Minnesota in the '70s

By Dave Kenney and Thomas Saylor

A History of the 1970s in Minnesota, looking closely at this transitional time, a ten-year evolution of the state from the anti-establishment tumult of the Sixties to the Reagan conservatism of the Eighties. Based on primary documents, oral histories, collection photographs, and close look at history, politics, and popular culture of the decade, including the state's prominence in national politics, environmentalism, immigration change, feminist change, grassroots activism including Native American, music, and sports. Proposal submitted by two veteran MHS authors, Dave Kenney and Thomas Saylor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9780873519007

Dave Kenney

Dave Kenney is a freelance writer specializing in Minnesota history and a two-time Minnesota Book Award winner.

Book preview

MINNESOTA IN THE ’70s

MINNESOTA

IN THE

70s

DAVE KENNEY AND THOMAS SAYLOR

© 2013 by the Minnesota Historical Society. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to the Minnesota Historical Society Press, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, MN 55102–1906.

www.mhspress.org

The Minnesota Historical Society Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.

Front cover: Prince, 1978, Minnesota Historical Society, Star Tribune Photo Collection; Southern Airways poster, Minnesota Historical Society; IDS Tower, 1975, Minnesota Historical Society; hitchhiking on Hennepin Avenue, Mike Evangelist; wedding scene, National Archives; skaters at Izzy-Dorry’s Rink, New Ulm, National Archives; station wagon, Becky Larson Stromberg; Casey Jones of Lunch with Casey, Gary McDonald

Back cover: Wedge Co-op, 1979, Minnesota Historical Society; AIM protestors, Dick Bancroft; Alderman Walter Dziedzic, Minnesota Historical Society, Star Tribune Photo Collection; ERA button, Minnesota Historical Society

International Standard Book Number

ISBN: 978-0-87351-893-2 (paper)

ISBN: 978-0-87351-900-7 (e-book)

Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kenney, Dave, 1961–

Minnesota in the 70s / Dave Kenney, Thomas Saylor.

pages cm

Summary: Minnesota forged an identity during the 1970s that would persist, rightly or wrongly, for decades to come. It was a place of note and consequence—a state of presidential candidates, grassroots activism, civic engagement, environmental awareness, and Mary Tyler Moore. All these subjects and more are covered in this book.—Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-87351-893-2 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-87351-900-7 (ebook)

1. Minnesota—History—20th century. 2. Minnesota—Social conditions—20th century. 3. Minnesota—Politics and government—1951-I. Saylor, Thomas, 1958–II. Title. III. Title: Minnesota in the seventies.

F610.K46 2013

977.6′053—dc23

2013024568

This and other Minnesota Historical Society Press books are available from popular e-book vendors.

For all those who, like us, are trying to

make sense of what this decade meant.

Contents

Introduction

1 Veer Left

2 People Power

3 Grand Plans

4 Cultural Oasis

5 Earth Days

6 Weary and Worried

7 Down to Business

8 The Sporting Life

9 Back to School

10 Veer Right

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

MINNESOTA IN THE ’70s

Introduction

MENTION THE 1970S TO AMERICANS old enough to have lived through that time, and their responses may be about Watergate and the end of US involvement in Vietnam, inflation and gas shortages, even polyester leisure suits and Saturday Night Fever. By contrast, the 1960s often evoke images of the Kennedy years, the civil rights movement, campus protests, even the first moon landing: a society moving, striving, achieving. And for many the 1980s are linked to Ronald Reagan and a conservative revival, an economic upswing, tax cuts, and a religious awakening.

Caught in the middle, the 1970s are at times portrayed merely as the decade after the 1960s, or the decade before the 1980s, lacking any real definition of their own beyond superficial (disco), silly (pet rocks), or self absorbed (the narcissistic me decade).

