Doug Grow on MinnPost

'Minnesota's Quiet Crusader' Don Fraser reflects on his career and today's politics

Doug Grow — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 13:21:25 +0000

Doug Grow

Quiet, humble, the politician without an ego? Arvonne Fraser listened to the descriptions of her husband and smiled.

“There are people who think that Don doesn’t have an ego and that he wasn’t ambitious,’’ she said, as her husband sat near her, stirring somewhat uncomfortably.

It was clear the former Minnesota congressman and Minneapolis mayor was a bit concerned with where his wife was headed in this conversation about his life and times. But after all the decades together — the political victories, the one painful defeat, the policy disagreements the two have had, the personal tragedies they have suffered — Don Fraser knows that once Arvonne Fraser is rolling, there’s no slowing her down.

“Talk about ambitious!’’ she said. “He’s always been ambitious, he’s always had a plan for how to get there.’’

A biography, “Don Fraser, Minnesota’s Quiet Crusader,’’ recently has been published. Written by Iric Nathanson, historian and frequent contributor to MinnPost, it underscores the fact that a man who seems so quiet — almost shy — on the outside has been a significant player in the events that have shaped our times. There are a lot of politicians who make a few headlines with their flash and then disappear. Nathanson makes it clear that Fraser is among the few politicians who make a lasting difference because of their beliefs.

Starting as a state senator (1954-1962), then as a U.S. congressman (1963-1979), then, after a stunning loss in a DFL U.S. Senate primary race, becoming mayor of Minneapolis, Fraser’s fingerprints can be seen on everything from the Vietnam War to keeping the Boundary Waters Canoe Area pristine to early childhood development programs.

These days, even the Frasers appear to be slowing down. In a recent discussion about his career and the book, Don Fraser said it was necessary for his spouse to answer some of the questions. He has two issues, he explained. At 94, his memory isn’t what it used to be. In addition, he suffered a stroke a couple of years ago, making his speech sometimes a bit difficult.

“She can speak for me,’’ he said.

They both smiled at that because Arvonne never has been one to hold back from speaking for — or sometimes in opposition to — her husband. They are a unique political couple. She has long been a leader of feminist movements and laughingly points out she had a book published about her life and times — "She's No Lady: Politics, Family, and International Feminism" — long before this book about her husband.

So the question-and-answer session turned out to be as unique the Frasers. Sometimes she answered for him. Sometimes he answered for himself. Sometimes they both answered. And generally they agreed with each other, which probably accounts for a 68-year-marriage.

Don Fraser was a man of process — study groups, commissions, blue ribbon panels — in party building as well as policymaking. Is today’s culture too impatient to put up with process?

Arvonne: “He does like process, but he always understood there has to be an end to process. Process wasn’t just a way to sweep things under the rug. He started out with a goal and then figured out the process needed to get there.’’

Following Hubert Humphrey’s loss to Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential race, Fraser, along with South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, led a Democratic National Committee that took 15 months to come up with rules that opened up the party’s process for selecting presidential candidates. The new process set the stage for McGovern to win the nomination, but McGovern got crushed by Nixon in 1972. In the wake of that election, Fraser said “presidential primaries are an unmitigated disaster.” In the time of Trump, does he still feel that way?

Does the rise of Trump underscore the flaws of presidential primaries? Turns out, it’s complicated.

Don: “I don’t know that you could say he’s president because of primaries. He did use primaries to get the nomination, but he did win the election.’’

Arvonne: “He didn’t win the popular vote.’’

Don: “That’s true.”

Arvonne: “We both understand that primaries are an important check on our parties, but when you have all these presidential primaries, then it’s the public left to do the vetting. The public doesn’t have the ability or the time or the interest in doing the necessary vetting.’’

Fraser’s one political loss came via a primary. In 1978, he decided to give up his safe House seat and run for the U.S. Senate that was left open by the death of Hubert Humphrey. He was opposed by conservative businessman Robert Short. Short was anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-mining and opposed restrictions on the BWCA, making him popular among conservative DFLers in the 8th Congressional District. He also drew 120,000 crossover votes from Republicans in the primary, which led to Fraser’s defeat. (Short ultimately was easily defeated by Republican David Durenberger.)

Was it Minnesota’s open primary rules that led to his defeat?

Don: “Maybe. But those were the rules. If I wanted to keep moving, I had to win within that system.’’

Arvonne: “He used to say that in hindsight, he should have emphasized the liberal issues he believed in rather than debate on Short’s terms.’’

Don: “The BWCA issue was the big issue that Short worked on. His view was like (Rep. Jim) Oberstar’s perspective. But there were other things, too. (South) Korea comes into the picture, too.”

(As the leader of a subcommittee in the early 1970s, Fraser had held hearings on the human rights violations of a brutal South Korean government and the entanglements of South Korean intelligence agents, the cult of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and wealthy Korean business people at the edges of U.S. government policy. In the process, Fraser offended people with money and influence, and some of that money came into his race for the Senate.)

As he reflects on his long political career, what’s most gratifying?

Don: “I’ve thought about that more lately and I think some of the work I did in Congress was useful. Particularly in my last years in Congress I was able to get the U.S. to publicly commit to human rights as an important aspect of how we approach foreign policy. Having human rights as having a place in our foreign policy is a shift from what it had been before.’’

Do the Frasers despair at the state of contemporary politics?

Don: “I think that Trump may serve out his first term, though I sometimes wonder if things will get so bad that he won’t make it through the term. But, after that, over the next 20 years we’ll be back to what we had before Trump arrived.’’

Arvonne: “This young group, raised under Obama and attracted to Sanders, is not at home sucking their thumbs. Combine that young group with a lot of women — they have issues they feel strongly about. It’s a movement and it has goals.’’

Is it even possible to become a farmer in Minnesota today?

Doug Grow — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 18:08:52 +0000

Doug Grow

After a few years in Florida, Anne Schwagerl and her husband Peter decided they wanted something different from a professional life of cubicles and 40-hour work weeks. They moved to the family farm near Browns Valley in Big Stone County the western border of Minnesota.

They’ve had two children and they’ve moved into “grandma’s house.” Though Peter’s father is a conventional farmer (corn and soybeans), Peter and Anne have tried to find a new niche in the ag economy.

Among the non-GMO organic crops they grow is an organic blue corn, which is sold to an organic chip company. The yield is about half of the yield of a hybrid, non-organic field corn. But the price they receive is about triple the price corn farmers currently are receiving.

Other than the brutally long days of the harvest season, they love everything about farming. Working outdoors. The variety of tasks. The warmth of those around them. The sunrises and sunsets. The only thing Anne says the couple misses from that life of cities are grocery stores that are open 24 hours a day. “Farming wasn’t on our radar,” Anne said. “But now we can’t imagine anything else.”

They are involved not just in their community, but in the organic and range-raised food movement internationally. What we eat, they believe, is a question of values. “For a long time, we’ve devalued food and the people who grow it.”

But they also know they are bucking a trend. For all the attention Americans now focus on the sourcing of their food, there are a few young people trying to get into farming of any kind, let alone those like the Schwagerls, those trying to find niche markets with organic products or coming up with unique crops.

It's a fact so well known among those in Greater Minnesota that when young people do move to rural parts of the state, they are sometimes greeted like conquering heroes. “When we had our first baby,’’ said Anne, 32, “we got thank you notes.”

'The numbers just don't work'

Today, there are thousands of acres of farmland across Minnesota, but there is little room for young people who want to make a living on the farm.

