to North Dakota.

When A.C. Townley started the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota, the agricultural revolt left a trail that spread eastward across Minnesota. It became the Farmer-Labor handle on the Minnesota's Democratic Farmer-Labor Party.

"People in northern Minnesota, especially, were about in the same shape as the people in North Dakota," said Harding Noblitt, a political scientist from Moorhead.

Many farmers were convinced that big businesses and eastern banks had too much economic power. Since they had flirted with third political parties earlier, the leap to the to the Farmer Labor movement was not a particularly big one.

When the NPL movement swept across North Dakota in 1915, some of its organizers were from Minnesota.

Townley, himself, was born in Browns Valley. He was a teacher in Alexandria before he and his brother moved to western North Dakota to start a flax farm. One of Townley's NPL organizers was Harry Munger of Fergus Falls.

"I was raised in a kettle of stew," former state Rep. Willard Munger, a DFLer from Duluth, said years later. "I had two grandfathers and one was entirely opposite from the other."

Willard, who often accompanied his father on his trips to organize farmers, said his grandfather Munger was a Norman Thomas socialist who homesteaded 160 acres of land north of Fergus Falls at the turn of the century. He was a well-read scholar whose love of books and nature was greater than any affection he may have had for farming.

His grandfather on his mother's side was a sound farmer who had little time for politics and philosophers.

"He used to say to me, 'Willard, why do you hang around with your grandfather Munger so much? You know all he does is sit at home and read those books and preach to you all day long. You go out and look at his barn door. He props it up with a post; he doesn't even put hinges on. But he sits there and reads those damned books. I think he would like me to divide up my farm with him because of that socialist idea he has."

In spite of the counsel, Willard clung to the teachings of his grandfather Munger and carried them into the agricultural revolution.

"My political heydays were in Fergus Falls," he said. "I was active all the way through high school."

He was so close to Townley, that his nickname in his school yearbook was "A. C."

But in Minnesota, the movement took on a slightly different tone than the one that took over the Republican Party in North Dakota.

Minnesota Republicans wanted nothing to do with the socialist movement. Farmer-Laborites were left to fend for themselves.

As secretary of the Fergus Falls Farmer-Labor Club, Willard Munger found political patronage jobs for followers of the movement.

"Whoever wanted a job on the highway would get an endorsement to replace a Republican," he said.

Farmer-Laborites felt they had earned the Republican-held jobs because they had demonstrated to change a political and economic system that had forced them into bread lines. Republicans, Munger said, had tried to protect that system.

"It was the wrong thing to do," he said. "It is not the way to run government," but it was the spoils system."

In the 1930s, as the economic depression worsened, Minnesota - like North Dakota - found itself with three major political parties: Republicans, Democrats and the Farmer Labor Party. But in those days, the Farmer Labor Party dominated politics.

Floyd B. Olson was elected governor in 1930 on the Farmer-Labor ticket and proved to be both personable and provocative. As governor, he was a strong drinker and womanizer.

Munger said he and a delegation of other Farmer Labor leaders urged Olson to tone down his extra-curricular activities, but Olson was unrepentant.

"He wouldn't apologize," Noblitt said. "He only said, 'Pray for me.' He was the 1930s version of (Gov.) Jesse Ventura."

As governor Olson helped bring the income tax to Minnesota and moved the Farmer-Labor movement closer to the Democratic Party. Noblitt said many people were convinced that Olson was headed for national prominence until he died during his third term as governor.

In 1936, Elmer Benson was elected governor, largely without the help of the Farmer-Labor movement. Benson was not a Communist, but Noblitt said he was not averse to working with left wingers and communists.

The relationship wrecked the Farmer-Labor Party, he said, and led to the re-emergence of the Republican Party.

In 1938, Harold Stassen, then a 31-year-old Republican, was elected governor. He proved to be every bit as popular as Olson.

He was twice re-elected governor. He became a nationally recognized leader of progressive Republicans, championed U.S. involvement in international affairs, and helped establish the United Nations.

While Stassen's political star rose, the political fortunes of the Democrats and the Farmer-Laborites sank. Unable to win at the polls and under pressure from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the two parties merged in 1944 to from the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party.

The union proved to be both a successful and controversial.

In 1948, the DFL orchestrated the election of Hubert H. Humphrey to the U.S. Senate and Eugene McCarthy to the U.S. House. But Humphrey and McCarthy, once allies in the fight to cleanse the party of Benson loyalists, parted company after they reached Washington.

"I think McCarthy was pretty jealous of Humphrey's success," Noblitt said, recalling a meeting he had with McCarthy at the Democratic National Convention in 1964. Noblitt said he could tell that McCarthy as "madder than hell" that Lyndon Johnson was going to pick Humphrey as his running mate for the presidential election.

By that time, Noblitt said, the two men were no longer close. Both men had too many of the same political ambitions, he said.

Four years later, the two men were outright opponents. Humphrey ran for president as an apologist for U.S. involvement in the Vietnam conflict. McCarthy, then a Senator, ran for the presidency as an opponent of the war.

The merger of the Democrats and Farmer-labor movement produced a stable of other political stars, as well.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Bergland was repeatedly re-elected to Congress from Northwestern Minnesota's 7th Congressional District, and served as secretary of agriculture under President Jimmy Carter.

Walter Mondale rose to prominence in the U.S. Senate and became Carter's vice president. Four years later, he ran for president and lost to Republican Ronald Reagan

But the merger of the two political parties also produced political casualties, among them Knutson.

Elected to Congress in 1954, she angered the DFL leadership in 1956 by endorsing Sen. Estes Kefauver for president. To party leaders, it signaled that she had joined the Benson faction that they were trying to purge from the party

Armed with pen and paper, DFLers coaxed Knutson's husband, Andy, to write the famous "Coya Come Home" letter that first appeared in a Sunday edition of The Forum. Odin S. Langen of Hawley defeated her in 1958.

Noblitt said Knutson did not realize the implications of what she was doing.

"She was not too well informed," he said. "She didn't know anything before 1950, because as a young mother raising a family hadn't paid attention to politics."

She was unaware of the intra-party fight that was brewing between DFLers loyal to Humphrey and old farmer laborites still loyal to Benson.

Most of the people who opposed her, Noblitt said, thought they were doing Humphrey a favor.