But like the 1977 blockbuster film Saturday Night Fever, a closer look at the 1970s reveals more than just years stranded in the middle, squeezed by higher-profile periods on either side. The film of course leaves viewers with enduring images of Tony Manero (John Travolta) in the disco and on the streets of Brooklyn, and the sounds of the Bee Gees. But the film also reveals what historian Bruce J. Schulman calls a far more serious, and darker, portrait of American life in the era of malaise. Tony Manero deals with, and feels trapped by, some of the challenges facing American society during the 1970s: ethnic conflict, urban decay, and dead-end jobs.¹

So too with the decade itself: behind the simple images were years of profound challenge and change.

The 1970s were above all a time of economic transformation. Americans felt the impacts of stagflation, simultaneous inflation and unemployment, and an oil embargo. Aging industries, especially manufacturing, were buffeted by the twin storms of an interest rate spike and the higher energy prices brought on by the oil crisis. Numerous businesses closed, others downsized or relocated; millions of men and women lost their jobs. And if they found new ones, wages typically were lower. New industries, for example those linked to high tech or computers, couldn’t make up the difference.²

Politically, voters veered from one party and position to another in a futile search for solutions. America witnessed four presidents—Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan (elected in 1980)—in less than seven years. But confidence in elected leaders, shaken by Watergate, remained at a low ebb.³

And Americans proved willing to challenge more than just their political leaders. They called accepted beliefs into question, including marriage and family, race and sexuality, and the role of religion. Individuals and groups alike concerned themselves with the environment, took a hard look at how their actions impacted the world around them, and demanded change. Also, taking a page from the 1960s book of campus protest and the civil rights movement, others, including women, American Indians, the gay community, and farm workers, showed themselves willing to stand up and demand their rights. Equally important, a broad cross section of Americans rode this wave of activism and addressed new issues like taxation, publicly funded construction projects, busing, and abortion rights.

RECENT YEARS HAVE SEEN AN INCREASE in scholarly and popular attention to the 1970s and its importance to American society. Cultural and economic historians, both on the Left and the Right, have begun to present their interpretations of the period. Among the more insightful and significant are Bruce J. Schulman’s The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics; Thomas Borstelmann’s The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality; David Frum’s How We Got Here: The 70s, The Decade That Brought You Modern Life—for Better or Worse; and Judith Stein’s Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies. While these authors may disagree with each other’s findings, sometimes sharply, they do share one opinion: this was a decade that mattered.⁴

Minnesota in the ’70s is conceived of as a modest addition to this literature, one voice in a larger dialogue. But this book does more than just contribute to a national debate. Despite an expanding national literature, there is a surprising dearth of works on the state during this formative decade, even though the state underwent important and far-reaching changes. This volume works to fill this gap in the literature on Minnesota during this period.

But having arrived at the decision to tell the story of Minnesota in the 1970s, we encountered several questions. First, just when did the 1970s begin and end? After all, the concept of a decade is too neat; historical trends frequently spill over their assigned starting and ending dates. Historians writing about the national scene provided us with some ideas. Bruce Schulman, for example, argues that 1968 marked the end of one decade and the start of another, while another historian, Laura Kalman, identifies 1975 as the starting date and links her interpretation to the 1974 resignation of Richard Nixon. Most others fall somewhere in between.⁵

For Minnesota, we believe the decade of the 1970s began in 1971 with the adoption of the so-called Minnesota Miracle. This broad-based agreement on taxation and spending represented a new political coalition, one that remained in place until much later in the decade. At the other end, we believe the decade came to a close with the elections of November 1978, when leading Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFL) politicians were turned out of office and Republicans returned armed with a new agenda of social issues and tax policies. Bookend style, the first and last chapters of this volume examine the events of 1971 and 1978, respectively.

A second consideration we faced was how best to tell the story of Minnesota during the 1970s. It’s a tall challenge to tell the story of a state and its people during an entire decade. Seeing a chronological format as too wooden, we selected a thematic and narrative approach. Accordingly, each of the book’s ten chapters has a single narrative spine, one story that we feel represents larger forces at work. This approach allowed us to focus on the personal dimension and humanize larger trends and movements.