Family farms, not to mention the main streets and churches that grew up around them, continue to fade away, like the old red barns that once dotted the Minnesota countryside. Agriculture experts predict that what’s left of the small farm lifestyle is going to take another hit this spring, when a combination of low commodity prices and high debt will lead to another round of foreclosures.

Gary Wertish

“We’re going to lose a lot of good people,” said Gary Wertish, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union. “This is potentially as bad as the 1980s. The numbers just don’t work.”

Indeed, no matter how hard they work, most small farmers can’t outwork the numbers. The cost of land, equipment and seed coupled with low crop prices is a formula that equals debt. And that leads to the harshest trend in terms of what rural Minnesota is going to look like in the years and decades to come. The state’s farmers are getting older (the average age is now around 55) even while it continues to get harder and harder for young people to get into farming.

The biggest factor in that trend is no mystery: Accessibility to land. Without a long-held family farm to turn to, the Schwagerls have no doubts about wether they'd be able to do work they love doing:

“Impossible,” Anne said.

Dave Frederickson, the state’s commissioner of agriculture, empathizes for young people who don’t inherit farmland but who want to go into farming. He offers the hypothetical situation of a young person who wants to be a farmer: If they somehow managed to find and buy 400 acres of land in south central Minnesota at $5,000 an acre, they'd be looking at as much as $2 million in debt.

Then, according to Frederickson, it costs about $600 an acre to grow corn (the costs include land, equipment, seed and fertilizer.) If, as Frederickson says, the land yields 200 bushels of corn per acre and the farmer receives $3 a bushel, that’s $600.

“So you’ve worked yourself to the bone and there’s no profit,’’ said Frederickson. “Why would you do that?’’

'Just useless buildings today'

State pols have attempted to help get young people back on the farm. For example, in the last session a farm tax credit bill was passed for farmers who sell land or equipment to a young non-family member.

But tweaks aren’t going to solve the problem of unaffordable land. According to the Farmers Union’s Wertish, land prices have gone “by five or six times since the early 2000s.”

The big peaks came in 2012 when worldwide drought — which was felt in Iowa and Illinois but not Minnesota — led to huge commodity price spikes. Corn, for example, peaked at $7.46. Land prices soared with the crop prices, the mean price of an acre of farmland rising to $4,917.

This situation put cash in the pockets of farmers and it also enticed landowners to make the decision to sell land. Land being finite, many farmers decided to make down payments on land that hadn't been available before.

But within two years, commodity prices crashed. Longtime farmers who had some equity or had saved during the years of bounty could maintain loan payments, at least for a while. But young farmers, who typically had little equity to begin with, have left with little but hopes and prayers.

Today, the fear is that many farmers — even longtime ones — are out of capital, and will not be able to get loans necessary to finance spring planting. And though the price of farmland acres has edged down to $4,776 since their peak in 2012, the rate of decline is much slower than the crash of commodity prices. (Local ag people believe it’s been outside investors, with no historic ties to the land, who have kept land prices at levels that don’t currently make economic sense.)

Almost all of the numbers are a sign to young Minnesotans that it’s time to move to cities — or stay away.

No one speaks more lovingly than Frederickson of the days of farm families working hard but living comfortably by planting a few hundred acres of corn and hay, keeping some chickens and pigs and milking small herd of dairy cows. But even the old-fashioned barns, if they exist at all, no longer are used for cows.

The Frederickson family farm had a barn (it was white), but Frederickson remembers knocking out the stanchions with a sledge hammer in the 1970s. The stanchions were replaced with hog pens, which he knocked out in the 1990s. The barn became a storage place for his boat.

“Those old barns are just useless buildings today,’’ he said, wistfully.

Hope and hops

There remain exceptions to the aging demographics of Minnesota farm country, of course. The organization Future Farmers of Minnesota has 11,000 members. Even if the picturesque family farm isn’t going to be available, those kids are being taught that there are farm-related trades, such as welding, that would allow them to live in rural parts of the state to serve the big operations that survive.

There have long been small farmers who survive by taking town jobs while running the family farm. When available, those jobs offer a guaranteed paychecks and perhaps even health insurance. But it’s a burnout lifestyle, attractive to few.

And there are people like Eric Sannerud and Ben Boo, both of whom grew up suburbanites but always were attracted to the land. After experimenting with miniscule hop crops on a couple of acres near Ham Lake, they found a friendly banker, some investors and purchased 120 acres of land near Foley in Benton County.

This is not some flowers-in-your-hair deal. Total startup investment for their hops project has been more than $4 million, including more than $1 million for equipment used to harvest and process the plant.

Overnight, Mighty Axe Hops became the biggest hops operation in the state. (More than 90 per cent of the hops in the U.S. are grown in Oregon, Washington and Utah.) Two years in, hopes are high that this is not just an economically sustainable operation, but one in which there’s actual growth potential.

Though still learning, Sannerud, who is 26, said that the hops farm has grown about 1,500 pounds of hops per acre and the farm has contracts to sell almost all of their product not just to local breweries, but to a growing numbers of small breweries nationally.

Since the 9th Century, hops have given beer its distinctive flavor. “People are ridiculously interested in the flavors of different hops,” said Sannerud.

There are a handful of different varieties grown at the farm, and other varieties are being tested at the 3-acre site in Ham Lake.

Sannerud is living the farmer’s life fulltime, with the hops farm near Foley and a 40-acre farm near Milaca, which is 14 miles from the Foley site. At the Milaca acreage, he and his girl friend raise pigs and sell organic produce at farmer’s markets. Their work is hard but he said he’s become “used to the feeling of remoteness.”

And he also said that he and his girlfriend have been welcomed by their neighbors, mostly older generations of farmers. “They’ve only seen young people leave,” said Sannerud. “Young people moving in are seen as new butts for the pews.”

This report was made possible by a grant from the Otto Bremer Trust. MinnPost's donors, foundation funders, and corporate sponsors support our work in the belief that promoting greater civic engagement and informed discourse is the surest path to a better Minnesota. They play no role in guiding the journalism produced by MinnPost.

Why gun-rights advocates may — or may not — be really ticked at Republican lawmakers in Minnesota

Doug Grow — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 16:44:57 +0000

Doug Grow

Earlier this year, when the Minnesota legislative session ended, some of Minnesota’s most fierce gun rights advocates were not happy. Or at least it seemed that way.

“Stabbed in the back,” “betrayed,” and “ deceived,’’ were just a few of the words showing up on gun rights websites.

The displeasure was focused on the fate of two measures that had been floated at the Legislature. One would have exempted “qualified” Minnesotans from having to take a gun-training class and apply to a local law enforcement office for a right to carry permit.

The other bill was a bigger deal. It would have expanded the state’s “stand your ground” laws so that a person would no longer have to retreat or sound a warning before firing a gun at someone they believed posed an imminent threat to their safety.

In the wake of Republicans taking control of both the House and Senate after the 2016 election — victories gun-rights groups believed they had a hand in securing — those were the two big issues those groups expected to see addressed.

But then, well, nothing. Though the House passed the stand-your-ground bill out of committee, the Senate did not, and there were no floor votes on either measure.

And so, in the weeks and months that followed, some gun-rights advocates vowed that there would be consequences. “Make no mistake about it, Minnesota Gun Rights will be more than happy to take a political 2 x 4 to ANY politician who stands in the way of our 2nd Amendment Rights,” Ben Dorr, the political director of an outfit called Minnesota Gun Rights, wrote on his organization’s website.

