Politics changed over the decades...

Hubert Humphrey

Written by Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune/Saturday, 8-20-22

Well, here we go again, headlong into another election season. There’s no holding it back, I’m afraid, although I’d just as soon.

I spent the final 25 years or so of my active career in journalism at this newspaper participating in interviews with politicians/candidates for the paper’s editorial endorsements. It was interesting work most of the time. Of course we met with both Republicans and Democrats and the occasional Independent, like Gov. Jesse Ventura, whose demeanor could only be described as gruff. Always.

 

I liked most of them on both sides of the aisle, and won’t be taking sides here, just recounting some memories of those days and adding thoughts on the system.

 

I had some favorites who showed up for these interviews. Among Republicans, I particularly liked former U.S. Sen. David Durenberger. Very cheerful guy. Of course among Democrats there was Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich, always affable and open. He was sometimes called “governor goofy” and he didn’t seem to mind. It was, as they say, the secret of his charm. His successor, Republican Arne Carlson, was always good humored, sometimes borderline giddy.

 

I filled out a small lunch table one time with Hubert Humphrey when he was a senator. He was perpetually “on” and had a reputation for always remembering people’s names. I was never sure, though, that he remembered mine, even after several contacts. Always got a Christmas card though.

 

Of course former vice president and ex-U.S. Sen. Walter Mondale was an occasional, affable, guest at the newspaper. He came once as vice president and they shut down First Street in front of our building and spread the Secret Service around the office glaring at everybody.

 

Can’t forget U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar who served our area in Congress for so long, following his predecessor John A. Blatnik. We saw a lot of Oberstar, who was an erudite policy wonk if there ever was one — always friendly, always “on” too. One time meeting with him in a restaurant with two of my female colleagues, he arrived late and kissed the women on the cheek. I told him if he kissed me, “I’m moving to Canada.” He loved it.

 

There are so many others, great and not-so. One of the greats was Sen. Paul Wellstone who visited many times. He knocked off Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, much to Boschwitz’s surprise, and distinguished himself as an outspoken liberal voice before he was killed in an Iron Range plane crash. He had an appointment to meet with us later that same day that was left unfulfilled. Instead he had an appointment in Samarra.

 

Oh, but I go on. The list includes local politicians too — Duluth mayors, city councilors, county commissioners and legislators from this area. Lately I’ve been thinking about the time young Dave Tomassoni of Chisholm came in and said he was going to run for the Minnesota Legislature. He did. He won a House seat and later won a Senate seat. He died a little over week ago, leaving an outstanding legacy of public service. 

 

One local official years ago opened our interview with the confession that he had gone back to his wife after an affair, wrongly assuming that we knew about it and that we paid heed to politicians’ personal lives. We don’t unless they drive drunk or shoot somebody and a couple of other offenses.

 

With all that contact, you notice certain traits that many of the successful politicians — local and national — have in common. For example, a few seldom use the first person pronoun, always referring to themselves as “we.” I suppose they’re referring to their staffs or supporters or maybe their pets. “We” covers a lot of ground, we believe.

 

Invariably they “roll up their sleeves” to tackle any project, before putting their “shoulder to the wheel” and working 24-7 at all times to serve the “hard-working” people in their districts. Constituents are invariably “hard working” Minnesotans or Americans or whatever. Nobody’s lazy, I guess.

 

The higher-ups exude patriotism at all times, the men unfailingly sporting American flag pins on suit lapels. They are seldom photographed without an actual American flag nearby and describe all military veterans and active armed services personnel as “heroes” and “brave.” Some are, of course, but everyone in uniform? I served years ago but never felt I qualified as either.

 

But those who get elected, especially to Congress, love it. Oh, House members have to run for re-election every two years. What a bummer that is — the possibility of losing a six-figure salary, sizable office staff in Washington kowtowing to their every whim, free parking at the Washington airports while regularly flying back home at no personal cost. Oh, then there’s a big travel budget and that lavish House gym, To keep all that all they have to do is vote the way their party leaders tell them and risk losing it all in elections.