As we read, researched, and talked with Minnesotans who lived through the decade, several interpretive themes emerged as most important: activism and protest; transformation; and environmentalism. We believe these ideas combined to illuminate the most significant developments, personalities, and actions.

The stories we present in Minnesota in the ’70s follow this thematic approach. In addition to the two chapters dealing with the political changes of 1971 and 1978, for example, we use food and food shopping to examine how the state’s economy was transformed, and visit rural southwestern Minnesota to explain the upheavals in small towns and farming communities.

By tracing the actions and impacts of the American Indian Movement, we show how citizens stood up and demanded their rights, and argue that protest had become mainstream with the story of Aitkin County’s resistance to the surreal Minnesota Experimental City.

Other chapters explore school desegregation battles in the Twin Cities; the lengthy and vocal debate on the downtown Minneapolis stadium that became the Metrodome; the rise to prominence of the music industry; and the environmental impact of taconite mining in northeastern Minnesota.

But recognizing the complexity of issues, and the multitude of actors and actions, we included a number of brief descriptive pieces that reminisce and add context to each chapter. Some of these people, places, and events we expect will be familiar to readers; we think others should be.

Other authors might construct the story of Minnesota in the 1970s very differently, and we accept that. In fact, we welcome future works on the subject that complement this volume, or even that take issue with its conclusions or our way of telling the story. By offering a closer look at the 1970s, we hope this book provokes discussion and contributes to a better understanding of the history of our state and the people who made it.

1. VEER LEFT

Minnesota’s 1971 DFL congressional delegation, minus Hubert Humphrey (L–R): Representatives John Blatnik, Bob Bergland, Don Fraser, and Joe Karth and Senator Walter Mondale. Minnesota Historical Society, Walter F. Mondale Papers.

AS THE 1970S DAWNED, Republican Richard M. Nixon occupied the White House. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, and the midterm elections that year didn’t change this constellation. In Minnesota’s congressional delegation, Democrats claimed four of eight House seats in November 1970, up from three, and the party had both Senate seats. Vietnam continued to be the nation’s leading topic.

But in Minnesota’s state elections that year, the primary issue was taxes. With a bold but politically risky proposal concerning taxation and education spending, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendell Anderson advanced the tax question to the forefront. Despite a promise of higher taxes, voters still elected Anderson. His subsequent negotiations in 1971 with the Republican-controlled legislature produced a bipartisan compromise that increased various taxes and fundamentally reconfigured education spending, placing it under state direction—key elements of what became known as the Minnesota Miracle and effective examples of public policy success in Minnesota.

Anderson’s leadership and the Minnesota Miracle both played significant roles in the DFL’s historic victory at the polls in November 1972. For the first time, the party won majorities in both houses of the legislature (and this in spite of President Nixon’s landslide reelection). In addition, the 1972 election sent six women to St. Paul, two Republicans and four Democrats, more than ever before and significant first gains of the women’s movement (see page 12). More would follow.

Governor Anderson used the new DFL majorities to advance a strong liberal agenda. Over the next few years, the DFL legislature increased spending on education and other programs; passed tough environmental laws; enacted partial public financing of political campaigns; addressed unionization rights for public employees; and ratified the federal Equal Rights Amendment. Minnesota appeared to be a state that worked—a successful governor who achieved compromise in the state legislature and citizens that willingly paid higher taxes to fund social programs and various reforms.

In fact, Minnesota worked so well, or appeared to, that it attracted the attention of Time magazine, arguably the leading national news magazine of the day. The lead article on Minnesota’s groundbreaking public policy and the accompanying cover photo of Governor Anderson that appeared in August 1973 seemed visual confirmation that this party and this approach to governing were here to stay. The Republicans’ choice not to include any women on their ticket for statewide offices at their 1974 state convention in Duluth confirmed for many Minnesotans that the GOP simply was out of touch, a party of the past (see page 19). The popular Anderson was reelected in November 1974 by a huge margin.

