Lashkowitz's storied tenure
By Sarah Coomber
The Forum - 10/10/1999

The 20-year mayoral tenure of Fargo's Herschel Lashkowitz is legendary.

From 1954 to 1974 his City Commission meetings attracted standing-room-only crowds and made for popular live television and radio broadcasts.

Newspaper reporters used words like "pandemonium" to describe the gatherings and "hot-headed" to describe the mayor.

The Police Department was regularly enlisted to track down missing city commissioners and City Hall employees.

Shouting matches broke out at City Hall, both in public and behind closed doors.

"You never knew what he was going to pull," recalled current City Commissioner Gib Bromenschenkel, who served for four years with Lashkowitz.

But despite the theatrics, by all accounts Lashkowitz loved Fargo and its people, and he saved a special place in his heart for the underdog.

"Herschel had his heart and soul in the best interests of Fargo," Bromenschenkel said.

In Lashkowitz's final, and unsuccessful, run for mayor in 1974, sometimes-adversary City Commissioner Nicholas Schuster offered him his endorsement. He characterized Lashkowitz's interests as "rooted with the needs and desires of the average citizen regardless of his or her particular state in life."

After his defeat by Richard Hentges, the 56-year-old Lashkowitz said "closeness to the people, openness in government, integrity in office and disavowal of privileged positions enabled Fargo to move ahead, grow impressively and make real progress" those 20 years.

What price, progress?

Reports of the time said Lashkowitz, a 34-year-old lawyer, was a reluctant mayoral candidate. Despite petitions circulated on his behalf in March 1954, the World War II veteran initially said he would not run.

But the lure must have been strong, because four days later he filed his petitions and officially entered the race.

"The day after he filed for mayor we had 74 calls from different people volunteering to work for him and also offering campaign donations," his campaign manager Raymond Conlon said after his victory.

In April, after winning the race, Lashkowitz called on all types of people - young, old, women, men, blue collar and white - to join him in building a better Fargo.

"I pledge all of my energies in making Fargo a greater and happier city," Lashkowitz said.

Fargoans must have wondered what progress their new mayor would make as he began shaking up City Hall shortly after his election.

Lashkowitz refused to surrender the chair when putting forth motions and sometimes received no support from the board for his proposals.

By July, The Forum took him on in editorials, accusing him of usurping the city attorney's authority.

"... (H)e has no clear conception of his duties or else he has an exaggerated idea of his own importance," read the July 4, 1954, editorial.

A year later, Fargo attorney Lewis Oehlert accused Lashkowitz in a City Commission meeting of attempting to intimidate city employees behind closed doors.

Oehlert said Lashkowitz scared the board's executive secretary, Dorothy Thompson. "... (A)fter a tirade of threats in which you perspired freely and your eyes became glassy you said, 'I'm going to take (city budget and personnel officer) Richard Norgaard out behind City Hall and beat him within an inch of his life.'"

Thompson verified the statement.

That night City Auditor Bill Johnson told the board he didn't like working nights and locked his door when he did - "because I don't want to have someone come in and bawl me out all the time."

A few days later the Bismarck Tribune called Lashkowitz "an intense and impetuous young man" who had "put his foot into just about every important Fargo mouth, including his own."

But the newspaper mocked Fargo saying it was hard to imagine Lashkowitz intimidating anyone, because he would "probably have difficulty scaling 135 pounds dripping wet with stones in all his pockets."

"Intimidation must come easy down east," the newspaper reads. "As must also tempests in teapots."

Continued success

Despite controversies enveloping City Hall, Lashkowitz became a popular politician. In February 1956 a Stutsman County group formed a Herschel Lashkowitz for U.S. Senator Club. In 1959, Democrats wooed him to run for a seat in the state Legislature. In 1960 he became an independent candidate for governor. He pursued various endorsements, some successfully, and served five terms as a Democratic state senator.

City Hall high jinks continued. According to The Forum, Lashkowitz planted people in an audience listening to city commissioners up for re-election and had them direct questions at the two he wanted ousted. Bromenschenkel said Lashkowitz's "cronies" filled City Commission meetings to offer support.

In 1960, the City Commission took away Lashkowitz's finance portfolio and left him with no area of responsibility for a time.

No one knew what would come next, said Sharon Odegaard, a secretary at City Hall during the last eight Lashkowitz years and City Commission executive secretary today.

Odegaard had no telephone back then but even so would be summoned to work some nights. A policeman would appear at her door to say Lashkowitz needed her to return to City Hall.

"He was very compassionate, but it didn't always show because he was so hell-bent to do something," she said. "He just found a way to get things done."

