A Minnesota Populist Tries to Crash the Millionaires' Club - Jerry Janezich

When 45,000 people hit the streets of Seattle to challenge the World Trade Organization last November 30, Jerry Janezich was in the thick of it. Marching with the United Steelworkers, he joined the demonstrations that changed America's debate about corporate power.

Eight days later, back home in Minnesota, the small-town tavern owner and Democratic state legislator announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

"The key question faced in Seattle," says Janezich, "will also be the key question of this century's first decade: Who will decide our future? Global corporations or you and I--the voters in a democratic society?"

That may not sound like typical rhetoric in Al Gore's Democratic Party, but Janezich has already secured the endorsement of Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer Labor Party, along with the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the state's Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, and the Steelworkers. He's won support from feminist and gay groups within the Democratic-Farmer Labor Party, and he has secured the backing of more than sixty fellow legislators and four of Minnesota's Democratic members of the U.S. House.

Plus, he's got Paul Wellstone.

"I stood side-by-side with Jerry in Seattle as we marched together for a voice for working men and women, farmers, and our environment," says the two-term Democratic Senator. "As a U.S. Senator, Jerry would continue to demonstrate his populist convictions with passion and action."

But can Janezich really make the leap from the streets of Seattle to the corridors of power? Wellstone and others think so, although they admit it will be a tough fight. Janezich believes he can beat Senator Rod Grams, a television personality-turned-politician, who won a victory when the 1994 Republican landslide swept traditionally liberal Minnesota. With a cookie-cutter conservative voting record and a penchant for personal scandal, Grams is widely seen as one of the more vulnerable GOP incumbents seeking reelection this year. A July poll conducted for Minnesota Public Radio found that only 39 percent of likely voters held a favorable opinion of the first-term Senator. And in a state where the Midwest farm crisis is devastating rural areas, the Republican's support for free market policies that favor corporate agribusiness makes him seem particularly out-of-touch this year.

Janezich couldn't be more different. "If corporate America wants free trade, we want human rights, fair labor standards, and fair environmental standards," he told the Democratic-Farmer Labor convention in June. "If corporate America wants no tariffs, we want no toxins, clean water, and clean air."

That talk won him the enthusiastic support of the party faithful. But the Democratic-Farmer Labor Party endorsement does not necessarily translate into the party nomination. Founded when Democrats merged with the leftwing populists of the old Farmer-Labor party in the 1940s, the Democratic-Farmer Labor Party's core membership is perhaps the most progressive of any state Democratic party in the nation. That membership dominates state party conventions, often tendering endorsements to progressive candidates such as Wellstone and Janezich.

But primary voters are more fickle. In recent years, a number of party-endorsed contenders for top state jobs have been displaced on primary day by wealthy, free-spending candidates of a more centrist bent. That's the threat Janezich faces this year. Though he led narrowly in a key post-convention poll, Janezich faces a half dozen other Democrats in the September 12 primary--including millionaire trial lawyer Mike Ciresi; Mark Dayton, the heir to a department store fortune; and construction company executive Rebecca Yanisch, whose campaign commercials identify her as "one of Minnesota's top businesswomen."

These candidates all have something Janezich lacks: a sizable political war chest. While Janezich had banked $172,000 in small contributions as of June 30, Ciresi had pumped more than $3 million into his campaign, Yanisch had collected more than $1 million, and Dayton had popped more than $400,000 into his treasury. By mid-summer, Ciresi, Dayton, and Yanisch were flooding Twin Cities television with slick commercials that the Janezich campaign could not afford.

But Janezich says his endorsements from the Democratic-Farmer Labor Party and the unions will translate into something the millionaire candidates lack--an army of volunteers and committed supporters the likes of which elected Wellstone in 1990 and 1996.

"I'm you," Janezich tells crowds at union halls, senior centers, and county fairs. And he does not hesitate to explain what that means. "There are," he notes, "eighty-five millionaires in the United States Senate. No electricians. No carpenters. No secretaries. And I'm not there yet, either. But let me tell you what.... This process will work for Joe and Marge Janezich's son."

Janezich says he got his politics from his parents, an iron ore miner and a shirt factory worker who, like many of their neighbors on northern Minnesota's iron range, combined an Eastern European heritage with a fierce loyalty to their unions and their Democratic-Farmer Labor Party.