 

And here we are, another election looming. Things in politics have changed since those olden days I describe here. A lot. While competition in politics has always been fierce, back then at least it was usually polite, even respectful. There was the “loyal opposition” and challengers would be called “worthy” opponents.

 

Seems like there’s a lot of outright hatred in politics these days. More’s the pity. You can figure out for yourself who’s to blame.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Plenty of presidential visits here in the past...

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune, October 3, 2020

Before President Trump’s visit to Duluth earlier this week, this newspaper ran a story about how popular Duluth has become in election years for visits from high-profile candidates and their family members.

 

The story recounted how his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, was also here a little over a week ago, that Donald Trump Jr. showed up and Vice President Mike Pence and Ivanka Trump recently made a joint appearance here in support of the incumbent.

 

I’m sure you recall all that very recent history even if you’re only half paying attention. But the story sparked in me recollections of previous visits to Duluth by high-profile candidates, quite a few of whom I saw either as a civilian or a journalist, and one as a member of the Army National Guard.

 

Truman in Duluth, 1948

So today I thought I’d recall some of those in the past starting — believe it or not — with President Harry S. Truman in 1948. Truman, as vice president, had become chief executive upon the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, but was facing the electorate for the first time in his bid to remain in the highest office in the land.

 

He toured large swaths of the country by train during that successful campaign and eventually the Truman campaign train showed up in Superior, his starting off point in the Head of the Lakes for a visit by car across the bay to Duluth on a sunny autumn day. That’s when I saw him.

 

I was in fourth grade at Lincoln Elementary that fall and we were told by our teacher that anyone who wanted to be let out of school in the early afternoon to see the president should bring a note and we could be released.

 

I took the bus downtown with my mother and we stood at First Avenue East and Superior Street when Truman was driven by seated on the back of a top-down convertible, waving at the throngs — yes, that’s the proper word — that lined Superior Street along the route.

 

A bunch of teenagers on top of the building across the street were hollering “phooey on Dewey” as a smiling “Give ‘em Hell Harry” slowly rolled by. Truman’s Republican opponent was Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York making his second run for the presidency, having been defeated by ailing Roosevelt in 1944.

 

Eisenhower, Duluth MN 1952

Truman was the first president I saw in person but not the last, by far. He was succeeded by former Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower who was elected in 1952 after a campaign that also included a visit to Duluth. I just caught a fleeting glimpse of him as he was driven a block from our house en route to the airport after appearances downtown.

 

I knew the route he was to take so I waited for the entourage to come, and there was Ike in the back seat of a hard-top Cadillac limo, waving out a side window to people lining the avenue, his famous grin intact. I had actually seen him once before, still in uniform, being escorted around the Minnesota State Fair just after World War II. (Yeah, I’m that old.)

 

Our next president, John F. Kennedy, had campaigned in the area in 1960 but he also showed up in Duluth as president in September 1963 when he was gearing up for his run for a second term in 1964. I’ve written about this before in columns, but, briefly, I was a member of a Duluth-based Army National Guard unit that was activated for the visit of our commander in chief.

 

We were lining Superior Street but I was ordered to the entrance to Hotel Duluth along with about a dozen other troopers to hold back crowds as Kennedy entered the hotel, where he would stay the night. The unexpected duty got me within a few feet of the smiling Kennedy after he alighted from the Lincoln limo he would be riding in two months later when he was assassinated in Dallas.

 

Onward. In 1964, Republican presidential candidate Sen. Barry Goldwater’s vice presidential running mate, U.S. Rep. William E. Miller, showed up in Duluth that fall, spending most of his few hours here on the UMD campus. By then I was a newspaper reporter and part of the team covering him. Goldwater was soundly defeated by Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s vice president who had taken over when Kennedy was murdered. Miller disappeared into the mists of history.

 

Minnesota’s own Hubert H. Humphrey, Johnson’s vice presidential pick, visited us numerous times throughout his lengthy political career as a U.S. senator. He got the Democratic nomination for president in 1968 but lost to Richard Nixon, who had campaigned here when he faced Kennedy in 1960 but I never saw him. 

