Stand Up!: The Story of Minnesota’s Protest Tradition

13. A Swing to the Right

122 as polarization increased, minnesota’s second pro­ gressive era was drawing to a close. As during the first such period, Democrats and Republicans had shared political power, and control of the governor’s office had alternated between them. But at the midpoint of the 1970s, as Minnesota was celebrating its national reputation as “a state that works,” it was also preparing to turn back to its historic Republican preference. Of thirty-three governors who had served since statehood, twenty-three had been Republican and only seven Democratic. The year 1972 was the first in which Democrats elected both a governor and majorities in both houses of the legislature. In the next thirty years, the governor’s office would be occupied by three Republicans, one middle-of-theroad Democrat, and one fiscally conservative member of a third party. In 1976 Minnesota senator Walter Mondale was chosen as the running mate of Jimmy Carter and became the second 13. A SWING TO THE RIGHT A Swing to the Right 123 Minnesotan to serve as vice president of the United States. DFL governor Wendell Anderson resigned, and his successor, lieutenant governor Rudy Perpich, appointed him to fill out Mondale’s term in the U.S. Senate. The move was unpopular , and in 1978, in what is often known as “the Minnesota Massacre,” Republicans swept the state, electing Al Quie as governor and sending two Republican senators to Washington. In 1980 the whole country followed Minnesota’s sharp turn to the right in electing Ronald Reagan as president. In addition to the Democratic slate, Reagan was opposed by two other candidates. John Anderson, a moderate Republican , rejected the party’s growing conservatism and ran as an independent, and Barry Commoner, a leading environmental scientist, was nominated by the Citizens Party. Although neither received many votes, they testified that protest politics was still alive in the country. Meanwhile, feminists cheered the choice made by Walter Mondale, whom the Democrats nominated to oppose Reagan in 1984. For the first time in U.S. history, the candidate of a major party named a woman as his running mate. She was Geraldine Ferraro of New York. In Minnesota the Republican Party had officially changed its name to “Independent Republican” following the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation. Soon, however, its more moderate members found themselves being outspent and outorganized by an alliance of Christian and pro-business rightists . Some of the more liberal Republicans turned their support to Rudy Perpich, who was governor from 1982 to 1990. Minnesota’s first Catholic governor, Perpich was the son and grandson of Croatian immigrants. He was also the first governor to come from the Iron Range. That region was no longer identified with flaming radicalism. Depleted resources and competition from global trade led miners there to see their 124 STAND UP! interests as parallel to those of industry. Perpich had served as governor for two years after Wendell Anderson left for the U.S. Senate but was defeated in 1978. Four years later Perpich won the Democratic primary over the more liberal candidate endorsed by DFL party regulars. Often lampooned by his detractors as “governor goofy” because of his unorthodox ideas, Rudy Perpich was hard to classify . Some saw him as a populist and others as a conservative. A staunch friend of women in government, he chose Marlene Johnson as his running mate, and she became the state’s first female lieutenant governor, starting a pattern that has persisted ever since. He appointed Judge Rosalie Wahl as the first woman to serve on the state’s supreme court, and he continued appointing female judges until for a brief time the court had a majority of women. Despite his Catholic heritage, he avoided divisive social questions like abortion and gay rights, but on economic and labor issues, particularly in his last term, he leaned toward business. Worried environmentalists and other protesters who were represented by neither party in state electoral politics took not only to the streets but to the farm fields. Agriculture, like nearly everything else, had become an industry since World War II. Crop yields had been boosted by chemical fertilizers, hybrid seeds, insecticides, and herbicides, along with mechanical equipment of ever-increasing size and power. Chickens and turkeys were no longer raised in farmyards but in steel barns filled with permanent cages and automated systems for feeding and watering. Hogs and cattle were fattened by the...