BY ED FELIEN
I got to know Polly during her first run for the U.S. Senate in 1988. She was running for DFL endorsement against Skip Humphrey at the DFL Convention in Rochester. My wife and I helped stuff envelopes, and Carol got elected a state delegate. I got a floor pass so we were both able to go to the convention and work the floor for Polly. Carol taught Women’s Studies at Minneapolis Community College, and Skip was anti-choice, so Carol had a field day talking to delegates.
I was the representative from Polly’s campaign to watch the counting of ballots. We had great hopes that we could deny Skip the DFL endorsement. I watched as they counted the ballots, and I was jubilant and ecstatic when the count showed Polly with 41% of the votes. I ran out onto the floor and told the news to the delegates. They told me there had been a mistake. At first I was thinking they just couldn’t believe it, but then I heard an announcement from the chair that some ballots had mysteriously not been counted in the first ballot and Skip did have the necessary 60% for endorsement. There never was a satisfactory explanation of where those extra votes for Skip came from.
Polly ran in the general election and drew enough progressive votes away from Skip that he lost the election to Durenberger.
This sent a clear message to the DFL leadership: Either endorse a pro-choice, anti-war candidate for U.S. Senate or the left would desert the party and the candidate would lose.
Two years later the DFL was going to nominate another candidate for U.S. Senate to run against Rudy Boschwitz. No one in the DFL Party leadership thought Boschwitz could be beat. And, in order to get the left out to the polls, to help Rudy Perpich get re-elected governor, and since Polly had demonstrated that an anti-choice and pro-defense candidate would turn off voters for the whole ticket, the party bosses let us endorse Paul Wellstone. Representative Jim Rice from North Minneapolis, one of the old-time party bosses told me in the hall at the convention, “So, now you can proclaim the Southside Soviet.” The irony of this was that while I was calling for Paul that fall in South Minneapolis voters were telling me, “Yes, we’re going to vote for Paul and for Arne Carlson.” Perpich appointed the most progressive Supreme Court in Minnesota history but he was masquerading as a pro-lifer. Carlson was masquerading as pro-choice and he appointed the most reactionary justices. Perpich lost and Wellstone won. And after that the DFL never endorsed a candidate for statewide office who wasn’t pro-choice.
Polly Mann took leadership of the anti-war movement at a critical time. Her candidacy didn’t make Wellstone possible. Polly Mann made Paul Wellstone inevitable.
Other tributes to Polly Mann:
“Polly, I have always admired your guts to run for the U.S. Senate in 1986. I have always regretted that I did not trash my Labor agenda and commitment and give you my support. Will you forgive me that short-sightedness?”
—Wayne Wittman
I had recently moved to Minneapolis and after attending an event at Northrop Auditorium (on U of M campus), outside the door a woman stood, introduced herself as Polly Mann and asked for my vote because she was running for the U.S. Senate. I shook her hand and wondered, who was this brave and daring spirit who was willing to shake things up in Washington, D.C.?
—Joyce Wallace
I needed to have feisty female role models, and she filled that role.
—Diane J. Peterson
“Thanks for all that you are.”
—Russell Packard
In 1978 I first had the pleasure of meeting Polly Mann, when she was the best DFL county chair in southwestern Minnesota, and I was working to re-elect my friend Rick Nolan to his seat in the old 6th Congressional District. For all of the years since then I have tried to understand how a lifelong radical feminist, totally-commited peacenik, justice-seeking socialist—who doesn’t suffer fools gladly and has never been afraid to speak her mind—originated from Arkansas. I only wish someone like her had been living in Arkansas when charlatans Bill and Hillary Clinton arrived on the scene. “Much love, respect, and gratitude for all of the leadership that you have given to Minnesota and the issues we share.”
—George Mische
