March of the Governors, Governor #26
Edward John Thye
(Series Podcast #28)

Edward John Thye (1896-1969) was called Minnesota’s “farmer-governor,” and aptly so. He was born on a farm in South Dakota, grew up on a farm near Northfield, maintained his own Dakota County farm during his political career, concentrated on farm issues during his twelve years in the US Senate, and retired to the farm when his political career ended. Thye was the son of Norwegian immigrants, served in France during World War I, sold tractors, farmed, and got into politics through his friend Harold Stassen, who appointed him assistant commissioner of agriculture in 1939. Stassen then effectively chose Thye to succeed him when he left the governorship for the Navy in 1943. Thye finished Stassen’s term, won election easily in 1944, then moved on to the Senate in 1946. Eugene McCarthy defeated him in 1958.

Paul Nelson, with host Ken Peterson

March of the Governors – Harold Stassen, Governor #25
Podcast #27
Harold Stassen, Minnesota’s twenty-fifth governor, is among our most intriguing. He sprang to national attention as the state’s “Boy Governor,” elected in 1938 at the age of thirty-one. Stassen was very popular in his over four years as governor because of success with the legislature and in administering state government. He went on to be a US Navy commander in WWII; one of eight US delegates to the 1945 UN Charter Assembly; a top presidential candidate in 1948; president of the University of Pennsylvania; and a member of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s cabinet. Stassen also is credited by many with leading and inspiring a long line of progressive leaders in Minnesota’s Republican Party. 

Today, however, Stassen is sometimes remembered not for his political accomplishments but for the many unsuccessful runs for political office in his last three decades. As a result, Stassen has become a joke to some political observers instead of the multitalented politician and public policy thinker that he was.

March of the Governors
Podcast #26
The Farmer-Labor Party
Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party was the most successful third party in American history. Between 1930 and 1938, the party far outpaced both traditional parties in vote-getting, including successfully electing three Farmer-Labor governors. For this special episode, we assembled a panel of historians to reflect on the terms of Floyd Olson, Hjalmar Peterson, and Elmer Benson and this unique interlude in Minnesota political history.

March of the Governors, Governor #24
Elmer Austin Benson
(Series Podcast #25)

We are unlikely to see a politician like Elmer Benson ever again. The small-town, left-wing banker served briefly as a US Senator before becoming governor. He was a genuine political radical who advocated replacing capitalism in Minnesota with a "cooperative commonwealth." The first time he ran for governor of Minnesota in 1936, he won by a landslide. The next time, in 1938, he lost by a landslide. In between, he battled with the legislature, filled state jobs with Farmer-Labor party workers, and once endorsed an occupation of the state senate chambers by Farmer-Laborites demanding action. Benson lived a long life (1895-1985) and never repented of anything. 

March of the Governors, Governor #23: Hjalmar Petersen
(Series Podcast #24)

Hjalmar Petersen (1890-1968) holds many distinctions as a governor of Minnesota: our only Dane, our only Hjalmar, our last immigrant (so far), our only governor from Askov (so far), and the one who served the shortest term (four months.) He served two terms in the legislature, one term as lieutenant governor, and eighteen years as a warehouse and railroad commissioner. He ran for governor four more times—three with the Farmer-Labor Party, one as a Republican. His political career began in 1930 and ended in 1967. He became governor in August 1936 upon the death of Floyd B. Olson. Passed over as Farmer-Labor candidate for governor in the primaries later that year, Petersen nurtured a grudge against the party for years to come. In 1938, he nearly upset Governor Elmer Benson in a primary. He tried again in 1942 and 1946. In 1956, he managed Estes Kefauver’s Minnesota presidential primary win over Adlai Stevenson. He served once more on the railroad and warehouse commission from 1955 to 1967.

March of the Governors, Governor #22
Floyd Bjornstjerne Olson
(Series Podcast #23)

By age thirty, Floyd Bjornstjerne Olson (1891-1936) had been a shabbos goy, a college dropout, a stevedore, and a Wobbly. By age forty, he had served ten years as Hennepin County attorney. In the next five years, he would become one of Minnesota’s most successful politicians – its first Farmer-Labor governor (elected three times), a powerful speaker, the force behind legislation to support suffering farmers and workers during the Depression, and the only Minnesota governor ever to proclaim, “I am a radical.” He toyed with the idea of leading a national Farmer-Labor Party and took aim at a seat in the US Senate in 1936. But it was not to be: Pancreatic cancer took him in his prime at age forty-four. 

March of the Governors, Governor #21
Theodore Christianson
(Series Podcast #22)

Theodore Christianson (1883-1948) was a farm boy from Lac Qui Parle County and a progressive Republican who proved eminently successful as a vote-getter and as a government reformer. He was the first man elected governor three times, knocking off three successful Farmer-Labor politicians—Floyd B. Olson (1924), Magnus Johnson (1926), and Ernest Lundeen (1928). In times of crisis in farm country, he declined direct help to farmers, choosing instead to concentrate on small, efficient state government. Farmers rewarded him with their votes. Before becoming governor, he ran a newspaper in Dawson, Minnesota. After his terms, he worked for trade associations in Chicago and wrote a five-volume history of Minnesota.

March of the Governors, Governor #20
Jacob A. O. Preus
(Series Podcast #21)

By age forty-one, Jacob A. O. Preus had been Minnesota's insurance commissioner and state auditor and had served two successful terms as governor (1921-1925). On his watch, the Minnesota Republican Party enacted a considerable program of progressive legislation. But the long crisis in farm country and the rise of the Farmer-Labor Party brought him down. Now, decisively defeated by Magnus Johnson for the US Senate, Preus was finished with politics. However, he was far from done piling up accomplishments. He had a long and successful second career in insurance and is the only person in Minnesota history to serve as governor AND found a Fortune 500 company—in his case, Lutheran Brotherhood, now Thrivent, based in Minneapolis.

March of the Governors, Governor #19
Joseph Alfred Arner Burnquist
(Series Podcast #20)

Joseph Alfred Arner Burnquist (1879-1961), born in Dayton, Iowa, was destined for leadership from an early age. A star student and orator at Carleton, he was in the legislature at age twenty-eight, lieutenant governor at thirty-one, and governor at thirty-six. He led, or at least presided over, Minnesota’s infamous Public Safety Commission, the author of the worst World War I-era state-sponsored repression in the United States. The voters then turned against him, and he was out of office and seemingly out of politics at age forty-one. However, he returned eighteen years later to serve four terms as Minnesota’s attorney general.

March of the Governors, Governor #18
Winfield Scott Hammond
(Series Podcast #19)

Winfield Scott Hammond (1863-1915) was Minnesota’s eighteenth governor and the last of only four from the Democratic Party (decades before, by merger, it became the DFL.) He was the first unmarried governor and the man who served the shortest time in office. Hammond was also our first Ivy League governor (Dartmouth, class of 1884) and one of several with deep New England roots: two of his forebears fought at Lexington and Concord. A Democrat in deep Republican country, the studious Hammond proved an excellent vote-getter, elected to Congress in 1906. He enjoyed that job but was lured back to Minnesota by a Democratic Party desperate for a plausible gubernatorial candidate. He defeated Republican William Lee in 1914 and died during a visit to Louisiana eleven months later.