But rather than an example of a grassroots uprising over a passionate constituency's core beliefs, the episode might be more aptly seen as a lesson in the weird, confusing and often cynical machinations involved in interest group politics in Minnesota, especially around the always potent and often polarizing issue of guns.

Lawmakers, guns and money

Let's just stipulate that almost nothing is more important to any special-interest group — left, right or middle — than being angry at something. Without perceived threats, without anger, there can be no call to mobilize. Without mobilization, there can be no power — and no revenue. Environmental groups, pro-business groups, and gun groups of all stripes all use scare tactics to raise money.

The gun-rights lobby is well versed in such tactics, of course. And among gun-rights organizations in Minnesota, a group called Minnesota Gun Rights is almost always loudest and most extreme in its rhetoric, claiming to be “the North Star’s No Compromise Gun Group.’’

For all that, though, Minnesota Gun Rights is also seen as the sketchiest gun-rights organization. Despite its claims about being able to mobilize “thousands” of Minnesotans on behalf of the causes it champions, there’s little evidence that it could ever do so.

Chris Dorr

Its political director, Chris Dorr, has worked for Republican pols in Iowa, and the group’s underlying purpose might be best summed up in one of the messages on the group’s website. First, there was a call for pro-gun Minnesotans to express their anger at state legislators. Then came this request: “When you’re done, please send an emergency contribution to support MN Gun Rights to help run our critical programs.’’ (Efforts to reach Dorr via both phone and email were unsuccessful.)

Veteran legislators have seen this move before. In fact, in 2015, 16 Minnesota legislators — 11 Republicans and 5 DFLers — wrote a letter warning their constituents that Minnesota Gun Rights was less a political organization than a money-raising scheme. “Don’t be fooled by the fake out-of-state MN Gun Rights,’’ the letter stated.

Trying to ‘run away’ from gun issues?

And yet, just because Minnesota Gun Rights has shaky credentials doesn’t mean everything is sunny between GOP lawmakers and gun-rights advocates in Minnesota.

Given the Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate, there were high expectations among gun advocates going into the 2017 session.

Now, in the wake of their disappointment over the lack of movement, there still are strong words and political threats in the air. In fact, Rob Doar, political director of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, says there are number of people ready to line up to run against legislators who didn’t push hard enough to move the two pieces of legislation gun groups wanted. “I tell you this, actions speak louder than words,’’ said Doar. “We’re tired of words.’’

State Rep. Jim Nash

Rep. Jim Nash, R-Waconia, has become a go-to guy when it comes to carrying gun legislation in St. Paul. “I’ve been a very vocal supporter of the Second Amendment all my life,’’ he said, adding that he supports “all the amendments’’ with equal vigor.

Nash says he understands why some gun people are upset with Republican lawmakers. “I’d say the Second Amendment people were looking forward to the session,’’ Nash said. “I can’t speak for the caucus, but I believe these are important discussions to have and some [Republican lawmakers] are trying to run away from them.’’

But Nash also said that Republicans in the House shouldn’t be the targets of gun-owner contempt. The problem, he said, is in the Senate, where Republicans made it clear they weren’t going to deal with any gun legislation this year.

Indeed, much of the anger among gun-rights people is focused on GOP Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove. As chairman of the Senate’s Judiciary and Public Safety Finance and Policy committee, he made no effort to push “constitutional carry” or “stand your ground” bills through the process.

Yet Limmer, a consistently conservative legislator, says there was a good reason for that. “Why would we waste time doing that when we have a governor who veto the bills?’’ he said.

Limmer noted that for all the attention they get, the people angry at him represent a small segment of the state’s gun owners. In fact, the two major gun groups in the state — the National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance — have both endorsed Limmer for years.

‘Lots of politics’

The debate over who did and didn’t fight hard enough for the two bills raises another issue, though, one that is bound to be part of the 2018 campaign season: whether some gun-rights groups ever will believe they’re protected enough.

Prior to 2003, permits to carry handguns were tightly controlled as county sheriffs could use their “discretion” as to which applicants needed a permit. That flipped in 2003 when Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed into law a bill that required sheriffs to issue permits assuming applicants passed a uniform set of requirements.

State Sen. Warren Limmer

Now more than 275,000 people in Minnesota have permits to carry, and civilians are free, among other things, to march into legislative hearings armed with a gun.

With a gubernatorial election, as well as state House races, just around the corner, the politics of guns will be in play, even if it’s unclear whether that will means efforts to expand “constitutional carry” and “stand your ground” — or something else.

Sen. Ron Latz, a DFLer from St. Louis Park who’s a longtime nemesis to the pro-gun crowd, knows that the gun groups will be pushing for more next year.

“Hopefully, Chair Limmer will continue to understand that those hearings would only be incredibly divisive and would not be supported by a majority of Minnesotans,’’ Latz wrote in an email response to questions about what lies ahead in the unending gun debate. “But understand that the Republican constituency that votes in primaries is their main concern and they are different kinds of folks. They [Republicans] would also be looking for ‘gotcha’ votes and on Democrats in rural districts.”

In other words, he continued: “Lots of politics here.’’

Can the DFL reconnect with rural Minnesotans?

Doug Grow — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 13:05:08 +0000

Doug Grow

If you look at the electoral map of Minnesota in 2016, it’s possible to conclude that the DFL no longer is a statewide party.

One little exercise brings that point home: If you subtract all the votes cast in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties in the 2016 election, Donald Trump would have easily carried Minnesota, with 58 percent of the vote.

As it was, Hillary Clinton defeated Trump, with 46.1 percent of the statewide vote. But she carried just nine of the state’s 87 counties. And not only did Trump crush Clinton in Greater Minnesota, but Republicans won control of both houses of the Legislature.

Republicans in Minnesota face plenty of their own problems when it comes to navigating the Trump era heading into the legislative and gubernatorial races of 2018. But Democrats also know that Trump’s triumph was a wake-up call, since it wasn’t just about his popularity — or Clinton’s lack of it — in Greater Minnesota. It was also about their own (in)ability to connect with voters outside the Twin Cities.

“I think progressives have ignored rural people and people of color,” in 2016, said Dan McGrath, executive director of the progressive organization Take Action Minnesota. “But I also think there’s a lot of awakening going on.”

“Too often progressives give the impression that we know best. ... I admit, sometimes at night I wrap myself in a blanket of self-righteousness.”

Driven by causes

To be clear, Take Action Minnesota is not the DFL, and it doesn’t speak for all Democrats. “But in a two-party system, we work with DFL candidates and try to pull the party left,” said McGrath.

Indeed, in many ways, Take Action represents the politics of our times. Left and right, more and more people are driven by causes, not party.

It’s an issue DFL officials have long discussed, even as they acknowledge how difficult it is to solve. Parties that once claimed to be big tents have come to be defined by a narrower range of views. It was once easy to find pro-choice Republican activists, for instance, or pro-life Democrats. No more.

“It’s a problem in both parties,” said Nancy Larson, a longtime DFL activist who has been working for years to keep the state DFL connected with people in Greater Minnesota. “All of those people in the middle have been left out. You really see it in rural people. They feel left out. There are people in the DFL who let you know that if you don’t think a certain way, if you don’t toe the line, you’re not a Democrat.”

MinnPost photo by Doug Grow

Rep. Tim Walz, right, chatting with Farmfest attendees in 2016.

In the name of inclusiveness, Larson says, the left wing of the DFL has become “rigid,” so much so that some of the DFL’s fixations have become something of a joke in large swaths of Greater Minnesota.

