Nasty election finally over...

Written By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune/11-12-22

Well, it’s over. The election, that is. Heaven knows it was the election from hell.

At this writing I don’t know who won what. Newspaper feature deadlines are such that this is being written too early in the week to know all the outcomes of Tuesday’s election. Besides, many races weren’t expected to be decided until much later in the week — like today.

 

So we likely all know the results by now (as this is being read) and I’m happy for you if things went the way you had hoped, and sorry if they didn’t. The way this election went down, though, was disgusting.

 

I spent the bulk of my journalism career associated in one way or another with politics at every level. Because of this I’ve met every high-level politician from Minnesota (and to some extent Wisconsin) from the early 1960s through the early years of this century. That’s all the governors, the U.S. senators and Congress members from this part of the state together with state lawmakers from around here. And also many of their challengers who hoped to defeat them. Oh, throw in mayors, city councilors, county board members — the whole kit and caboodle. But I never interviewed a candidate for dogcatcher, more’s the shame.

 

This is not boasting; it comes with the territory of some aspects of newspaper work.

 

And I have to say, this has been the nastiest election I have ever seen, including during all the years I was active in covering them, or writing stories and editorial opinions on candidates.

 

Will I take sides here? No. Campaigning, one party’s as bad as the other today. You wince at those ubiquitous television ads, showing candidates in dark tones and describing all of the terrible things they have done and will do both in their personal and public lives. They are the scum of the earth, the ads convey.

 

Jeez, who wants to be that mean? The political parties do, that’s who. It’s called negative campaigning, and it works.

 

In past elections, candidates often were referred to as “worthy opponents” and “the loyal opposition.” That is history. Instead we have ominous voices telling us on TV that if elected so-and-so will destroy our country (or state or congressional district, or state legislative districts).

 

In contrast, over the years, in conversing with myriad politicians and their challengers I generally found them to be pretty nice people. They harbored their own ideologies, of course, and proudly stated them, but they stuck to the issues of the day. I don’t recall any of them harshly knocking their opponents in a personal way like they did in this campaign. The best ones were way above that.

 

And while I might have had my own ideological opinions in meeting with those whose political views I knew were opposed to mine, it didn’t affect our cordial contact at all.

 

On the personal level, I liked both Democrats and Republicans, some better than others. I suppose among Minnesota governors, my favorite was the late Rudy Perpich. He could make any contact cordial while also espousing knowledgeable policy positions. And he was very common in his demeanor.

 

One time in a group dining with him in a restaurant, he insisted his security guard (a uniformed state trooper) be seated with the rest of us. After leaving office the first time (he served as Minnesota governor twice) he worked in Croatia, the homeland of his parents. I had the occasion to mention him in a humorous way in a column (he WAS known as “Governor Goofy” recall) and he called me from Croatia to good-naturedly rib me about what I’d written. It was when the Balkans were in upheaval, and I thought I could hear gunfire in the background.

 

Perpich was a Democrat. How about a Republican? Former U.S. Sen. David Durenberger was an affable interviewee who seemed intent on doing good for Minnesotans more than promoting ideological precepts of his party. And like Perpich, he openly displayed a light-hearted side of his personality. Unlike so many politicians, especially today’s, he knew how to laugh.

 

One time during a dinner meeting I mentioned a line I’d heard pointing out that then President Ronald Reagan was “older than Yugoslavia.” Loyal Republican Durenberger burst out in uproarious laughter at that thought. It was true: Reagan was born in 1911 and Yugoslavia wasn’t formed as a Balkan nation until after World War I. Both Reagan and Yugoslavia are now history. Durenberger, 88, is still with us.

 

But enough wonking around. I only have room here to cite these two politicians who led in a time before politics got as nasty as it has become. Of course political opponents resented one another, and REALLY resented those who challenged them at election time, but it usually didn’t show.

 

Elderly people (among whom I must ruefully now count myself) often espouse a fondness for the “old days” by longing for the “way things used to be.” I usually don’t subscribe to that, but I hope we can return to those days election-wise, before I get around to finally interviewing candidates for dogcatcher.

 

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.

Voting just isn't what it once was...

Written by Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune on November 14, 2020 

Well, the election is all over but the shouting (for joy) or the pouting (out of disappointment), but it’s over in either case. What a relief.

 

These columns are written a few days before they are published, so a lot of things might still up in the air, but it looks like Biden’s the one. Fine with me, maybe not fine with you. But this is America, don’t forget. Majority rules in a Democracy.

 

For the first time in my voting life, I voted by mail this year. COVID19 precautions, of course. It’s the first time in a startlingly long time that I didn’t go to a polling place to cast my ballot. Here’s a hint about how long: I voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960. Do the numbers.

 

Thinking so much this year about this wildly contested election, I found myself recalling how the process of actually casting a ballot has changed here in Duluth. Today, if you don’t mail it in, you go to the polling place, sign your name, they hand you a paper ballot and steer you to a little desk with a black pen and you mark your choices with little black dots.

 

The ranks of those of us who remember how the actual act of voting took place in the long past are thinning, but it was different, and perhaps someone should record it for the sake of history.  So here goes.

 

In Duluth (rural areas still used ballot boxes), the city provided what were called voting machines. They were stored in a warehouse in West Duluth and hauled out each election and placed in precincts across town. Some precincts that drew lots of voters would get two or more machines.

The gray machines were shaped like a refrigerator but somewhat taller. When open, the cloth curtains, about three feet long from top to bottom, were apart to allow the voter to enter. Upon entering, the voter would grasp a lever and pull the curtain shut.

 

Inside, with her back to the curtain, a voter would be faced with a dashboard, about chest high, with little levers to pull down beneath the names of each candidate. Click, click, click, you’d go, and your vote would be registered somewhere inside this large machine, There was a small slot with a paper scroll inside for write-ins of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck or some other candidate who would never win — but in some cases should have. When you were done, you would turn, grasp the lever and part the curtain again.

 

The act of parting the curtain triggered the little levers you had pulled town to cast your ballot, clicking them back up for the next person to register their votes on the dashboard. When exiting the machine by parting the curtain, it always surprised me that voters waiting their turn did not applaud, like a theater curtain call, but it never happened.

 

After the polls closed, election judges at each precinct would check the numbers recorded inside the machines and tabulate the vote, finally determining the totals for each candidate or issue on the ballot. The results would be called in to headquarters (usually the county auditor or, in city elections, the city clerk). And that was it.

 

The next day, when the election had ended, workers would visit each precinct, load the machine or machines on a truck and haul them back to the West Duluth warehouse, their important tabulations still inside. I need hardly point out this was a monumental furniture-moving job, with each machine weighing — this is a guess — perhaps several hundred pounds.

 

That was not it. The election night tabulations were not the official count. The votes had to be canvassed. A few days later, various officials, named to a canvassing board, would visit the West Duluth warehouse and check the numbers on each machine. When that was completed, the official count was declared.

 

That was it. A huge logistical and complex operation.

 

But you know what? As a voter you really felt that you had participated in something big, something important, and you had.

 

I never feel like that today, especially this election when I marked up a mail-in ballot and dropped it off at an official spot, like mailing a letter. Nowadays, even showing up at a polling place on election day and voting by marking dots with a pen on the ballot and feeding it into the slot of an anemic-looking little receiver just doesn’t have the gravitas that voting used to instill. At least in me.

 

Of course, I’m a geezer, so the old ways almost always seem like the best ways. But some things never change, and it’s consoling to see that Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are still showing up in elections regardless of drastic changes in the process. Sometimes they’re the best choice.

 

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.