PARTISAN POLITICS

Looking back . . .
Was nonpartisan Legislature an accident?


For 60 years, Minnesota was a party-pooper.

Although DFLers and IRs in the Legislature today often are at
loggerheads over politically charged issues, from 1913 until 1973
the House of Representatives and the Senate were -- at least on
paper -- devoid of partisanship.

Riding a national wave of political reform in the early 1900s,
the Legislature in 1913 enacted a law calling for all state
legislators and county elected officials to run on nonpartisan
tickets. 

That meant the 104 Republican, 20 Democratic, one Public
Ownership (the name for the Socialist Party in Minnesota), and
one Prohibition Party members serving in 1913 became generic
representatives in the House.

The process leading to the nonpartisan Legislature, however, was
not entirely driven by a desire to clean up state government. In
fact, it could be argued that the shift to a nonpartisan
Legislature happened by accident.

In 1912, the Legislature stripped the state courts and elected
officers of cities of the "first class" of their party
designations. 

During the 1913 Session, Sen. Julius E. Haycraft of Madelia, a
progressive Republican, introduced a bill to extend the
nonpartisan election law to all judges and city and county
officials. But in an attempt to kill the bill by making it
unpalatable, a group led by Senator A.J. Rockne, a conservative
Republican from Goodhue County, amended the bill to include the
Legislature.

Approved by the Senate, the bill was sent to the House, where
Senate opponents were sure the measure would die. But to their
surprise, the House approved it. 

For all the wrong reasons, the bill became a flashpoint for
anti-prohibition, anti-Socialist, and other forces in the House,
according to Charles R. Adrian, who wrote about the origins of
the nonpartisan system in a 1952 edition of the magazine,
Minnesota  History.

Because the Legislature was controlled by conservative, "dry"
Republicans, the liquor and brewery industry saw the nonpartisan
bill as a way to break the grip of the anti-"wet" forces and
derail efforts to bring prohibition to Minnesota.

And because the bill also called for only the top two
vote-getters to emerge out of a primary election, urban
legislators concerned about the rise of the Socialist Party saw
the proposed law as a way to squelch the left.

Other reasons for approving the bill also were offered but,
according to Adrian, "The Minnesota legislature had become
nonpartisan without a single word of debate on the merits of the
question."

The nonpartisan system had its champions as well as its
detractors, but it only applied to elections. In the Legislature,
members quickly split up into their political caucuses. By the
early 1970s, before the Legislature returned to partisan
elections, members organized themselves into Conservative and
Liberal caucuses. The media often would add further coloring to a
member's political stance, for example, reporting that a
representative or senator was a "Liberal-DFLer."

By late 1972, amidst calls for greater openness in state
government, the push for election reform became strong. Hailing
the proposed changes, the Worthington Daily Globe said in an
editorial, "After six decades of masquerade, hypocrisy and sham,
lawmakers in Minnesota will be required to show their political
stripes." Complaints about the nonpartisan system focused on the
inability of voters to learn the political shading of their
representatives.

But many people argued that the Minnesota experiment had proven
itself. "Non-party legislators are not as vulnerable to defeat on
each occasion when voters change the political party in control
of the state offices or the national administration," wrote
former state Sen. Daniel S. Feidt of Minneapolis in a pamphlet he
published in 1957.

Some Conservatives saw the push for a "label law" as a way for
the new Liberal majority in the Legislature to gain a firmer
foothold in state government.

Regardless, in 1973 a bill was passed returning the Legislature
to partisan elections.

Today, only Nebraska, which adopted its law in 1934, elects its
legislators from a nonpartisan ballot. 

--Andris Straumanis



Originally printed in 1992 in the Session Weekly, a weekly
newsmagazine published by the Minnesota House Public Information
Office.

***Last Update 8/5/94 (jtt) Last Review 8/5/94 (jtt) ***