Connect with us

Star Tribune

Former Minnesota Gov. Al Quie dies at age 99

Avatar

Published

on


Al Quie, who represented southern Minnesota in Congress for 20 years before returning home at the end of his political career to serve one term as governor, died Friday. He was 99.

Remembered for his stoic Norwegian demeanor and deep Lutheran faith, Quie died at his home in Wayzata. “He was surrounded by family and we are thankful for the last few days we all were able to say goodbye,” Quie’s son Joel said.

Quie was a third-generation dairy farmer and lifelong Republican who, once in office, never lost an election over more than two decades. He rose from small-town politics to become a powerful congressman and, near the end of his career in elected office, ousted an incumbent DFL governor in an election that came to be known as the Minnesota Massacre.

At the time, the sweeping defeat of the state’s Democratic leadership was seen — accurately, it turned out — as a bellwether for the 1980 general election and the Reagan years.

But Quie represented a party and a political era that became a distant memory later in his life. He worked across the aisle throughout his career, focusing particularly on agriculture and education, and was able to win over Republican and Democratic voters — a knack that made him an appealing gubernatorial candidate post-Watergate.

“He was the guy with broad appeal,” said Chuck Slocum, a former political adviser. “People that knew him liked him, and people that knew him trusted him.”

Through it all, Quie maintained a humble faith that informed every part of his life. During his 1978 run for governor, he balked at reports that he believed God had called him to run and that he flaunted his faith on the campaign trail.

“I know he wants me to serve him, whatever I do,” Quie said at the time. “But I don’t like the whole idea of God magically telling me what to do. That’s not the way God works in my life.”

Early life

Albert Harold Quie was born Sept. 18, 1923, on a farm in Rice County’s Wheeling Township, the third of four children born to Albert Knute and Nettie (Jacobson) Quie. He grew up riding horses and playing pranks with his brother, Paul. When they were small, they’d milk the same cow — one brother on each side, because neither could reach far enough.

Like many men of his generation, Quie fought in World War II, enlisting in the U.S. Navy in 1943. Knowing that he would be flying planes in the Pacific war theater, farther from home than he’d ever been, he turned to God.

“I looked at myself as a person who was kind of timid,” Quie said in an interview in March 2022, at age 98. “And I thought about that and prayed about it — that I was not going to be timid. I’ll dive right in.”

After the war, Al and Paul alternated attending school so that one of them could stay on the farm and help their father, who lost an arm in a 1947 farming accident.

At St. Olaf College, Al Quie made a splash on campus “when he flew an airplane upside down, at third-floor dormitory level, tumbling books from their shelves and pictures from their walls,” the New York Times wrote in 1967.

It was at St. Olaf that Quie met Gretchen Hansen, a young art student who, more than seven decades later, he could still remember seeing for the first time as she walked across campus. They married June 5, 1948, and settled on the family farm, becoming the third generation of Norwegian dairy farmers to work the land.

Political beginnings

Within years, Quie found his way into politics. He’d led the St. Olaf College Republicans, and went on to clerk for the local school board and serve on the Rice County Soil Conservation District. In 1954, Quie won a seat in the Legislature — something his Norwegian-born grandfather, Knute Finseth, had done nearly a century before.

But Quie didn’t finish the term. After Republican U.S. Rep. August Andresen died in office while representing Minnesota’s First Congressional District, those who knew Quie urged him to run for the seat.

“It wasn’t necessarily my dad’s idea but he was encouraged by friends and then the local Republican members saying, ‘Hey, Al, you would be an ideal candidate. Why don’t you think about doing that?’ ” Joel Quie said.

Al Quie — then 34 years old and a father of four — defeated Democrat Eugene Foley in the February 1958 special election by just 655 votes. The Minneapolis Star attributed a strong DFL showing in the rural district to disenchantment with Republican policies — including farm policies.

And yet Quie, both a Republican and a farmer, held onto his victory through recount efforts. News photos showed him grinning before a herd of cattle with his toddler sons and standing in the family’s old cow barn, squinting into the sun.

“He said during the campaign that the rich black earth and rolling contours of the farm, homesteaded 102 years ago by his grandfather, Halvor, a native of Norway, ‘is in my blood; I love it,’ ” the Minneapolis Tribune wrote.