Try Asian carp. These are the variety of species of carp that were imported in the 1970s from, well, Asia, and are invading U.S. waterways, causing all sorts of damage. “We’re not supposed to say ‘Asian carp,’ ” said Larson, laughing. “They’re ‘invasive carp.’ It’s in state statute.”

That’s not hyperbole. In 2014, the Minnesota Legislature, under DFL control at the time, passed a statute requiring that the commissioner of the DNR “use the term invasive carp or refer to the specific species in any proposed laws, rules or official documents when referring to carp species that are not naturalized to the waters of this state.”

This legislation was needed because, DFLers said, referring to the carp from Asia as Asian carp was perceived an attack on Asian-Americans.

Of course, there are bigger issues that have increasingly left many in Greater Minnesota feel unwanted in the 21st century DFL. Attitudes — and policy decisions — about mining and farming, for example, often separate people who once called themselves DFLers from today’s party.

And then came Trump. “He seemed refreshing to people who were being tired of being told what to say, what to think, what to do,” said Larson.

‘If you can’t capture the heart, it means nothing’

It’s an open question whether Trump will remain “refreshing” in Greater Minnesota by 2018, of course. But it’s also unclear how or if DFLers can reconnect with those outside the Twin Cities metro.

Both Larson and McGrath believe “messaging” is a fundamental failing of the modern DFL, a problem exacerbated in 2016 by Clinton’s shortcomings as chief messenger. “Democrats don’t know how to message,” said Larson. “They haven’t been able to do their messages in a personal sense."

And yet, there are fundamental issues that still unite many DFLers — health care, education and wages, among others — if they can get on the same page. “The party still does have blue collar values,” said Larson. “But if you can’t capture the heart, it means nothing.”

By contrast, the GOP has done a good job of being highly disciplined about its own messaging, says McGrath. One of the reasons the GOP has become the party of Greater Minnesota is by using the metro-rural split as a wedge issue, with campaign materials that constantly harp on the “fact” that the metro areas, especially Minneapolis, receive far more public benefits than those “underserved” people in Greater Minnesota.

Study after study, however, has shown that the reverse is true. A study by the nonpartisan House Research Department shows that the Twin Cities pays in 64 percent of the state’s taxes and receives 53 per cent of the state’s benefits. Meantime, non-metro counties pay in 36 percent of the taxes and get back 47 per cent of state benefits.

REUTERS/Craig Lassig

Gary Wertish of the Minnesota Farmers Union speaking with Sen. Al Franken at Farmfest in 2014.

A 10-year-old study by the nonprofit Growth and Justice was even more startling. When all forms of federal, state and local government payments were figured — including everything from farm subsidies to Social Security payments — public money amounted to 20 percent of the personal income of rural Minnesotans, as opposed to 12 percent for Minnesotans living in metro areas.

Despite such stats, both McGrath and Larson agree that when many people in Greater Minnesota think of the DFL, they think of Asian carp and of know-it-all environmentalists, not working people with sweat-stained shirts.

Meanwhile, many young progressives think the DFL hasn’t moved left enough, fast enough. “We primarily are concerned with our agenda, not party,” said McGrath.

In other words, crossing the divide won’t be easy, especially since the DFL could very easily retain the governor’s office by continuing to dominate in the places it already does so — by winning the same nine counties that Clinton won.

But regaining control of the Legislature is another matter, one that may require someone, or some thing, to reorient the relationship between metro progressives and former DFLers in rural Minnesota. Or a lot of therapy.

Where the Minnesota GOP is headed in the age of Trump

Doug Grow — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 16:37:50 +0000

Doug Grow

The danger of political waves is they often create undertow.

Watergate ultimately turned a Richard Nixon surge in Minnesota into such a brutal backlash that the state Republican Party changed its name. Only a few years later, the hubris of DFL Gov. Wendy Anderson in appointing himself to the U.S. Senate sank Democrats. Only a few years before, he had won re-election by more than 30 points.

But there’s never been a wave quite like President Donald Trump. And while it’s impossible to know exactly what impact the president will have on the party in 2018 or beyond, we asked three different kinds of Republicans — old school GOPers Chuck Slocum and former U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger; current party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan; and current Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka — where they think the Republican Party is headed in age of Trump.

The old school

There was an obvious reason to seek out the views of Durenberger and Slocum. Once upon a time, they were players amid another big wave. In 1972, Richard Nixon became the last Republican presidential candidate to carry Minnesota, defeating Democrat George McGovern. Nixon’s victory was so complete he even carried Hennepin County.

But by 1974, the Watergate scandal had erupted in full and the Minnesota GOP was in retreat. In the 1974 legislative races, DFLers won 104 seats. The GOP? 30.

So in 1975, Slocum, then the 28-year-old chairman of the state party, led the move to change the name of the state party from Republican to Independent Republican Party.

Yet changing the party name was only partially an effort to separate the state GOP from Nixon, Slocum said. It was also an attempt to broaden the party base. Slocum said that leading up to the state party’s convention of 1975, surveys were conducted that showed a name would be looked upon favorably by 3 percent of the state’s independents. “In an election, 3 percent is huge,’’ said Slocum.

Creative Commons/Jonathunder

Former Sen. David Durenberger

Today, Slocum sees parallels in people who reluctantly voted for Trump and those who reluctantly voted for Nixon in 1972. “Nixon was never deeply popular in Minnesota,” Slocum said. “He did carry the state. But that was because McGovern was about equal to Hillary.”

For his part, Durenberger believes that a Trump-led party has cut itself off from its old base. He’s been open about the fact that he didn’t vote for Trump, and said most of the Minnesota Republicans he knows of his generation also didn’t vote for the president.

“I think there were two things that led to what we have,” Durenberger said. “There are some people who voted for the Republican because they just couldn’t vote for the Democrat. The way many see it is that the Democrats have just gone too far. And I guess some people see him as an agent for change. I see him more as an accident of time. Once we were a party of ideology. Now it seems the party is personality driven.”

The party chair

Trump was not Jennifer Carnahan’s first choice to be her party’s presidential nominee. Her favorite candidate was Jeb Bush. When he dropped out of the race, she opted to support Marco Rubio. But she says she’s all in on Trump now.

Trump didn’t carry Minnesota, of course, but Hillary Clinton won the state by just 1.4 percent. And with Trump at the top of the ticket, Republicans swept rural Minnesota, taking control of the state Senate as well as the House. “The Trump wave brought in activists who are an integral part of the party,” Carnahan said. “I think even my own election [to party chairwoman in April] was part of that wave. I was from the outside, I have a business background and I was a new face.”

Carnahan, who went to Syracuse University with the hope of becoming a sports television anchor like fellow alum Bob Costas, is certainly a new face to party politics. Born in South Korea, she was adopted by a Minnesota couple and worked for two major league baseball teams before deciding that the road to a sports broadcasting career was filled with too many unpredictable curves. She moved into business, working in marketing for such companies as Dayton’s, Ecolab and McDonald’s before opening her own boutique clothing store.

MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan

Jennifer Carnahan

It wasn’t until 2016 that she got involved in politics. Tired of high taxes — “the government taking, taking, taking” — she showed up for her first GOP caucus and ran as a Republican for state Senate against DFLer Bobby Joe Champion. She got hammered by 56 points in her heavily DFL Minneapolis district. But she remains undaunted, insisting that her experience in that race will help the GOP gain urban votes — and that her inexperience in politics is ultimately an asset for the party. “People are tired of all the politicians who talk but don’t say anything,” she said.

