I write occasional articles about Minnesota’s history for our magazine, Thinking Minnesota. In the course of doing so, I often write more material than I have room for, as was the case with my article about the “Minnesota Massacre” of 1978 in the Winter 2024 issue. Specifically, I had to cut out much of the discussion of the rise and fall of Wendell Anderson, the governor who was in the running for Vice President in 1976, the Senate in 1978, and never held elected office again.
Minnesota governor Wendell Anderson’s future looked bright in 1974.
Elected in 1970, the 37-year-old former Gopher and Olympic hockey player from St. Paul’s East Side faced a Legislature controlled by ‘conservatives’ (legislators were elected on a nonpartisan ballot until 1974). To sell his plan to dramatically increase state personal and corporate income, liquor and cigarette, and the sales tax by $588 million to fund K-12 schools to reduce their dependence on locally levied property taxes and narrow funding disparities, he barnstormed the state and fought through a 157-day special session, the longest in state history. He succeeded in 1971 in what was dubbed the ‘Minnesota Miracle.’
The following year, ‘liberal’ legislative candidates bucked a national blowout, seizing control of both houses for the first time in state history. The DFL ‘trifecta’ passed what one journalist called “a torrent of environmental, labor and consumer legislation that had been bottled up for years.”
The nation noticed. In 1973, Anderson made the cover of Time magazine. “Like the state itself, Anderson can sometimes seem almost too good to be true,” Time gushed. “The son of a meat packer, he is something of a populist, an anti-elitist and egalitarian. He has athletic dash and youthful charm that make many of his constituents think of a Midwestern Kennedy.” “Some think that Anderson’s future may be larger than Minnesota,” the article teased. He was re-elected in a landslide in 1974, winning every county in the state, the first candidate to do so since 1916.
The Vice President
And then he started to push just a little too hard. Anderson was among those who thought that his future may be larger than Minnesota. He devoted much of his second inaugural address to foreign policy, defense, and global energy, puzzling his audience. Asked at the 1976 Democratic National Convention whether he would be interested in serving as Jimmy Carter’s running mate, Anderson responded: “If it were offered to me, I’d think very seriously about it for two or three seconds, and then say yes.” Carter offered the slot to fellow Minnesotan, Senator Walter Mondale, instead.
The Senator
Carter’s victory left Mondale’s Senate seat open. Anticipating this, the Minnesota Senate twice passed a bill providing for a special election, but House DFLers blocked it. Anderson took his chance, resigning the governorship with the understanding that Lt. Gov. Rudy Perpich, now Governor, would appoint him to fill the vacancy, which he did. By a 4-1 margin, those polled by the Minneapolis Tribune in December said they wanted the seat filled by a special election, not appointment.
“It will be a tough campaign,” Anderson said, already looking ahead to his reelection, “but I think I can establish a good-enough record so that I’ll receive a positive response…I’m not at all afraid of a primary and general election.”
As unpopular as this was, it looked worse when, following Hubert Humphrey’s death in January, 1978, Perpich appointed his widow Muriel to finish his term. It was unclear whether she was simply a caretaker. When asked whether she would run for reelection in November, she said “That’s too far ahead for anyone to be thinking about right now…If I do a good job that’s my goal.”
Perpich had “double-crossed the people of Minnesota,” GOP 3rd District Rep. Bill Frenzel charged, noting that “three Minnesota senators-Mondale, Wendell Anderson, and Mrs. Humphrey-were appointed and that the last two had been appointed by an unelected governor.” With both Senate seats and the governorship held by appointees going into a year when all were up for election, Minnesota’s Independent-Republicans (IRs) put up billboards at Halloween reading: “The DFL is going to face something scary — an election”.
The result, as I noted in the magazine last year, was that the GOP:
…picked up 32 [House seats] for a 67-67 tie. “[W]e couldn’t believe the actual numbers when they started to come in,” IR House Minority Leader Henry Savelkoul said, adding, “We won seats that I didn’t think we had a chance to win.” Furthermore, Quie, Boschwitz, and Durenberger all won. It was the first time the party had held all three offices since 1948.
After losing to Rudy Boschwitz and just two years after flirting with the Vice Presidency, former governor Wendell Anderson’s political career was over.