The coming end of Tim Walz's political career in Minnesota

 Come this November, whether Kamala Harris wins or loses the presidency, Governor Tim Walz’s political career in Minnesota ends. 

Tim Walz has had an amazing run in Minnesota politics. It includes six terms as a member of Congress, having flipped a Republican conservative district Democratic, even if only temporarily, and by winning the governorship twice and becoming a star among progressives. Nationwide. He was selected as Kamala Harris's vice president both because of his supposed appeal to progressives and his folksy Midwest image that would endear him to swing voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Were Harris to win the presidency, Walz would resign as governor, move off to Washington, and probably never return to Minnesota politics again. This would be like what happened to Walter Mondale after his national career ended. There is a slight chance that Walz might return to Minnesota much like Hubert Humphrey did after serving as vice-president and losing the presidency, but odds are against it.

On the other hand, were Harris to lose Walz will take the blame for her loss. It will be because of his missteps in many of his claims about his resume or because he turned out to be the wrong and risky choice for Vice President. Many said that perhaps Harris should have selected Pennsylvania. Governor Josh Shapiro to be her running mate, a popular political figure in the most critical swing state.

Were Harris to lose, Walz returns to Minnesota as governor. It will be in the remaining two years of his second term. It is hard to imagine that Walz would be successful in seeking a third term if he decided to do so. While Democrats like him, Walz has built up a lot of opposition across the state of Minnesota, receiving in his second election run for governor a smaller percentage of the vote than the first time, against an arguably weak opponent. Winning a third term in modern Minnesota history has only been accomplished once by Rudy Perpich, and that occurred under extraordinary circumstances of which it is unlikely we will see again.

Walz effectively becomes a lame duck after the 2024 elections in Minnesota, one way or another. Moreover, were the Republicans able to flip one or both houses of the legislature that would also significantly diminish or end his influence in this state. But even if the Democrats hold their political trifecta, they faced the consequences of a possible budget deficit according to the most recent fiscal forecast.  This was caused in part by the significant budgetary increases they enacted in the last two years. Walz will not have the budget surplus he did in the past to do the things he wants. He will have to make far more difficult choices politically than he had to do in his previous six years.

But even assume that Walz does stay on as governor and the Democrats hold the trifecta, having tasted the national spotlight, it is unlikely that he will want to continue his focus at the state level. As the adage goes, after you visited the city, it's kind of hard to keep you down on the farm.

 Under any of these scenarios, Tim Walz will become less of a feature in Minnesota politics in less than a month.

The (Carlson)-Wellstone Rule: What if Keith Ellison Quits the Attorney General race?

Please note:  I made a few changes in this blog:  Specifically, state law does not allow Ellison to simply  abandon his candidacy.  Please read below.


The Minnesota DFL are worried about Keith Ellison.  In the Thursday, August 16, 2018 press conference DFL Party Chair Ken Martin said he supports Ellison "at this time," but also indicated that he is concerned about the domestic abuse allegations and is investigating.  What happens if Ellison’s candidacy is no longer viable and he needs to be replaced?  History and law take us to the Carlson-Wellstone Rule, formulated in 1990 and then 2002 to address the replacement of candidates who had party nominations.

In 1990 the Republican Party selected Jon Grunseth to be its gubernatorial nominee over  Arne Carlson both in the convention and primary.   However on October 14, 1990,stories emerged in the general election that he and several of his friends had a nude swimming pool party that included Grunseth’s daughter and friends.  Allegations also emerged that he had an extramarital affair.  Pressure mounted and he was eventually persuaded to leave the ticket.  The Republican Party sought to substitute Arnie Carlson on the ballot, Democrats went to court challenging it.