Carnahan doesn’t dispute that many of the new party enthusiasts are driven to the party by the president’s personality. “There’s no question his personality is part of why many support him,” said Carnahan. “Many of his most ardent supporters liked his style when he was a TV celebrity. They liked his style on ‘The Apprentice.’ They know him as the person who owned the Miss Universe pageant and who has been hugely successful in business.”

Her job, she said, is to bridge the gap that exists between those new activists and the more restrained Republicans of another era. “It’s my job to help the gentleman who made his money in business and the Christian conservatives and the new activists see that we’re all probably 90 percent alike in the things we believe,” she said.

The majority leader

Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka believes that it’s the combination of Trump’s style and his substance that explains Trump’s success, especially across large swaths of rural Minnesota. “President Trump’s policies have resonated with people who feel they’ve been forgotten, particularly blue collar, middle class voters,” Gazelka wrote in an e-mail. “They like that President Trump is old enough to express common sense ideas and stand up for the little guy instead of pandering to the political class.”

On the other hand, Trump’s style is the antithesis of Gazelka’s. Gazelka is a deeply religious, conservative man, one who takes pride in being respectful to those who disagree with him. “President Trump’s impulsive tweets do get in the way of his message,” Gazelka wrote. “I hope that by the time the 2018 elections come around, we’ll be talking about his accomplishments.’’

Big opportunities, big challenges

Carnahan believes that those inspired by Trump’s style remain not only enthusiastic about the president, and the party, but that “the Trump wave is going to sweep through the elections of 2018.” Indeed, though the biggest goal for the Minnesota GOP in 2018 is the governor’s race, with DFL Rep. Tim Walz announcing he’s running for governor, Carnahan says the 1st Congressional District has also become a prime GOP target.

And yet, the Republican Party of Minnesota still faces substantial challenges, not the least of which remains the party’s debt. And if Durenberger is correct — that old-school Republicans are dismayed by the man at the top — raising funds may become more complicated. Will the new wave of Republican supporters have the wherewithal or desire to back their enthusiasm for the president with money for the state party?

MinnPost photo by Briana Bierschbach

Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka

“Maybe these new people can’t write big checks,” Carnahan said. “But what if they contribute $10 a month. If you get 5,000 of those, it can more than make up the difference.”

Carnahan admits she can’t talk politics with most of her old friends, many of whom are appalled by the president. She likes to call herself “someone in the middle.” But she’s also the head of the state party, and often sounds like a true believer.

When asked about her personal response to the president’s periodic twitter outbursts and the negative media storms they create, she says: “I feel like the liberal media will say what they want to say. I also believe people will believe what they want to believe. His ardent supporters will stay with him no matter what.”

That may be true — public opinion polls have so far borne that out.

But Durenberger, who has seen waves come and go, suspects most elected Republican officials — at all levels of government — aren’t so ardent when it comes to Trump, and suspects that many are already preparing lifeboat strategies in case the latest wave is followed by an undertow.

As he notes: “Politicians have good survival instincts.”

Minnesotans' retirement savings coming up short: What to do?

Doug Grow — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 16:07:38 +0000

Doug Grow

More and more people are marching into those so-called happy golden years with less and less.

The number of people turning 65 in this decade will be greater than the past four decades combined — and they will tend to live longer than earlier generations. Fewer and fewer people who will follow them have defined-benefit pensions, and many who have access to employee-contribution plans are coming up short as retirement nears — that is, if they participated in them. Many pass up the opportunity and are even further behind. Moreover, 40 percent of Minnesota private-sector workers are employed at a place where there is no access to a retirement plan of any kind. Already 8.6 percent of Minnesota seniors live at the poverty level and 30 percent are at or below 200 per cent of poverty.

So what to do?

Minnesota is still at the early stages of solving the problem. At the direction of the Legislature in 2014, the state’s Office of Management and Budget hired a consulting company, Deloitte, to conduct a retirement savings study [PDF]; it was released in late March. The study points out that even those workers who have access to retirement plans are falling far short of saving what they’ll need to live comfortably in retirement. Currently, the average worker with a defined-contributions plan is heading into retirement with just $38,000 in savings (if annualized, about $250 per month). And, again, that's workers with access to retirement plans.

The needs, and the reality

According to the Deloitte study, retirees should aspire to live in retirement on about 75 percent of what they were paid when they were working. That means, Deloitte says, that a worker who was paid $40,000 a year when working needs to have saved anywhere from $280,000 to $440,000 to live near the 75 percent standard. A Pew Research study in 2012 showed that 30 to 40 percent of baby boomers — born between 1946 and 1964 — do not and will not have saved enough to hit that 75 percent goal.

The Deloitte study lays out the dimensions of Minnesota's retirement savings gap and options for creating a state-administered vehicle to help those employees who who don't have access to a retirement plan at work.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday two DFL legislators — Sen. Sandy Pappas and Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn — proposed legislation, the Minnesota Secure Choice Retirement Act (SF 2303 and HF 2570), that would be an attempt to offer an efficient and inexpensive way for small businesses to offer their employees access to retirement plans. But there will be only “informational” hearings on the proposal this session, meaning nothing can start moving until 2018 at the soonest.

And there will be fierce opposition from the financial services industry to any sort of a state program. “The (retirement) products they are offering already are offered in the private sector,’’ said Robyn Rowen, a representative of the Minnesota Insurance and Financial Services Council. “We don’t think the way to solve the problem is to create a giant state program.’’

Perhaps the private sector does have the solution. But, so far, even with defined-benefit pensions disappearing and employees coming up short with their defined-contributions plans — or no plans — employees don't always think to turn to private-sector savings products.

A decades-long shift

The private-sector shift from traditional pension systems to 401(k)s and other ways of saving that put more risk on individuals has been dramatic. Studies show that as recently as 1980, 30 million workers — about 30 percent of the workforce — received pensions in retirement. By 2012, 16 million workers — about 19 per cent of the workforce — received pensions.

The growth of defined-contributions plans (employer administered retirement investment accounts) have filled some of the gaps created by the disappearance of traditional pensions. In 1980, just 19 percent of the workforce participated in IRA programs. By 2012, about half the workers had access to IRA-type plans.

Still, nearly half of private-sector workers have no access to even an IRA. And of course there is a huge gap between the value of a pension and the value of a retirement account.

Daunting problems for younger workers

Bad as it looks for many boomer retirees, the situation is only going to get worse in the future. The simple fact is younger workers are facing more daunting economic problems. Younger Americans are faced with education and housing debt far higher than boomers ever faced. Additionally, such basics as health care are more costly.

As a demographic group, today’s seniors are very fortunate. Again, according to Pew, households headed by the 65-plus crowd are not only the wealthiest segment of the population but they have 42 percent more wealth than their counterparts of 1984.

Meanwhile, households headed by those 35 and under are headed the other direction. They have 68 percent less wealth than their counterparts of 1984.

One more stark comparative stat: Today’s senior-headed households have 47 times as much net wealth as the 35-and-under households. In 1984, seniors had 10 times as much wealth as the 35-and-unders.

Trying to address the access gap

The legislation proposed in Minnesota wouldn't yield happily-ever-after retirement for today’s workers. The idea is to offer a helping hand to small businesses and nonprofits that currently don’t have retirement programs because of cost and complexity.