"With Herschel, there was Herschel's way, and that was the only way to do it," Bromenschenkel said.

Memorable meetings

Well-known for his lengthy speeches, Lashkowitz unleashed "a verbal barrage" at The Forum and then-editor John D. Paulson during a 1965 City Commission meeting. He apparently was incensed that The Forum charged he delayed a metropolitan planning commission meeting in order to stall the appointment of a city planner.

Twenty minutes into the meeting, which began at 7 p.m., the board took a five-minute recess and tried unsuccessfully to reach Paulson.

Lashkowitz launched into a tirade, suggesting to an applauding crowd that Fargo start a "Liars Contest."

"We could award a prize each month to the person finding the biggest distortion of truth in The Forum," he suggested.

City Commissioner John Korsmo interrupted the tirade and moved to adjourn. Vice Chairman John (Pete) Markey assumed the chair and called for a vote. The board voted 3-1, with Lashkowitz dissenting, to adjourn. Commissioner Kenneth Johnson had already left.

The rest of the commissioners departed, and Lashkowitz announced he was taking on their portfolios and the executive duties of the entire city. He conducted a one-man board until adjourning at 10:37 p.m.

The next day, City Attorney E.T. Conmy told Lashkowitz he was "getting demagogic" and "sowing the seeds of dictatorship." Lashkowitz said he no longer considered Conmy the city's legal officer.

And he told the city's department heads to begin submitting brief daily reports.

"We're bringing the government of Fargo out in the open," Lashkowitz said.

A little over a week later, the board approved 4-1 - with Lashkowitz dissenting - additions to Roberts Rules of Order. They included a rule that no member could speak more than five minutes on a subject without the board's permission. Violators would be fined $100.

A 1971 exchange between Lashkowitz and Schuster over who was in chaarge of a meeting regarding the budget was described in The Forum as a "white-hot war of words."

Commissioners Markey and John (Jack) See had already left when Lashkowitz relinquished the chair to Schuster so he could make a motion. No one seconded the motion, and Schuster refused to return the chair to Lashkowitz.

The mayor ordered police to arrest Schuster, but they refused.

Bromenschenkel moved to adjourn the meeting, and Schuster relinquished his chair to second it. The motion was never acted upon, and the commissioners walked out.

Lashkowitz called a special meeting of the board to begin at 1:15 a.m., and sent police officers to summon the commissioners. They did not return.

"None of us answered the door," Bromenschenkel remembered. "He was just mad that we adjourned the meeting."

A busy 20 years

By Lashkowitz's estimate, during his 20 years as mayor he attended 25,000 meetings, dinners and gatherings.

In his farewell speech in 1974, Lashkowitz listed the accomplishments of his time in office: The city's size grew by 146 percent; a Public Library, City Hall and Auditorium stood where there had been tenement housing and rundown businesses; three fire stations and two flood control projects had been built; two urban renewal projects that removed blight on lower Main Avenue and along the Red River were complete; the water and sewage plants had been expanded.

Also mentioned in The Forum were two railroad underpasses built on Second Street and public housing facilities. Fargo's high rise at 101 2nd St. S. is named for Lashkowitz. It offers independent living for disabled people and senior citizens.

Personal trials

While Lashkowitz's political life was turbulent, his personal life also had its trials.

As a young man, he nearly drowned when he suffered a stomach cramp in the middle of Lake Melissa. His cousin, Sholom Barron of St. Paul, rescued him.

During World War II he was a member of an anti-aircraft unit and served in the infantry in the battle of Attu, in Alaska's Aleutian islands.

In 1961 he received repeated death threats by telephone.

In 1966 two boys, ages 15 and 16, wrote profanities on the outside of the home he shared with his mother.

He was seriously injured and his mother, Etta, 78, was killed in 1971 when the car Lashkowitz was driving went off the road near Hawley, Minn.

Throughout his life, Lashkowitz focused more on politics than his own financial security. A story in the Feb. 16, 1964, issue of The Forum described Lashkowitz as a "virtually full-time mayor." At the time Lashkowitz said he might need to give more attention to his law practice.

"I've probably not given enough attention to my own personal needs," Lashkowitz said.

"I always said it was his wife - he was married to politics," said former state Sen. Jens Tennefos, who lived near Lashkowitz when they were children and traveled with him to the Legislature.

When his term as mayor ended, Lashkowitz summed up his career: "I took my stand on issues of a very public character. I stood up and said what I thought had to be said."

The lifelong bachelor died in 1993 at the age of 74 a poor - but honored - man.