          Even though the law was unclear on what to do, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Sandy Keith (who was appointed by then current DFL governor and gubernatorial candidate Rudy Perpich), allowed for the Republican Party to substitute Carlson for Grunseth, ruling that it would be the right thing to do to let the voters have a choice.  The Court also rejected efforts by Grunseth’s running mate Sharon Clark to force the party to make her the nominee, Clark v. Growe, 461 N.W.2d 385 (Minn. 1990).  Finally, in a side note, while the Grunseth problems were mounting then Senator Rudy Boschwitz  was worried about how these problems could explode and hurt him. He approached Grunseth and  promised to cover his expenses if he withdrew.  When Grunseth left the race, he asked Boschwitz to  pay up and when he did not Grunseth sued him in Court for breach of contract.  In Grunseth v. Boschwitz, a district court ruled the contract unenforceable because it violated Minnesota Statutes §211B. 10, making it illegal to “reward or promise to reward another in any manner to induce the person to be or refrain from or cease being a candidate.”

In 2002   Senator Paul Wellstone’s plane crashed, killing him on October 25, 2002, just eleven days before the election.  The DFL Central Committee met and replaced him with Walter Mondale who then lost to the Republican nominee Norm Coleman.  Among the legal battles” in this case was over the allocation of absentee ballots and votes already cast before Wellstone died.  In Erlandson v. Kiffmeyer, 659 N.W. 2d 724 (2003), the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that those who had cast their absentee ballots and wanted to change their votes could request a new ballot and revote.

The importance of these two substitutions leads to what can be called the Carlson-Wellstone rule, codified in Minnesota Statutes §204B.13.  For a partisan office such as governor, a vacancy in a nomination occurs when a candidate dies or is declared ineligible to run for office by a court.  If that occurs,   §204B.13 allows for the party according to its rules to substitute a candidate.  In the case of a gubernatorial candidate it is replacing, the substitution includes also the lieutenant  governor.

So how does all this apply here to Keith Ellison?  Assume pressure continues to mount over allegations of domestic abuse involving Ellison.  He is the DFL’s nominee for attorney general.  State law does not allow the party simply to oust him and replace with someone else.  Ellison cannot simply give up his candidacy.   He could of course move out of state and be declared ineligible to run, but short of being declared ineligible  neither Ellison nor the DFL can do much to get him off the ballot.  If the DFL were to offer him something of value to try leave the race they and Ellison would be violating  §211B.10.

 If Ellison were to simply abandon his candidacy, another scenario emerges.  State law does not currently allow him to do this.  However, it is possible the DFL Central Committee or another designated group of party officials, according to their bylaws, could select a replacement.  There is no requirement that the DFL would have to pick Matt Pelikan, the convention-endorsed candidate, or any of those who had run for attorney general in the primary.  In effect, they could even select Lori Swanson to be their nominee.  The DFL could then try to argue that who the party nominee is, is a matter of internal party rules and therefore sue the state and challenge the law preventing an Ellison substitution.  There is mixed jurisprudence coming from the US Supreme Court regarding whether  such an "internal party matter" issue would prevail here, but this is a possible argument.  This suit would be part of an "error and omissions" suit under state law to correct the ballot.

Whether it comes to all this is anyone’s guess.  However, the Carlson-Wellstone rule outlines the way the DFL could try to replace Ellison.

The Political Legacy of Hubert Humphrey

    What is Hubert Humphrey’s political legacy?  The dedication of the new monument in his honor has provoked an outpouring of commentary and analysis on his career and legacy.  The simple answer is that from 1948 until his death he was the face of Minnesota politics to the rest of the US and within the state of Minnesota he defined and personified the DFL party with a set of values that ended with Paul Wellstone’s plane crash in 2002.

    Much can be said about Humphrey’s career.  He was mayor of Minneapolis, senator, vice-president, and presidential candidate.  But this resume fails to capture the whole story.  His is a story of the courage of his convictions–both honoring them and not going far enough.  The two most important values–courage and loyalty. In terms of honoring them, Humphrey comes to national prominence at the 1948 Democratic Party National Convention in Philadelphia where he gave what most historians consider to be one of the greatest political speeches of the 20th century.  There he defended a minority report urging the party to support civil rights.  While today a Democrat urging civil rights would seem inordinary, in 1948 it was an act of courage with a party still captured by southern Dixiecrats and state’s rights.  In Humphrey’s words:

    "My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights. People -- human beings -- this is the issue of the 20th century. People of all kinds -- all sorts of people -- and these people are looking to America for leadership, and they’re looking to America for precept and example."