Essentially, the plans being proposed by the legislators would give businesses an inexpensive way to set up retirement accounts for their employees. The plans — there are two options, a state-sponsored IRA plan ("IRAP") or a multiple-employer retirement plan ("MERP") — would allow the employer to offer employees automatic payroll deductions. A state board would administer the investments of the pooled employee accounts. Neither the employer nor the state would be liable for any losses. On the other hand, the employee would be vested from day one and the account would follow the employee.

Beyond start-up costs — about $30 million — Pappas believes state run retirement operations could be self-sustaining. “Small fees” charged to those using the retirement services would cover the costs of the operation, which would be under the umbrella of the Minnesota State Retirement System.

Proposals similar to this are available — or in the process of being established — in Oregon, Washington, California, New Jersey and Illinois.

“It’s critical to encourage people to plan and save for retirement and ensure they can easily do so,’’ said Pappas.

How critical?

A couple more sobering stats: By around 2020, the state’s 65-plus population is expected to surpass the age 5-17 (K-12) population for the first time ever. By 2030, one in five Minnesotans will be 65 or older.

At DFL convention, fear has a name — and that name is not Donald Trump

Doug Grow — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 16:52:54 +0000

Doug Grow

There’s nothing like a lot of fear to bring a political party together.

DFL activists — the nearly 500 members of the party’s Central Committee — gathered in Hinckley on Saturday. The main stated purpose of the meeting was to elect a party chair. Ultimately, Ken Martin was re-elected, easily defeating Donna Cassutt.

But it was the tone of the all-day meeting that was most important. Was this a party still brooding over the Trump revolution? Were the activists still saying “how could anyone vote for Trump?” Or were these party stalwarts willing to look in a mirror and say, “How could we have become so far removed from the voters?”

Of course, Trump did not carry Minnesota. But DFLers weren’t taking much solace in that. Not only did Trump run very well in this once blue state — losing by less than two percentage points — Republicans took control of both legislative chambers. And races in once safe DFL districts were far closer than expected.

Those results have created a particular brand of dread in the party: that if the DFL doesn’t do some serious re-connecting with Minnesotans, the GOP could, in the 2018 election cycle, have an even better year than it did in 2016.

In fact, over and over again, one name was heard in speeches and conversations among delegates. But that name wasn't Donald Trump. It was Scott Walker, the personification of a fear that Minnesota is less than two years from an election cycle that could make the state's politics look like, well, Wisconsin’s.

A million little tents

At the convention, most DFLers seemed focused more on what they did wrong in the last election than they were on being horrified at the outcome. “If we want more people to turn out we need to say what we’re for, not just what we’re against,” said Martin in a speech to the delegates.

Of course. Simple. A positive message, a formula that is well understood by the activists.

The wrinkle, however, is deciding what that message is supposed to be. This is a party that has sliced and diced and chopped itself into a bunch of pieces. You’ve got your seniors caucus. Your LGBTQ caucus. Your women’s caucus. Your brown caucus. Your black caucus. Your green caucus. This isn’t a one-big-tent kind of party. It's a million little tents.

“We have so many caucuses, but what about the white Christian working guy caucus?” asked Nancy Larson, a delegate from Dassel, which lies in the Republican-rich 7th Congressional District. “That’s not said with malice. That part of our problem.”

Larson is a flaming progressive at heart. She ran as the lieutenant governor in John Marty’s campaign for governor in 1994. But she’s also a political pragmatist. “You can’t accomplish anything if you don’t win,” she said.

Candidates speak

Larson believes the next DFL gubernatorial candidate needs to come from the middle, someone such as U.S. Rep. Tim Walz. Others believe the party has to articulate a more clearly progressive message if it wants to remain successful.

To that end, there were three announced gubernatorial candidates on hand at the Saturday event. State auditor Rebecca Otto, Rep. Erin Murphy, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman all spoke to the delegates.

There also was a group promoting a “draft Rick Nolan” for governor. Nolan, the 8th District Congressman, is a good, old-fashioned orator. His speech was one of the few that had delegates paying attention.

But Nolan is also 73 years old now. By election day 2018, he’d be nearing 75, so his supporters had a single glossy printout to answer the “too old” question. On one side of the paper were black and white photos of Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown (78), former vice President Joe Biden (74) and Bernie Sanders (75). On the flip side was a color photo of Nolan. (Hillary Clinton was not a factor in the too-old discussions. In fact, Clinton’s was a name seldom mentioned at the convention. Among activists, it seems, she is yesterday’s news, except in a negative sense.)

Indeed, perhaps the main reason that Martin was challenged by Cassutt was the fact that he endorsed Clinton so early in the presidential process. He says now he endorsed because he wanted to be “honest” and “transparent” with party members. But the Sanders wing was furious with Martin. The party should be neutral in intra-party politics, and Martin promised he’ll never endorse again.

Nobody's perfect

But the bigger concern was whether the DFL could unify around a few big, inclusive themes.

The more radical elements of the party say that the party is locked into a box befitting the 20th century, not this one. The “Farmer” and “Labor” elements of the party have gone away. Oh sure, tepid labor leaders still have clout among party pols. But blue collar workers went for Trump.

More moderate DFLers pushed a back-to-basics theme. “Trump captured the emotional aspects of our economic message,” said state Sen. Dan Schoen, a relatively new voice in the party. “He wasn’t honest, but this was an election of raw emotions. We have to get back to our message. We have to focus on jobs. The best thing we can do for social justice is to create good jobs.”

All those little sub-groups in the party must understand, Schoen said, that there never will be “a perfect candidate.”

“The only perfect candidate is yourself,” Schoen said. “We can have our debates and differences but at some point, we have to fall in line.”

That’s an old-fashioned party discipline that many believe doesn’t exist anymore. Many, including Martin, said that the party must acknowledge that many younger voters are more interested in specific issues, not party politics. The party, he believes, must show its support of many of those issue-oriented groups.

The party's problems are many. But all DFLers needed for motivation, it seemed, was a simple mantra: “Scott Walker’s Wisconsin.”

Minnesota budget forecast: a $1.4 billion surplus

Doug Grow — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 19:37:38 +0000

Doug Grow

The Minnesota Legislature will start its session with a projected $1.4 billion on the bottom line as they begin the business of creating the next budget.

That, of course, means DFLers, who have now managed to lose control of both the Senate and the House, have done a wonderful job of managing the state’s economy. Or, in the eyes of Republicans, it means those tax-and-spenders have been taking too much money from the hard-working taxpayers of Minnesota and that government is too big and that the sky is falling as businesses prepare to move to South Dakota or Mississippi or someplace else where taxes and wages are low.

In many ways there’s nothing more predictable than the twice-yearly announcement budget and economic forecast. No matter if there’s a deficit in the forecast or a surplus, DFLers and Republicans will find reason to fight and point fingers.

That process began on Friday.

The governor said he and DFL legislators deserve credit for a run of balanced budgets since he took office six years ago. (He didn’t mention that he was succeeding Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty.)

“Six years ago, the forecast was a $6.2 billion deficit and a $2 billion debt to schools,’’ Dayton said. There has been “a remarkable change from the period of chronic deficits.’’

Republicans countered that Pawlenty was a victim of tough economic times nationally.

This surplus, according to House Speaker Kurt Daudt, is “a status quo forecast. We should not be congratulating ourselves.’’ The speaker said with Republicans in charge in both legislative bodies, regulations that strangle economic growth will fall by the wayside and all will prosper.

One thing the two sides seem to agree on: There will be a special session before Christmas in which the problems with skyrocketing health-care increases will be addressed, a bonding bill will get passed (remember, a bonding bill withered on the legislative vine at the end of last session) and a small tax cut will be passed.

