Word: rolvaag
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...career may well be ended, but she could have been weeping for Minnesota Democrats too. The once-proud party of Hubert Humphrey, created in 1944 when he merged Democrats and Farm-Laborites into the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party, had been humiliated by one of its own, Governor Karl F. Rolvaag. Rolvaag, dumped by the party organization, decided to run for a second term anyway, and clobbered Keith in the September 13 primary by a margin of more than two to one to become the now-chastened Democrats' candidate for Governor. The blow to party prestige was compounded that night...
Minnesota politics has slithered into the national press twice this year -- in June when the DFL convention refused to renominate Rolvaag, endorsing instead his Lieutenant Governor, Keith, and three months later when Rolvaag won the primary so decisively. Actually neither event was in the least surprising at the time it occurred...
What shocked almost everyone, however, was the Governor's decision to take on his own party leaders. Rolvaag was on a plane to Cincinnati well before the convention officially rejected him. After a Governors' conference there he retreated to Florida, apparently a defeated old man licking his wounds far from the secene of his humiliation. Vice President Humphrey, the party's titular leader, publicly advised him not to run against Keith, and it seemed inevitable that Rolvaag, a faithful D.F.L. drone for 18 years, would abide by the party's decision...
...weeks later Rolvaag was back in Minnesota, a declared candidate and almost instantly a sure winner. He had a simple but ultimately devastating slogan -- "Let the people decide." The usually accurate Minnesota Poll, operated by the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, showed in late July that the party rank-in-file would decide in favor of Rolvaag by a margin of more than 20 per cent...
...conventional explanation DFL-ers gave for jettisoning Rolvaag was his "bad image." The governor unquestionably appears dour, remote, and uninspiring to the public. His face looks terrible on television, and he is a nervous public speaker who mumbles choppy, barely coherent answers when grilled on panel shows...