At the end of 1958, the family left the 240-acre farm for Washington, D.C., and stayed for nearly 20 years. It was a period when members of Congress lived in the D.C. metro area most of the year and commuted back to their districts together, creating a sense of camaraderie.

“In the recess, those of us who would be east of North Dakota would drive home,” Quie said. “That’s what got us visiting very intimately with each other about politics.”

Quie served in Congress until 1978. It was four years after President Richard Nixon’s resignation, and Republicans across the country were in trouble. With his track record of winning over Democrats and his straight-edged reputation, the congressman was an appealing antidote.

One-term governor

As a young man, Quie realized that he had a knack for persuasion and building trust. Early on, he felt guilty that he hadn’t felt a call to use his talents as a member of the clergy. But the words of St. Olaf College President Clemens Granskou when Quie was in his early 20s — “Albert, there is no place where we need Christians more than in politics” — helped assuage that guilt, and continued to influence him decades later in his decision to run for governor.

After a lot of soul-searching about abandoning the clout he’d built in Congress, Quie took on DFL Gov. Rudy Perpich and won with 53% of the vote. Quie attributed his victory to DFLers’ attempts to obscure a legislative audit of the Upper Great Lakes Regional Commission — and that he confronted Perpich about the cover-up during a televised debate.

Also helpful for Republicans was the fact that, two years prior, highly popular DFL Gov. Wendell Anderson had appointed himself to fill Walter Mondale’s Senate seat after Mondale became vice president. Anderson’s move, seen as self-serving, left a bad taste in voters’ mouths.

“All the stars aligned where, OK, there’s enough of a conflict here on the Democratic side that it might be an opportune time for some GOP candidates to come in,” said Joel Quie, who worked on his father’s 1978 campaign.

But it was a rocky four years. Quie faced criticism early on for establishing a “key club” that promised his time to wealthy donors and for leading a horseback ride through a state park where horses were prohibited for conservation reasons. In a strange episode, in November 1979, five foreign students were arrested for allegedly plotting to kidnap Quie, though they were later released due to a lack of evidence.

Most significant were the budget troubles — and poor financial advice — that plagued Quie’s time in the governor’s office, taking the state from a surplus to a deficit and forcing him to go back on his campaign pledge to cut taxes.

As he neared the end of his term, Quie was down in the polls and visibly unhappy. During a visit to Washington in late 1981, Minnesota U.S. Sen. Rudy Boschwitz had told Quie to “get your political act together” or withdraw his candidacy.

When Quie announced in January that he would not seek a second term, his relief was palpable. So was Gretchen’s.

“We’ve been talking about this for months,” Gretchen Quie told a reporter. “It’s been topic Number 1 and I’m so tired of it. There’s a big world out there waiting for us.”

Books, paintings and John Wayne

Al and Gretchen Quie moved out of the governor’s residence and settled in the Faribault area, where for a while they “re-charged their batteries,” Joel Quie said.

Al Quie became involved in the Prison Fellowship, a nonprofit Christian ministry, and rose to the positions of state and then national director.

In 1989, without interest from their children in taking over the family farm, Al and Gretchen sold the property. But they would drive by on occasion, and when the original barn burned down in 1994, Al was devastated.

Even without the farm, Quie kept up his passion for riding horses. He traveled the length of the Continental Divide on horseback over the course of six summers, and kept riding until age 96.

Quie remained visible in Minnesota, occasionally commenting on politics. In 2010 he was among a group of prominent Republicans formally expelled from the state GOP, in a narrow vote of party activists, for endorsing a former Republican mounting a third-party bid for governor. Quie said at the time he’d stick with the GOP despite the slight.

At the end of his life, Quie — still a tall and gentle man with a ready smile — lived in a one-bedroom apartment at an assisted living community in Wayzata. Bookshelves were packed with volumes on Norway, politics and religion. Physical therapy, lunch with friends and John Wayne DVDs filled his days.

Gretchen, who died in 2015, left behind a trove of paintings, prints and pottery that surrounded him. Displayed most prominently were paintings of the old farm and of a man on horseback, riding alone beneath a pale sky.

Al Quie is survived by children Fred Quivik of St. Paul; Jennie Coffin of Fairfax, Va.; Dan Quie of Greenfield, Minn.; Joel Quie of Eden Prairie; Ben Quie of St. Paul; 14 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren. Quie’s funeral will be held at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis on September 9 at 1 pm.