 

Also in 1968, Alabama Gov. George Wallace, running for president on the third party American Independent ticket as a segregationist, showed up in the Duluth Arena, drawing a huge crowd. I was seated with others in the media slightly behind the stage and noticed Wallace’s lectern was huge and thick, large enough for a speaker to duck into if shots were fired. That didn’t happen here, of course, but he later was shot and lived the rest of his life as a paraplegic. 

 

Humphrey returned to the Senate after losing the election, continuing his long-time association with the Head of the Lakes. I had lunch with him one of those times, and he always sent a Christmas card.

 

In 1976, following Nixon’s impeachment in1974, his vice president and successor, Gerald Ford, was the Republican selected to face Gov. Jimmy Carter of Georgia in the race for the White House. Carter won. He showed up here in 1978 campaigning for Democrats in the mid-term elections. He spoke in Symphony Hall on a stage lined with Democratic candidates from Minnesota and Wisconsin, most of whom lost that year. I didn’t meet him, but sat with the press in a front row where I noticed grease spots on his trousers. It’s always hard to eat on airplanes.

 

Carter lost to Ronald Reagan two years later. I’m not aware that Reagan ever graced the Northland, but his 1984 opponent, Vice President Walter Mondale, certainly had, and did. I’d met him before but he visited us at the News Tribune on one trip to Duluth during that campaign. He was over confident in light of the way things turned out.

 

The next sitting president to show up was Bill Clinton, half way through his second term, to campaign for Democrats. He spoke at UMD, where I was in the audience with other press people. I didn’t meet him but he made quite a splash here, even going for a run on Skyline Drive.

 

In 2004 Republican President George W. Bush appeared before an enthusiastic crowd in the Duluth Arena. I was there with other media members. We were corralled as far from the president as possible, in keeping with presidents’ lack of affinity with the press. His wife, Laura, campaigned here too, at Bayfront Park. They won.

 

Which brings us to the present. I will never count Trump among the presidents and candidates I’ve actually seen while campaigning in Duluth. When he was here on Wednesday I had to see a man about a horse.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Duluth News Tribune 150th Anniversary: Lots of memories from a long newspaper career...

DNT press room, 1972: Then city editor Jim Heffernan is second from right
along with staff members and journalism interns.
 

By Jim Heffernan

I had to miss the gathering at Glensheen marking the 150th anniversary of the first publication of the paper that became the Duluth News Tribune. I would have liked to have attended, since I spent nearly a third of those 150 years —my entire career — in various news room positions at that newspaper and its sister, the former evening Duluth Herald.

Some people might regard local newspapers outside of the larger metropolitan areas as the backwater of journalism, and in some ways they are. But for most of my journalistic career Duluth was the third-largest city in Minnesota. It could not be ignored by politicians and other leaders, nor was it ignored by the entertainment industry, including visits by Elvis Presley (more on that later) and other top-name entertainers.

I had a varied career at the Duluth papers, as a general assignment reporter (which means you walk into work every day not knowing what you’re going to cover), beat reporter (education, city government, politics), city editor, arts/entertainment editor-writer and finally on the editorial page convincing half of the readers we were a Republican rag and the other half a Democratic diatribe. During much of that time I was also a general columnist. 

For being in the so-called backwater of newspapering, you meet or cover a lot of people from every field of endeavor, some well known, others ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, and still others in the most dire of circumstances, victims of fatal traffic accidents, drownings, murder. You name it.

Looking back on it all, I think I enjoyed my first job the most — general assignment reporter. It meant working nights and being available for anything deemed newsworthy by the city editor. In those days the paper’s circulation covered the territory from Ironwood, Mich., to International Falls, and everything in between in the upper, upper Midwest, including Duluth, Superior and the Iron Ranges (there were two, Mesabe and Gogebic).

So a lot can be happening that’s newsworthy on any given day that, as a general assignment reporter, you might be assigned to cover. I have many memories of that period, some of which might resonate today. Mainly, you meet a lot of people you wouldn’t have met if you’d gone into some other line of work — some of them quite noteworthy.

