President wannabes’ ‘different’ visits

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With the Gopher State’s day in the presidential campaign spotlight coming up March 1, we may see a new round of visits from a field of candidates that is in many respects what Minnesotans politely call “different.” Among them:

• Bernie Sanders is a self-described democratic socialist who only recently moved from merely caucusing with his Democratic colleagues in the U.S. Senate to seeking the party’s nomination for president — and at a minimum giving the seemingly inevitable nominee, Hillary Clinton, a serious scare from the left.
• Donald J. Trump continues to lead among Republican contenders, defying the party’s establishment and the legions of pundits who have been predicting his downfall for more than half a year, all the while basking in the free media his personality and colorful (some say demagogic) statements earn him.

Sanders has made repeated trips to Minnesota, including last week when he and Hillary Clinton headlined the DFL’s annual Humphrey-Mondale dinner as well as several oversubscribed rallies. But as unconventional as aspects of Sanders’ campaign may be, they can’t touch Trump for outrageousness. A Trump rally would likely prove the high water mark for the campaign season’s circus atmosphere in Minnesota.

But as unprecedented as this year’s campaign season seems, the state has not been a stranger to visits from unusual presidential candidates over the decades.

Two such hopefuls who made the trip to the Land of 10,000 Lakes were Robert La Follette and George Wallace. As told in local newspapers, the story of their campaign stops in Minnesota, as well as one by Communist Party candidate Earl Browder, show the bar is high for 2016 when it comes to visits from “different” presidential candidates.

‘Fighting Bob’ La Follette

While Sanders and Clinton parry over who has the greater claim to the title of “progressive,” neither can hold a candle to “Fighting Bob” La Follette, who served as Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator from Wisconsin. He was the standard-bearer for his Progressive Party in 1924, bringing his presidential campaign to Minnesota late in the season in hopes of swinging a neighboring state his way and throwing the election to the House of Representatives.

“LAFOLLETTE SLURS COOLIDGE,” screamed the banner headline across the front page of the Minneapolis Morning Tribune on Friday, Oct. 17, 1924. At a ticket price of a dollar a head, people had packed the Minneapolis Armory (the castle-like edifice on the University of Minnesota campus) to hear Fighting Bob. If they came to hear him launch a fresh attack on President Calvin Coolidge, they were not disappointed.

“Sarcasm, innuendo, ridicule — he employed them all in his barrage,” the Tribune reported. “Apparently the Wisconsin Senator had selected Minneapolis as the point where he should make his offensive upon Calvin Coolidge.”

The spectators also saw former Minnesota Gov. John Lind, a Democrat, endorse La Follette’s effort, as well as Floyd B. Olson, in the midst of his own Farmer-Labor Party campaign for governor. “The cry of ‘Socialism’ was poo-pooed by Mr. Olson,” the Tribune said.

But it was all for naught, in the newspaper’s estimation: “So far as the Armory crowd was concerned, Senator La Follette didn’t gain a single vote. The crowd was unanimous for him from the start. At $1 apiece the Armory didn’t fill with a rush and as time rolled along there was still room. Before La Follette arrived the doors were thrown open and the outside throng came in, standing in the rear.”

On Nov. 4, 1924, La Follette garnered almost 400,000 votes in Minnesota, 41 percent of the ballots cast. Coolidge got more than 420,000 votes in Minnesota and took all 12 of the state’s electoral votes. La Follette carried only his home state.

George Wallace

In the midst of his own third party presidential bid in 1968, George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama, came to Minnesota as part of an effort to get on the state’s ballot as the American Independent Party candidate.

It was the day before Independence Day when Wallace’s plane touched down at Wold-Chamberlain Airport in St. Paul. There he held a “lengthy” press conference, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported, vowing to steal more votes from home-state favorite Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey than Republican rival Richard Nixon in November.

Wallace got the 2,000 petition signatures he needed for a place on the ballot. But that wasn’t all he came for, according to press reports.

Wallace “expected trouble when he came to Minneapolis Wednesday,” the Minneapolis Star reported. “He got it. Fist fights broke out in Minneapolis Convention Hall before he spoke and about 30 policemen used nightsticks and Mace … to control the disorder. Wallace was shouted down by chants of ‘Wallace Go Home’ and ‘Sieg Heil.’”

Minneapolis Mayor Art Naftalin issued Wallace a public apology for “this inexcusable discourtesy.”

Wallace went on to get nearly 69,000 votes in Minnesota, or 4 percent, to Humphrey’s 858,000 and Nixon’s 659,000. It was among Wallace’s worst showings.

Earl Browder

Communist Party presidential nominee Earl Browder didn’t even get as far securing his preferred hall for a campaign stop in the Twin Cities in 1936.

The Minneapolis City Council’s committee on public grounds and buildings voted unanimously to deny him use of the Minneapolis Auditorium in August.

One newspaper editorial took aldermen to task: “If the refusal of the city council to rent the auditorium to Communist Earl Browder could be charged to aldermanic stupidity, the circumstance would hardly be sufficiently unusual to merit any consideration. Councils are proverbially stupid. But the matter is worse than stupidity; it involves cool, calm cynicism, for every member of that august body knows that this refusal does more to further Browder’s rantings against democracy than any speech he can make.”

Browder ended up delivering an address at Fish Lake that was carried on WTCN radio. He got only 79,000 votes nationwide. Minneapolis-based Gus Hall, chairman of the Communist Party USA, would run for president under the party’s banner four times from 1972 to 1984.

Donald J. Trump

If Trump does come this year, he’ll have his own 2000 toe-in-the-water Minnesota visit to top. Hosted by Gov. Jesse Ventura as a potential Reform Party presidential candidate, Trump tossed off one insult to the field after another. Of the Republican Party hopefuls, according to the Star Tribune, Trump said, “Are these people stiffs of what? I could take 90 percent of the people in this room and they’d be more capable. It’s pathetic.”

Trump abandoned his bid during a Valentine’s Day appearance on the “Today” show in the wake of Ventura’s break with the Reform Party — probably among Minnesota’s biggest roles in the campaigns of “different” presidential candidates.