Star Tribune news researcher John Wareham contributed to this story.



Read the original article

Leave your vote

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings

Star Tribune

Minnesota offering land for sale in northern recreation areas

Avatar

Published

on


The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will auction off state lands in popular northern counties next month.

The public land — in Aitkin, Cook, Itasca, and St. Louis counties — will go up for sale during the Department of Natural Resource’s annual online public land sale from Nov. 7 to 21.

“These rural and lakeshore properties may appeal to adjacent landowners or offer recreational opportunities such as space for a small cabin or camping,” the DNR said in a statement.

Properties will be available for bidding Nov. 7 through Nov. 21.

This all can trim for print: The properties include:

40 acres in Aitkin County, with a minimum bid of $85,000

44 acres in Cook County, minimum bid $138,000

1.9 acres in Itasca County, minimum bid $114,000



Read the original article

Leave your vote

Continue Reading

Star Tribune

Razor wire, barriers to be removed from Third Precinct

Avatar

Published

on


Minneapolis city officials say razor wire, concrete barriers and fencing will be removed from around the former Third Precinct police station – which was set ablaze by protesters after George Floyd’s police killing – in the next three weeks. The burned-out vestibule will be removed within three months with construction fencing to be erected closer to the building.

This week, Minneapolis City Council members have expressed frustration that four years after the protests culminated in a fire at the police station, the charred building still stands and has become a “prop” some conservatives use to rail against city leadership. Most recently, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance made a stop outside the building and criticized Gov. Tim Walz’s handling of the 2020 riots.

On Thursday, the council voted 8-3 to approve a resolution calling for “immediate cleanup, remediation, and beautification of the 3000 Minnehaha site including but not limited to the removal of fencing, jersey barriers, barbed wire, and all other exterior blight.”

Council Member Robin Wonsley said the city needs to acknowledge that many police officers stationed in the Third Precinct “waged racist and violent actions” against residents for decades.

Council Member Aurin Chowdhury said the council wants the building cleaned up and beautified “immediately.”

“We cannot allow for this corner to be a backdrop for those who wish to manipulate the trauma of our city for political gain,” Chowdhury said.

Council Member Katie Cashman said the council shouldn’t be divided by “right-wing figures posing in front of the Third Precinct and pandering to conservative interests.”

“It’s really important for us to stay united in our goal, to achieve rehabilitation of this site in a way that advances racial healing and acknowledgement of the past trauma in this community, and to not let those figures divide us here,” she said.



Read the original article

Leave your vote

Continue Reading

Star Tribune

Last-minute staycation ideas in the Twin Cities

Avatar

Published

on


It’s MEA weekend — the four-day stretch in mid-October when educators traditionally flock to St. Paul RiverCentre for a conference organized by the statewide teachers union as students and their families take an extended break.

Some orchards offer visitors the opportunity to pick their own fruit, while others operate sprawling general stores that sell a variety of apple-themed goodies.

Tiger cub twins Amaliya (female), left, and Andrei (male), right, who were born in May, hang out with their mother, Amur tiger Sundari, after making their debut in their new public habitat at the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley, Minn. on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. ] LEILA NAVIDI • leila.navidi@startribune.com (Leila Navidi)

October is usually a happenin’ month at the Minnesota Zoo. The annual Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular is chock-full of meticulously decorated gourds, and this year’s event runs until Nov. 2. Tickets start at $18 for adults and $14 for children (kids younger than 2 get in free but must still register for tickets). The Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular begins at 6 p.m.

But there’s another new attraction at the zoo these days: the pair of Amur tiger cubs born to 7-year-old mom Bernadette just a couple of months ago. This week, zoo officials named the young felines Marisa and Maks. The zoo is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day.

Patrons enjoy drinks and dinner on the patio Thursday evening, July 18, 2024 at Lola’s Lakehouse in Waconia. Lola’s Lakehouse in Waconia features a large back deck/patio area with views of Lake Waconia. (Jeff Wheeler/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

With so many people out of town, there’s no better time to visit some of the Twin Cities’ most popular eateries.



Read the original article

Leave your vote

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2024 Breaking MN

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.