One Saturday in the 1960s, for example, I was told to go over to Hotel Duluth and cover a press conference for Walter Mondale on the weekend it was announced he had been appointed to the U.S. Senate by Gov. Karl Rolvaag, also in attendance. Mondale had been Minnesota attorney general and would succeed Hubert Humphrey in the Senate because Humphrey had been selected as President Lyndon Johnson’s vice presidential running mate. Humphrey, of course, showed up many times over the years. I had a working lunch with him one noontime in the old Duluth Athletic Club, and always got a Christmas card from him and Muriel.

Mondale came back 20 years later, as vice president, for an interview with the editorial board on which I sat. Quite a few more miles on him since that Saturday in Hotel Duluth in 1964. He was running for president against Ronald Reagan, who, to my knowledge, never came to Duluth.

Then there are those days when, from out of the blue, you become involved in an unfolding story linking someone from around here to national headlines. The most vivid of those in my memory was the time the Associated Press reported that a U.S. military member from Superior had been arrested in Europe for treason, charged with passing American secrets to the Russians. It was the height of the Cold War.

Hmmm. Nobody around here knew the man’s name (I still recall it but won’t use it), so I and our Superior reporter, Richard L. “Scoop” Pomeroy, began looking for anything about him in Superior. We found his picture in a high school yearbook in the public library, went on a couple of hunches Pomeroy had, knowing Superior like the back of his hand, and ended up finding the alleged traitor’s elderly mother scrubbing the floor in a Tower Avenue cafe after hours.

Somehow we got in, and Pomeroy approached her, asking if she was so-and-sos mother. Yes, she was. Did she know her son had been charged with betraying the country? No she did not, and her reaction was what might be expected. Such a sad scene, it is vivid in my memory 50-plus years later. The other side of general assignment reporting.

Eddie Rickenbacker
WWI Ace & race car driver

You meet a lot of famous, or formerly famous, people in this backwater. One noon I had a hasty interview with Eddie Rickenbacker, who had been one of the most famous Americans of the 20th century, a war hero and race-car driver. Here to address a service club, I cornered him in advance to ask what he was going to say because I couldn’t stay for the meeting. “Get out of the U.N.” the conservative ex-hero growled.

Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong also showed up here in the ‘60s to do a show at Denfeld Auditorium (this was before the DECC was built) and I was sent over to Hotel Duluth (so much happened in that hotel) to interview the famed jazzman. He was so uncooperative I couldn’t get a story out of him (we were in his suite where he was dining on pork chops and vanilla ice cream). Thanks Satchmo.

Over at the Radisson Hotel a few years later I had lunch with a much more cooperative luminary, actor Gregory Peck, best recalled today as the man who personified Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Looking back, I might have been talking to Atticus himself, Peck was so warm and reasoned. He invited me to visit him and his wife in Los Angeles. I promised I would but went back on my word.

Nobody knows who Dimitri Nabakov was, but his father Vlaidmir Nabokov is pretty well known to the well read. The younger Nabokov was in Duluth to perform with the Symphony as a baritone soloist in some oratorio. I spent part of an afternoon with him in my office at the paper, me wanting to talk about his father, the “Lolita” author, and he plugging the oratorio. Nice guy, though. And not a bad singing voice.

In my active years at the paper, I met or interviewed every Minnesota governor, every U.S. Senator, two congressmen from this area (that’s all there were in my active years), all Duluth mayors, Superior mayors and other Wisconsin political leaders (I’m talking about you Alvin O’Konski) and a whole host of personages too numerous to mention who had their moments in the sun, and have now faded. Among Minnesota governors, Rudy Perpich was the most fun and Jesse Venture the most intimidating. He refused to tell me his real name when asked. (It’s James Janos.)

Paul Wellstone showed up about once a year before and during his tenure in the U.S. Senate, always deeply concerned about the downtrodden. He had an appointment to meet with us in the afternoon a few hours after he died in a plane crash on the Range.

The sun still shines, sort of, on Elvis Presley, who came here twice in the last year of his short life. I stood face to face with him in the Radisson lower parking lot on one of those occasions but couldn’t get him to say a word. Alighting from a Cadillac limo, he just stood and smirked until somebody opened a nearby service door and away he went, taking some of the final steps of his storied career.