There is importance to the budget forecast.

The forecast matters because it will be the basis of how the 2018-19 budget will be built. In the current biennium, the budget is roughly $42 billion and, assuming there are no significant tax increases or cuts, the budget for the next biennium will be roughly $45 billion.

A surplus should make the work of the legislators and Dayton easier as they deal with the huge surge in health insurance rates, transportation projects and education spending. But, of course, nothing comes easy in government these days.

The state’s “rainy day fund” is at record highs. Based on this forecast, another $334 million was placed into the fund, bringing that fund to $1.9 billion, about $100 million shy of the long-term target.

The big unknown over this budget forecast is what will happen when Donald Trump becomes President Trump and the GOP has sweeping control of the national legislative process.

Dayton, state economist Laura Kalambokidis, and finance commissioner Myron Frans all said that what happens with the Affordable Care Act, what happens with existing trade policies, what happens in areas of immigration all will have a direct impact on Minnesota’s economy.

But there were other little side events that made this forecast dog and pony show more intriguing than others.

Photo by Tom Olmscheid/Workingpress Photo Agency

House Speaker Kurt Daudt, right, announced regulations that strangle economic growth will fall by the wayside. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka is at left.

There was a long line of DFL legislators at the event ready to take questions from the media. But there were no questions for the likes of Sen. Tom Bakk and the new House minority leader, Melissa Hortman.

That was a reminder of the adage that elections have consequences. The DFLers are in the minority. What they have to say means almost nothing.

There’s also a tone from Daudt that he’s weary of Dayton’s temper tantrums. On one hand, Daudt talks of how he “works well” with the governor and “respects” the governor. But those little phrases aren’t said with much conviction.

When he speaks of Dayton’s temper, Daudt speaks with more passion. For example, Daudt was asked about Dayton walking out of a recent meeting regarding placement of Civil War paintings in the remodeled capitol.

“That’s not the first time I’ve seen the governor walk out of a meeting,’’ Daudt said, anger in his voice. Daudt, who usually is quite controlled, went off on a long tangent about he’s been mistreated by DFLers regarding issues during Capitol remodeling.

All of this means that the budget forecast may not be as important as the political forecast, which looks rockier than usual.

For Minnesota women who dreamt of seeing the first female president, a shocking election night

Doug Grow — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 16:10:55 +0000

Doug Grow

It was going to be the celebration of a lifetime. Women had arrived at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Minneapolis, hoping — even daring to expect — that Hillary Clinton would be elected president. The ultimate glass ceiling would be shattered.

There were women wearing suffragette buttons, women wearing all matter of “I’m With Her’’ shirts and blouses and scarves.

The excitement was genuine. And then it was all gone. The hope was replaced by sadness, numbness, anger, even fear as the would-be celebrants watched the huge TV monitors tell a story few were prepared to believe. Donald Trump was taking state after state after state. Donald Trump was going to be president.

On Election Day afternoon, Josie Johnson, a Minnesota civil rights giant, had talked about why this hope to elect a woman as president had always seemed different from the joy that had surrounded the Obama campaign of eight years ago.

“When Obama was elected,’’ Johnson said, “it was a different feeling. For me it was an event I thought I’d never see in my lifetime. I was so happy. But there’s always been a cloud over this campaign. That there is a segment of our society that could endorse and support Donald Trump for us as black people has been scary. I don’t think we realized — or let ourselves realize — that supremacy and racism was so close to the surface.’’

Hours before the polls closed, Johnson was on edge. “I’m scared,’’ she said Tuesday morning.

Johnson stayed home on election night, choosing to spend the evening with her grandchildren. But many other came to the Hilton, believing they would see history. Kathryn McConnell and her spouse, Sue Jones, recently moved to Minnesota from the D.C. area. They had come to this event not so much to see a “first,’’ but because in their view it was clear who the more qualified candidate was.

“I worked in the State Department and I didn’t look at this as a feminist issue,” McConnell said. “She was great. I remember her last day at work. We got word that if we wanted to say goodbye, she was going to be leaving the building through the main lobby at 10 o’clock in the morning. I went down to the lobby, which isn’t very big. We were all crowded in the lobby and she’s coming through, the clapping got louder and louder and louder. It was like she was a rock star.”

Celebrate MinnPost's 9th
Anniversary at the Cowles

You won't want to miss this post-election discussion with Sen. Al Franken and political scientist Norm Ornstein. Get tickets today!

But that star quality, that sense of her competence was obviously missed by millions. And as state after state turned red on those big TV maps, there were discussions, sometimes small disputes over what was going wrong. Was gender the decider? In 2016, is this country still not capable of voting for a woman to be president?

State Rep. Alice Hausman and state Sen. Patricia Torres Ray disagreed on that subject.

“In part it was the media, especially cable,’’ said Hausman. “Whenever he talked, they gave him time, even when he was obviously lying. Every time they’d mention her, there was mention of her emails. Then, there’d be these stories about how Americans think of her as ‘secretive.’ Here she’s running against the first person in 40 years not to release his tax returns and she’s the one who’s considered secretive. I think that’s in part the coverage, and I also believe it is gender.’’

MinnPost photo by Bill Kelley

DFL election party attending watching the returns on televisions and smartphones at the Hilton Hotel in Minneapolis.

Torres Ray, who had been a Bernie Sanders supporter, was having no part of that.

“He caught the heart and essence of what is going on in this country,’’ she said, “and Hillary didn’t. I think Hillary’s amazing and intelligent and skilled. But as a political person she’s lacking something important.’’

“She admitted that,’’ Hausman said. “But she had plans, policies, experience, stability. Isn’t that enough?’’

Hausman said it’s hard for her imagining another woman stepping forward, given what Clinton went through.

“Who would it be?’’ Hausman asked.

“It doesn’t have to be somebody we know right now,’’ said Torres Ray. “Just remember, we were not prepared for Barrack Obama when he appeared. Nobody knew him and he caught our hearts. Hillary didn’t do that. But that doesn’t mean somebody else can’t.”

At times, the evening turned bizarre. At 10:40 p.m., the song “I Feel Good” was blasting through the hall, a place where very few were feeling good. And it was especially bizarre when politicians would step to the podium in an effort to pump up a numb crowd. Dayton, Smith, Klobuchar, Hodges, Coleman, Franken, Ellison and many others spoke. They raised their voices. They waved their arms enthusiastically.

But reality hung over the ballroom. The most optimistic thing the pols could say was, “It’s gonna be a long night.’’

MinnPost photo by Bill Kelley

Anne Jones

This was supposed to let the crowd know that the night was over until the last vote was counted. But most understood that this night got long in a hurry. By 9 p.m., the dream was becoming a nightmare. And then it kept getting worse.

Anne Jones, a retired military person, was hurt and angry. “You’d hear him say, ‘SHE can’t be the commander in chief,’ ” Jones said. “This from what they call people like Donald Trump in the military. They call them ‘Chicken Hawks’ or ‘Tin Soldiers.’ They’re willing to send somebody else’s kid to war but they won’t be there and they won’t send their kids. ... I just find all of this shocking.”

Lorraine Applebaum had a different perspective. She’s 91 and never in her life had given politics much thought — mostly, she said, because she grew up at a time when there was no role for women in politics. But then Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination and Applebaum was hooked. “I was thinking about it every day,” she said. “I’ve been so excited. But after tonight, no more.”

In general, it appeared that young women were crying, older women tended to walk around with stunned looks.