     This speech led to many Democrats walking out of the convention, including Strom Thurmond who ran for president that year.  Humphrey’s speech changed Democrat politics.  The line from this speech connects to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the transformation of the Democratic Party into the party of civil rights and freedom, stealing than banner away from the Republicans who had held it since the Civil War.  If LBJ in signing the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was prescient in declaring that the Democrats had lost the south for the rest of the century, it was Humphrey’s speech that began that loss.  By his speech, when the Democrats embraced civil rights it set in motion the forces of political alignment that persist to this day across the country with the Republicans a party of the South and the Democrats one of the North and coasts.

    That 1948 speech was an act of courage and demonstrated loyalty to human dignity. Humphrey always cared about the underdog. Humphrey came to embody the classic image of the Post WW II Liberal-Democrat. It was a party of the New Deal, the Great Society, and a respect for civil rights and human dignity. There was passion in the values and a courage to espouse them. Yet twenty years later in 1968 as a presidential candidate a different loyalty did him in–his loyalty to LBJ. Humphrey (as LBJ’s vice-president) remained loyal, perhaps too loyal to the president, failing to break from him and criticize the Vietnam War. By failing to do that Humphrey failed to capture the banner of the anti-war crowd that first cheered for rival Minnesotan Senator Eugene McCarthy and then Bobby Kennedy.  Some say that had he remained true to his values, had he broken sooner and criticized the war, he would have won the presidency. But despite this loss, Humphrey went onto complete a significant career in the Senate, with perhaps the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Bill one of his crowning achievements. The law guaranteed a job to everyone who wanted to work–too bad the law would be watered down to nothing.

    Humphrey was Minnesota’s face to America.  He was part of legacy or lineage of Minnesota politicians that included Orville Freeman, Walter Mondale, Wendell Anderson, Paul Wellstone, and to a lesser degree, mayors Don Frazier, George Latimer, and Representatives Bruce Vento and Martin Sabo. Nationally they embodied the essence of what the Democrat Party used to be, and they were also the definition of what the DFL was once in Minnesota.

    But that era ended. How and why is a stpry for another day. But I remember first coming to Minnesota in 1986, noting how the DFL party was then in the hands of what I described as the sons of former or dead DFLers. The new generation of Democrats sang homage to Humphrey but they were hardly of the same mold. Now a quarter of a century later, the DFL Party is in the hands of the grandsons and daughters of former and dead Democrats.  They still sing homage to Humphrey but this hardly the party of Hubert. It is a party that is insular, having failed to renew its values and broaden its membership beyond the core of party regulars and hacks who have failed to honor values of Humphrey while updating for the 21st century. The last hurrah for the party of Humphrey was Paul Wellstone, but with his plane crash in 2002 an era closed and the DFL that once existed died too.

    Minnesota is no longer the party of Humphrey.  We are a state of Jesse Ventura, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, government shutdowns, budget impasses, voter ID, and attempts to ban same-sex marriage.  We are a state where bridges fall down, more children are without health care coverage, racial disparities in education and incarceration, and political polarization.  This is not the Minnesota of Humphrey. The DFL in the legislature and the state seem incapable of producing leaders and passion that capture what he stood for.  Finally, the national Democratic party too is a faint shadow  of the Party of Hubert Humphrey.  Clinton was no Humphrey, as is the same with Obama.  Neither  have ever demonstrated the courage, compassion, and commitment to fairness and the underdog that the Happy Warrior did. Were Hubert Humphrey alive today he would not recognize his party, his state, or his country.