You get into courthouses quite often when you are a reporter. I covered the trial of a prominent Duluth insurance executive who had bludgeoned his wife and who, upon being declared guilty, folded into the fetal position in the lap of his attorney, moaning. Not a pretty sight; one you remember. It was said years later, after serving prison time, that he had his cremated ashes dumped from a plane on the St. Louis County Courthouse. None landed on me but I was across the street at the paper.

Another time I was sitting in the back of a courtroom just to rest on a hot afternoon when they drew a guilty plea for shoplifting from a local doctor who had treated me as a child. It made me feel terrible.

There can be action, too, at times in the work life of a reporter. I remember driving a press car through the bumpy backroads of the broadcast tower farm atop Duluth’s hill in pursuit of a confused moose so our photographer, riding shotgun, could get a photo. He got the photo; I got a memory of just another day on the job as a general assignment reporter. 

Of course, every day wasn’t exciting or even interesting. You do a lot of drudge work in newsrooms too. Before the paper turned obituaries over to the advertising department, reporters wrote them. I have sent hundreds to their rewards after a final mention in their local paper, including my own parents. Pretty soon I think I’ll write my own, just to stay in practice.

Regular news reporters also helped the sportswriters when the Friday night lights were beaming down on football fields across the Northland. I know almost nothing about sports, but managed to put together passable accounts of games described on the phone by excited or disappointed coaches enlisted to call us. My one foray into sportswriting.

Well, this is getting long. I’ve got to say, though, that sometimes I think I’d like to go down to the paper again, find my old newsroom desk, crank a sheet of paper into a mechanical typewriter, set the margins, and start banging away on some story…any story.

But wait. “What’s a typewriter, Grandpa?”

I hope that child’s child doesn’t have to ask “What’s a newspaper?”

A degree of separation from Elizabeth Taylor not close enough...

By Jim Heffernan 

I often think of things in terms of degrees of separation – from me – when famous people are in the news. Geraldine Farraro dies; well, I have met Walter Mondale many times, she was his running mate, therefore, while I had never met her, I’m one degree of separation away.

Spending a lifetime in journalism, even in Duluth, offers the opportunity to meet a lot of prominent people, mainly in politics and the arts, as they inevitably find their way to Duluth at some point in their careers. I met quite a few in my years as a newspaper reporter and, for a decade, entertainment writer.

I’ll cite just two examples of people so well known and internationally connected that through them you can be one degree of separation from just about everybody worth being a degree of separation from. I had lunch with the late actor Gregory Peck when he passed through Duluth in the 1970s, opening the door for one-degree separation from just about everybody prominent in Hollywood going back to the 1930s.

And, as with just about every journalist in Minnesota and the country, meeting Hubert Humphrey opened the door to a degree of separation from anybody who’s anybody in American politics in the last half of the 20th century. The same is true of Mondale, of course.

Then there’s Elizabeth Taylor, who died last week. I am a degree of separation from her, probably through Gregory Peck, but more closely through a friend of mine who entertained her at his home, and whose wife felt threatened by the actress’ attentions to my friend.

Such was the power of Elizabeth Taylor.

The contact took place in the 1980s when Taylor was married to U.S. Sen. John Warner of Virginia. My friend was president of a private college in that state, and, with his wife, hosted the senator and his wife – Taylor -- at a dinner in the college president’s residence on campus.

The Warners were charming, of course, according to my friend. Everyone was charming, you’d expect. But my friend’s wife, when recounting the story of the visit, was clearly irritated by Taylor’s attentions to my friend. She described how Taylor took my friend’s arm and walked closely with him as they moved into the dining room, and other attentions Taylor seemed to be paying him, in spite of the fact that Taylor’s husband, the senator, was right there.

It wasn’t serious flirtation, of course, and probably the way Taylor acted one-on-one with everyone she engaged with socially. But what amused me about hearing the scene described was that I’d always thought that my friend somewhat resembled Richard Burton, one of Taylor’s previous husbands. Not a shocking resemblance, but a suggestion. They simply looked somewhat alike – to me at least.

Did Taylor think so too? Who knows? Nothing more came of it, of course, other than an interesting conversation with my friends over gin and tonics.

Oh yes, and it assured me one degree of separation from Elizabeth Taylor. Not close enough, but it’ll have to do.