But there were dark clouds too. The 1972 Democratic platform included several very liberal planks that hinted at possible splits in the party: amnesty for Vietnam War draft evaders, possible legalization of marijuana, and gay rights looked to be contentious issues. In the latter half of the decade, Republicans would rebound more quickly than most pundits had predicted, armed with new ideas—among them aggressive tax reform—and, equally importantly, the DFL would badly compromise itself in the eyes of many voters and experience major losses at the polls. But that is a story for a later chapter.

The story we tell here is one of success: how Minnesota and the country at large understood an apparently successful model of bipartisan agreement. Everyone, it seemed, was enamored of a solution to the vexing question of taxes.

FISH STORY

THE DFL PRECINCT CAUCUSES scheduled for the evening of February 22, 1972, promised to be lively if not downright chaotic affairs. Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy were at it again, running for president along with two Senate colleagues, Edmund Muskie of Maine and George McGovern of South Dakota. (The other Democratic candidates, including segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace, were considered bit players in Minnesota.) The stakes were high. The Democrats knew they needed a strong candidate if they were going to defeat incumbent president Richard Nixon in November. With two favorite sons in the running, the caucuses in Minnesota were getting plenty of national attention.

Two-year-old Beth Anderson steals the spotlight at a postelection news conference featuring her father, Minnesota Governor-elect Wendell Anderson, and US Senator-elect Hubert Humphrey, 1970. Dave Kenney Collection.

The match-up of would-be presidents was not, however, the only factor making the caucuses so intriguing. This was the first time that Minnesotans had caucused since the voting age was lowered to eighteen in 1971. The DFL had been actively recruiting young voters in advance of the general election and it expected a big turnout of first-timers. The Republicans had recruited young voters too but, as the party associated with Nixon and the Vietnam War, they were not expected to do well with the younger demographic. The DFL caucuses were also the first to operate under the party’s new proportional delegate selection rules. Party leaders had designed the new system to ensure better representation of minority viewpoints, but the process was cumbersome and confusing. No one could predict how people would react. With the Humphrey-McCarthy rivalry revived, an influx of young, idealistic, and newly enfranchised voters eager to make their voices heard, and an untested system for choosing delegates, DFL leaders braced themselves for the possibility that their caucuses would devolve into political free-for-alls.

They needn’t have worried.

Young voters showed up in large numbers for the 1972 DFL caucuses. Minnesota Historical Society, Star Tribune Photo Collection.

Although some precincts reported turnouts two to three times greater than those of 1968, most caucus-goers—including the large numbers of young people who were attending for the first time—were usually on their best behavior. Liberals favoring antiwar candidates like McCarthy and McGovern often banded together under a peace coalition banner, but generally did not try to shut out their more conservative counterparts who tended to support Humphrey and Muskie. Many precincts, especially those with a high concentration of college students, experienced a surge of excitement provided by the arrival of highly motivated kids, but the generation gap between younger and older DFLers produced few confrontations. In most instances…the young and the older people got along well, the Minneapolis Star reported. More than a few eighteen- to twenty-year-olds were elected delegates to their county conventions. The new proportional delegate selection rules, which ensured that blocs of voters favoring certain candidates or policy positions would be represented, seemed to work well enough.¹

Watching the proceedings from the vantage of two particularly well-behaved precincts in Minneapolis was Greg Wierzynski, a correspondent with Time magazine. Wierzynski had come to the Twin Cities to get a firsthand look at Minnesota democracy in action, and what he saw impressed him. As Time’s bureau chief in Chicago, he had grown accustomed to hard-edged, big-city machine politics. The high level of civil discourse on display at his chosen Minneapolis precincts was, in comparison, a revelation. He was charmed. I was struck by the civility of it all when it was over and the votes had been counted, he said. Everybody walked out of the room and were—maybe not happy—but certainly very civil toward one another and tolerant of one another’s viewpoints.²