Aviva Breen has been at the forefront of women’s and civil rights activities in Minnesota for decades. She had come to this event with Phyllis Kahn, the longtime state rep who was defeated in a primary a few months ago.

“I think part of what happened is gender,’’ said Breen. “But I also think there’s some other ugly stuff as well.’’

Kahn shook her head in agreement. “The concept of white man as victim is very difficult for me,’’ said Kahn.

“Maybe this will be the white man’s last stand,’’ said Breen.

MinnPost photo by Bill Kelley

Lorraine Applebaum: “I’ve been so excited. But after tonight, no more.”

Will women like Breen ever see a woman as president?

“Probably not in my lifetime, which is getting shorter all the time,’’ said Breen, who is 80.

Perhaps the only people looking sadder, more concerned than the women were small groups of Somali-American men. They huddled around TV sets and shook their heads sadly.

“This is absolutely unexpected,’’ said Abdul Ahmed, who had been a Hillary delegate at the Democratic Convention. “What bothered all of us is when he [Trump] came to Minnesota. He came here and he impugned our integrity our citizenship. Why would he do that?”

Ahmed throughout the evening he was receiving texts from others in the community. “These are from U.S. citizens,’’ he said. “They’re talking about his Muslim ban and they’re wondering, ‘If we leave the country will we be able to come back?’ ”

It appeared that Minnesota was going to end up supporting Clinton. That gave the Somalis some comfort.

“This is the best state ever,’’ said Ahmed. “I like Minnesota nice. We people in Minnesota will be together.’’

'The FBI can’t be doing this sort of thing': a Q&A with the U professor who filed an ethics complaint against James Comey

Doug Grow — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 19:24:26 +0000

Doug Grow

The Hatch Act has been around since 1939, but it never has received so much attention as it has in recent days.

Much of that attention is because of a University of Minnesota law professor, Richard Painter, who wrote an op-ed piece for Sunday’s New York Times saying that FBI director James Comey was in violation of the Hatch Act when, 11 days before the election, he wrote a letter to members of Congress saying his agency was pursuing developments surrounding the investigation Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.

“This is no trivial matter,” wrote Painter. “We cannot allow FBI or Justice Department officials to unnecessarily publicize pending investigations concerning candidates of either party while an election is underway. That is an abuse of power.”

The Hatch Act clearly prohibits such actions, Painter says. In addition to his op-ed piece, Painter has filed a complaint against the FBI with the Office of the Special Prosecutor and the Office of Government Ethics.

Painter is a Clinton backer, but he’s supporting her by default, he says. He’s a lifelong Republican who was the chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration from 2005 to 2007. In this cycle, his first choice for president was Jeb Bush. When that campaign faltered, he moved on to Marco Rubio. When that campaign faltered, he moved on to John Kasich. When Kasich faltered, he moved on to Clinton.

He’s written several pieces on political and business ethics for the Times and the Star Tribune. He’s also written several books, including “Getting the Government Americans Deserve.”

Painter says he was recruited to the U’s law school following his time at the White House. His spouse is a music history teacher at the university, and the couple has three children. “We love it here,” Painter says of being a Minnesotan. “We’re here for good.”

Painter has been juggling his schedule to do interviews with media outlets from the Canadian Broadcasting Company to MinnPost since his op-ed piece.

MinnPost: Have you ever met Comey?

RP: I’ve met him and he seems like a nice man. When he decided not to indict Clinton earlier, I thought he’d done the right thing, but I was bothered by some of the things he said at the time. Still, I knew he was under tremendous pressure, so I gave him a pass on that. But now this [the recent letter to Congress regarding the emails]. The FBI can’t be doing this sort of thing. Investigations are supposed to be confidential. Members of the Congress, the President, the public — none of us should be getting daily updates on an investigation. Now, the Democrats are going to be saying to the FBI, ‘What do you know about the Russians and Trump?’ I’m sure they’re investigating but they’re not informing the Congress or the people. The FBI is not supposed to be putting out voting pamphlets. It’s dangerous. Remember, Richard Nixon tried to do that.

MinnPost: So why do you think Comey publicized the FBI’s new investigation?

Richard Painter

RP: The pressure’s been on Comey from Republican members of the Congress for a year. For every member of Congress who has feared going down because of what’s happened at the top of the ticket, the e-mails have been seen as a lifeboat. … They were mad as heck that he didn’t indict Clinton or anybody else. They made him promise he would come back to them with any new information, and that was his fatal mistake. He promised.

MinnPost: What could happen to Comey if he’s actually found in violation of the Hatch Act?

RP: The presumptive policy is to terminate. In my view, though, that’s not what should happen. First, the director should acknowledge he was wrong, that it shouldn’t have happened. But the key is not to get Comey. The key is to make policy clear. The President, the Vice President, the members of Congress can come after political opponents by using the FBI or the Justice Department. We can’t send a message that this is okay.

MinnPost: For the moment, you’re something of a hero to Democrats. Does that seem strange?

RP: There are a lot of Republicans who are furious about how the FBI got dragged into this, too. It’s just a terrible mess for everybody. Republicans know that two can play at this game. Have we created a situation that if Clinton wins, Republicans are going to be nervous about the FBI? . . . Now we have this newest stuff on the FBI releasing the documents on Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich. I haven’t had time to see what’s behind that. But it’s all just a mess.

MP: Are you getting angry feedback from old Republican colleagues?

RP: Most understand that the Republican Party is in disarray. We’ve really screwed the pooch and what’s sad is that around the country, a lot of good candidates are being hurt by this. I tell some of my old friends that I live in the 2d District in Minnesota and the party’s candidate is Jason Lewis. I say, “We’ve got the only pro-slavery candidate remaining the in the party of Lincoln.” We’ve got a lot of great candidates. Look at Ohio. Rob Portman would have been a wonderful [presidential] candidate. Now he’s fighting for his life to hold his Senate seat. I’m still a Republican. But look at my district. I’ll probably vote for Paula Overby. Independent candidates might do a lot of good at this point.

MP: You’ve written books about ethics in banking, in law, in politics. Are those professions and ethics becoming non-sequiturs?

RP: I get jokes about it all the time. People say, “Those must be pretty short books.” But hopefully, we do understand how important these things are.

Doug Grow on MinnPost

'Minnesota's Quiet Crusader' Don Fraser reflects on his career and today's politics

Is it even possible to become a farmer in Minnesota today?

'The numbers just don't work'

'Just useless buildings today'

Hope and hops

Why gun-rights advocates may — or may not — be really ticked at Republican lawmakers in Minnesota

Lawmakers, guns and money

Trying to ‘run away’ from gun issues?

‘Lots of politics’

Can the DFL reconnect with rural Minnesotans?

Driven by causes

‘If you can’t capture the heart, it means nothing’

Where the Minnesota GOP is headed in the age of Trump

The old school

The party chair

The majority leader

Big opportunities, big challenges

Minnesotans' retirement savings coming up short: What to do?

The needs, and the reality

A decades-long shift

Daunting problems for younger workers

Trying to address the access gap

At DFL convention, fear has a name — and that name is not Donald Trump

A million little tents

Candidates speak

Nobody's perfect

Minnesota budget forecast: a $1.4 billion surplus

For Minnesota women who dreamt of seeing the first female president, a shocking election night

Celebrate MinnPost's 9thAnniversary at the Cowles

'The FBI can’t be doing this sort of thing': a Q&A with the U professor who filed an ethics complaint against James Comey

Celebrate MinnPost's 9th
Anniversary at the Cowles