Interview with Former Governor Elmer L. Andersen Interviewed by Mark E. Haidet Minnesota Historical Society Interviewed on February 9, 1978 in Governor Andersen's St. Paul office MEH: In a previous interview [August and September 1975] on your governorship, Joanne Baldwin recorded your recollections of the political problems that you encountered during your administration and your impression of the Highway 35 charges. Before proceeding with the discussion of your recollections of the recount and your involvement in the 1966 gubernatorial contest, I would like to ask a few additional questions on these topics. AndersenFirst of all, what was your impression of then Lieutenant-governor Karl Rolvaag and what type of relationship existed between the two of you? L. ELA: Well, I thought well of Karl Rolvaag as a person. I did then and always have; I think he's a very decent man. We knew he had a personal problem then, as he has continued to have, which most recently has led to his leaving the Public Service Commission.ElmerSociety I guess any relation we had at that time was one kind of lacking of much relationship. I don't recall that our paths crossed very much. I certainly didn't think of relying on him for anything and he didn't interfere with me. He just was standing by as the lieutenant-governor.with I had also served in the Senate when he had been lieutenant-governor and the presiding officer of the Senate and always thought he presided very well over the Senate. So, I had no ill will toward him. I didn't rely on him and didn't expect anything of him. Historical MEH: Today, the governor and the lieutenant-governor are elected on the same ticket, but how did you feel about that at the time wheninterview you were working with the... ELA: It really doesn't matter much because the lieutenant-governor as a state official is a nonentity. I mean there is just nothing that he can do or is required to do. He can be helpful to the governor if he chooses.history So,Minnesota I suppose there's some slight advantage in having them both of the same party. For example, had they [Wendell Anderson and Rudy Perpich] not been, I guess Mr. Perpich wouldn't be governor now because if the governor and lieutenant-governor were of differentOral parties, the governor could hardly become a senator and then let a person from the opposition party become governor.1 1In December 1976, Wendell Anderson resigned as governor. Lieutenant-governor Rudy Perpich was then elevated to the office of governor. Perpich then appointed Anderson to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Walter Mondale upon his election to the vice-presidency. 1 From a practical standpoint, the main function of the lieutenant-governor is to preside over the Senate. That's all he does. Then he only presides over the Senate when it is sitting as the Senate and not when it's sitting as a committee of the whole. So, it's a very limited...I'd say it's about the choicest spot in state government today because it absolutely pays the most for the least amount of work. I suppose there's some slight advantage in having both of those offices in the same party, but I don't see that it's made much difference since that became the law than what had been the case before. I'm not aware of any significant differences, really. MEH: What was your campaign strategy prior to the Highway 35 issue and what effect did that issue have upon your strategy? ELA: Well, I was very much involved in the business of being governor and didn't really have a campaign strategy. I was just trying to be a good governor. I relied on performance resulting in support and, I guess, that was just about it. I just went about the work of the governorship and traveled very extensively; I appeared everywhere. So, I guess the strategyAndersen was to try and get everywhere I could and do as well as I could and hope that the people would appreciate it. L. I guess I put priority on good government function, one might say, to a fault. I know one issue that I'm sure hurt me that would illustrate that. Our highway commissioner came in one day with a proposal of how we could have more money for highways. He suggested that we close up a lot of unneeded snow plow garages around the state that wereElmer obsolete.Society In the old days they needed a plow in about every little community because the range of the plows was quite limited. Almost every town had a little highway garage and a family or two that lived in the town as a result. As time had gone on and bigger equipment was developed,with the garages were located in centers that might be 50 or 100 miles apart. But they never got around to closing these little garages because it was such a sensitive thing in every little town; it meant a couple of families and a couple of jobs. But I told our highway commissioner to go aheadHistorical and close them if we didn't need them. That really became such an issue in so many little communities that felt they were struggling for survival. The fact that it was money that might better be spent for highways didn't really count that much. The good government interviewissue was lost as against the provincial issue of a small town wanting to keep a garage and a couple of jobs. As I say, we may have tried to do too much. I know that on that particular issue we alienated many people who felt that we should have let those garages stay where they were. historyMinnesota When the highway thing2 came along that...They had concocted this scheme and had been trying to get somebody to use it. They had been to different radio stations and to different papers and nobody would,Oral as they said then, touch the story because it wasn't true; there was nothing wrong with the highways. But they had to get somebody to break the story. They finally did in Washington. Either through Humphrey's office or Blatnik's office, they got a Minneapolis newspaper man of national prominence to print this alleged charge. That kind of created the issue. 2 Refers to the controversy surrounding the construction of Interstate 35. 2 My main concern and what really upset me was not so much what it might do to my campaign chances, but what it was doing to the state of Minnesota. There was some pretty serious charges being made which, if true, could hold up funds for Minnesota. In fact, they charged that Minnesota was about to lose funds, and this led me to believe that they must have a way of shutting them off. The Secretary of Commerce at that time was a man named Luther Hodges, a fine Democrat from North Carolina whom I had known through Rotary activity--he had been an international president of Rotary and I had been active in Rotary. So I called him up and alerted him to the fact that somebody might try to get him to sign a paper denying or holding up funds to Minnesota based on this alleged scandal. I said: "All I ask of you, Luther, is don't sign it on somebody else's say so." There were Minnesotans in the department at that time who were part of this whole scheme and I knew they were up to no good. But I thought I knew Hodges well enough to know that, if he were alerted, he'd watch for it. And sure enough, he told me sometime later that that attempt was made, he caught it, and that when he checked, he found that there was no basis for it. So he didn't sign it. So the worst that they were charging didn't come off. But enough came off to have made enough of a difference to enough people to have changed the outcome of the election.Andersen As to how it changed the strategy of the campaign, there wasn't much time to change anything because this thing was sprung just a few days before the election. When charges are madeL. all one can do is refute them and in this case there wasn't time to get the refutation until right after the election. Of course, the whole thing was dropped; there was nothing to it. So, it was a Watergate style, dirty trick that worked. But, as I say, the whole thing that concerned me the most then, and still does to some degree, was that people would jeopardize the whole state'sElmer welfareSociety in order to win an election. That I thought was a pretty despicable thing--to besmirch the whole state of Minnesota and to put it in deep trouble on an important program. The highway program at that time was moving at a high speed and the curtailment of funds or the holdingwith up of funds was a big, big, serious thing. But my strategy didn't change a great deal because the campaign was almost over at that point. MEH: Can you recall how you felt on election nightHistorical as the returns were coming in? ELA: Not too specifically. Sure, I was certainly disappointed. It was clear that it was going to be a close election.