On the flight back to Chicago, Wierzynski experienced an epiphany: Time should run a cover story on Minnesota. It just struck me that this state was very worth a story, he said. This was a place that was working.³

The idea did not require a hard sell. Time’s editor in chief, Hedley Donovan, was a Minnesota native who took an early interest in the proposal and checked in frequently with Wierzynski as he crafted his piece. Let’s put it this way, Wierzynski explained with a laugh years later. It got very high level supervision. The story, as it developed over the next sixteen months, would cover many of the state’s most familiar bragging points: its good schools; its concentration of Fortune 500 businesses; its thriving arts scene; its wide variety of outdoor activities. But more than anything else, the article would focus on the state’s politics and government. Minnesota’s leaders had recently overcome deep partisan divisions to enact a series of laws known collectively as the Minnesota Miracle. The powers-that-were at Time wanted their readers to ask themselves whether Minnesota’s accomplishments in the public policy arena might not be worth emulating elsewhere. As they already knew, the Minnesota Miracle had its roots in a groundbreaking policy proposal put forward two years earlier during the state’s 1970 gubernatorial campaign, and owed its success largely to the young Democratic politician Wendell Anderson who won that election.⁴

THE DEMOCRATIC FARMER LABOR PARTY had messed up in recent elections. Four years earlier, in 1966, DFLers had turned against Karl Rolvaag, a sitting governor from their own party, and refused to endorse him for reelection. A nasty primary campaign followed, and the resulting intraparty feud helped to ensure that a Republican, Harold LeVander, won the general election. In 1968, the DFL’s disintegration accelerated when the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination came down to a pair of Minnesotans: Vice President Hubert Humphrey and US Senator Eugene McCarthy. DFLers had no alternative but to choose sides in the Humphrey-McCarthy rivalry, and the wounds inflicted during the ensuing internecine political strife healed slowly. Now, as the party headed into the 1970 fall campaign, its recent history of dysfunction haunted Democratic dreams and raised the likelihood of additional failures.

Not that the party’s prospects were completely dim. McCarthy had decided to retire from the Senate, and Humphrey, Minnesota’s most gifted vote-getter, was running for the open seat. Democrats told themselves that any ticket with Hubert at the top promised a decent chance of success, but the rest of the DFLers on the ballot fell short of Humphrey’s stature. No one knew whether the Happy Warrior’s coattails were long and sturdy enough to drag the rest of the party to victory.

Wendell Anderson campaign poster, 1970. Minnesota Historical Society Collections.

The DFL was placing most of its hopes for the future on its candidate for governor, Wendell Anderson, a likeable, photogenic, but not particularly accomplished state senator from St. Paul’s East Side. The former high school, college, and Olympic hockey star had won the DFL endorsement by fighting off a spirited challenge from one of his state senate colleagues, Nick Coleman, also of St. Paul. But the party’s liberal activists, many of whom preferred Coleman, remained suspicious of Anderson. They weren’t sure the party’s nominee was truly a committed progressive. They certainly didn’t see him as a savior capable of ushering in a new era of liberalism in Minnesota. But like their opponents on the Republican side, they underestimated Anderson’s determination and ability to lead a DFL renaissance. They made fun of him because he was a hockey player, his chief campaign strategist, David Lebedoff, recalled years later. But he was smart, incredibly smart.⁵

And as Anderson soon figured out, the smart issue in the fall of 1970 was not the Vietnam War or women’s rights or any of the other liberal preoccupations of the party’s left wing. It was taxes.

And not just any taxes—property taxes.

WENDELL ANDERSON AND DAVID LEBEDOFF spent much of the first day of October preparing for a debate that evening against Anderson’s Republican opponent, state attorney general Douglas Head. Now, as Anderson and Lebedoff drove toward the Hotel St. Paul, where the showdown was to take place, the candidate suggested that they make a quick stop at the home of one of his legislative colleagues, Karl Grittner, a state senator and junior high school principal who was known around the capitol as an expert on education policy. Anderson wanted Grittner’s advice on how to handle a question that was almost certain to come up during the debate.

