Her Honor: Rosalie Wahl and the Minnesota Women’s Movement

Chapter Seven: Seeking Systemic Change

x 143 xChapter Seven Seeking Systemic Change Minnesota feminists were euphoric about Rosalie’s landslide victory, but the rest of the 1978 election results were deflating, particu­ larly to DFLers. Governor Rudy Perpich was unseated by Independent-­ Republican (IR) Al Quie, who had represented southeastern Minnesota in the U.S. House for nearly eleven terms. The DFL governor of whom feminists had been wary two years earlier had become a hero in many eyes, despite his opposition to legal abortion.1 Ironically, abortion opponents also found Perpich’s stance objectionable . Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL), the state’s leading anti-abortion lobby, faulted him for not outspokenly seeking the reversal of Roe v. Wade. They considered him a “weak pro-lifer”—an assessment not without foundation. As he campaigned, Perpich never raised the subject of his own volition, and as governor he had initiated no policy at MCCL’s behest. Many of his appointments had gone to supporters of abortion rights—including Rosalie Wahl. On the Sunday before the election, a political committee allied with MCCL and headed by a tactically gifted GOP activist from Roseville, Marsie Leier, had arranged for anti-Perpich fliers to be placed under the windshield wipers of 250,000 cars parked near Roman Catholic and conservative Protestant churches. Perpich had declined to respond to an MCCL questionnaire, the flier said, while Quie had not only responded, but also had been a congressional sponsor of the proposed Human Life Amendment to constitutionally ban abortion.2 The fliers may not have affected the election’s outcome. All three major statewide offices went to Independent-Republicans, and the state house—the only legislative chamber on the ballot that year—would end 144 x Rosalie Wahl and the Minnesota Women’s Movement up tied, 67–67. Most analysts believed Minnesota voters in 1978 turned against the entire DFL ticket out of disapproval of Wendell Anderson’s “self-appointment” to the U.S. Senate and dislike of DFL Senate primary winner Robert Short. But Lola Perpich maintained that Quie and abortion foes, with “a Bible in one hand and a bucket of mud in the other,” had spoiled her husband’s chances with an unfair smear. In a letter to the edi­ tors of state newspapers on November 24, Minnesota’s first lady accused Quie of injecting religion into the campaign in violation of the state’s tradition of separation of church and state. Perpich would be back—and he would remember MCCL’s role in the 1978 campaign. Independent-Republican feminists viewed Quie with misgivings similar to those with which DFL feminists greeted Perpich in late 1976. His abortion position troubled them. So did the 1978 Independent-­ Republican convention’s selection of Bemidji school superintendent Lou Wangberg as its endorsee for lieutenant governor. Wangberg’s rival for endorsement was Rochester’s Nancy Brataas, who sought to make Independent-­Republicans the first major party to nominate a woman for lieutenant governor. Brataas, a state senator since 1975, had, through years of service to its organization and candidates, more than earned her party’s backing. But she supported abortion rights, she was from the same part of the state as Quie, and she was a woman seeking an office no woman had held before. Before the convention, Quie had personally asked her to seek the lieutenant governor spot, but he did not push the convention to endorse her. With her senate seat not on the ballot in 1978, Brataas had ample reason to walk away from that year’s campaign after the convention’s rejection. Instead , she refused to fault Quie for the convention’s decision and worked hard to elect the Quie-Wangberg ticket. Her selflessness won her praise from an unexpected source. DFL activist David Lebedoff observed in the Minneapolis Star, “What Nancy Brataas did between the IR convention and the November election has more to do with her party’s landslide victory than the work of any other Republican in the state.” She was hoping to keep her star shining for another day.3 Brataas’s visible support for Quie made it easier for other GOP women to suspend harsh judgments as he took office. So did Quie’s reputation as an honest, openhearted man who, during a long public career, had also demonstrated an open mind. Raised on a southeastern Minnesota dairy Seeking Systemic Change x 145 farm founded by his grandfather, a Norwegian...