A good-government think tank called the Minnesota Citizens League, which was hosting the event, had recently issued a report recommending sweeping changes in the way the state funded education. The report’s core argument, buried in pages of wonkish prose, sounded deceptively simple: The locally-collected property tax for schools, it contended, should be replaced by state-collected taxes. As the Citizens League saw it, the current funding system, which relied heavily on local property taxes, produced gross inequities in the quality of education: property-rich communities could tax their residents at low rates and still give their kids a high-quality education, while less wealthy communities were forced to levy high tax rates for less-than-adequate schools. The time had come, the league concluded, to equalize education funding by shifting the tax burden from the local level to the state level.

Anderson and Lebedoff dropped in on Grittner unannounced and got quickly to the point. What, Anderson asked, did Grittner think of the Citizens League’s education funding proposal? Grittner responded that he thought the idea made sense from a policy perspective. Politically, though, it was nitroglycerin.

Maybe you should stay away from the subject, he suggested.

Anderson thanked Grittner for his advice and promised to consider it carefully. During the drive into downtown St. Paul, Anderson and Lebedoff continued to weigh the risks and advantages of supporting such a fundamental reworking of the tax code at this late stage in the campaign. Lebedoff counseled caution. Anderson remained noncommittal.

By the time the subject came up during the debate, Anderson had made up his mind. He had concluded, he told the assembled crowd, that the Citizens League was right: Minnesota needed to redesign its education funding system to rely less on local property taxes and more on state-collected revenue sources, although he wasn’t sure yet what those sources might be. He did not say so publicly, but he had decided to reject Karl Grittner’s counsel and instead fully embrace a politically perilous idea.⁶

Douglas Head smiled as he listened to his DFL opponent explain and justify his position. By Head’s reckoning, Anderson had just committed a major political gaffe that would turn the election. The Democrat had, in essence, promised to raise taxes in order to carry out a radical experiment in education policy. (The part about lowering property taxes could be conveniently ignored.) Head was certain that the voters of Minnesota would reject Anderson’s embrace of the Citizens League report and turn to the Republican side for refuge. When asked where he stood on the proposal, the attorney general stated flatly that he opposed it.

In the month that followed the debate, taxes emerged as the defining issue of the campaign. Head derided Anderson as Spendy Wendy, claiming that his opponent’s proposal would undermine local control over education and lead to an immediate increase in real estate taxes. The Republican candidate for attorney general, Robert Forsythe, resorted to even more colorful language, alleging that Anderson was proposing to hang a massive bag of cement around the neck of the average Minnesota taxpayer. Anderson insisted that, on the contrary, he wanted to lower property taxes while shifting the education financing burden to other sources such as excise taxes and income taxes. He accused candidate Head of trying to mislead the voting public. They are losing and they know it, he said of the Republicans. They’re getting desperate. The Anderson campaign produced a series of television spots in which the candidate stood in front of his humble boyhood home on St. Paul’s East Side and declared his solidarity with the state’s middle-class and working-class voters. Why, he asked, looking straight into the camera, would he raise taxes on his own neighbors?⁷

The strategy worked. In the November election, Anderson easily defeated Head with 54 percent of the vote. To the surprise of many political analysts, Minnesota’s electorate had chosen a candidate who promised to raise state taxes appreciably. The DFL and its liberal policies were back in favor. Minneapolis Star political reporter Ted Smebakken speculated that Anderson’s victory would stabilize a party that has fallen prey repeatedly to destructive infighting in recent years. The Minneapolis Tribune’s editorial page predicted that the DFL’s resurgence would last a decade. And an ebullient Hubert Humphrey, who won the 1970 US Senate race in a landslide, considered the election a turning point of monumental proportions. It represented, in his words, the rebirth of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party.⁸

ANDERSON INTERPRETED THE 1970 election results as a mandate for progressive change. The voters "recognized that the Republican Party