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Minnesota: Senior Senator Sen. Mark Dayton (DFL) Last Updated July 14, 2003
Mark Dayton, elected to the Senate in 2000, grew up in Minnesota, the son of Bruce Dayton, head of Dayton Hudson, one of the nation's major and most innovative retailers (it is now called Target Corporation, and in 2001 changed the name of Dayton's in Minnesota to Marshall Field's). Mark Dayton graduated from Yale in the student-rebellion year of 1969 and taught 9th grade science in a New York public school in the Bowery for two years, then worked as a counselor and administrator for a Boston crisis center for teenage runaways. He was a conscientious objector and was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement and his name found its way--presumably because of his family and that of his then-wife, a Rockefeller--to Richard Nixon's enemies list. In 1975 and 1976 he worked for then-Senator Walter Mondale; in 1977 he returned to Minnesota and worked for Governor Rudy Perpich. In 1979, after Perpich lost, Dayton funded with $400,000 a nonprofit agency to spur development in rural Minnesota. In 1982 Dayton ran for the Senate, and spent the then enormous sum of $7 million of his own money. He beat former Senator Eugene McCarthy's quixotic campaign by 69%-24% in the DFL primary, but lost 53%-47% to Republican Senator David Durenberger. Between 1983 and 1986 he was Perpich's commissioner of Energy and Economic Development. In 1990 he was elected state auditor; in 1994 he decided not to run for reelection. In 1998 he ran in the Democratic primary for governor, but spent only $2 million of his own money, and finished fourth, far behind the winner, Skip Humphrey, with 18% of the vote. In 1999 and 2000 he was finance chairman for Senator Paul Wellstone. In 2000 he stepped up to run against Senator Rod Grams. Grams was the most obviously vulnerable Republican senator up that year. A former Minneapolis-St. Paul TV news anchor, he had won in the Republican year of 1994 by only 49%-44% against Ann Wynia, an under-funded, liberal candidate; he had served just one term in the House from a suburban Twin Cities district. Grams' very conservative voting record--as different from his colleague Wellstone's as those of any two senators from the same state have been for more than half a century--was out of line with Minnesota opinion on many issues, and he had no signal legislative accomplishments. Grams attracted seven DFL opponents before Dayton entered the race. Dayton first gave it thought in January, when he realized his second marriage had broken up. He gave it more thought in March 2000, when former Congressman Tim Penny, a fiscally conservative Democrat, surprised everyone by dropping out of the race. Dayton kept thinking about Penny's withdrawal as he went training that month near Churchill, Manitoba, for a North Pole expedition. "I saw a political vacuum. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum," he said later, and decided to forego the North Pole for a Senate race. He announced on April 3. He steered clear of the nominating convention, which chose state Senator Jerry Janezich, owner of a bar in the Iron Range. Instead, Dayton came up with innovative campaign ideas. He borrowed from a Senate candidate from Montana the idea of accompanying busloads of senior citizens to Canada to buy prescription drugs at lower prices than in the United States; this Rx Express got plenty of publicity. He set up a Healthcare Hotline for people having disputes with their HMOs, which are very common in Minnesota. He performed menial jobs across the state--the work days strategy pioneered by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin in 1974. He spent his own money liberally, but so did trial lawyer Mike Ciresi; Ciresi's firm received $427 million for working on Minnesota's $6.1 billion tobacco lawsuit and he spent some $5 million on the primary. But Ciresi went off the air in mid-June while Dayton, who spent $5.2 million on the primary, had the airwaves to himself from June 17 to August 1. In the September 12 primary, Dayton won 41%, to 22% for Ciresi, 21% for Janezich and 15% for construction executive Rebecca Yanisch. The two major-party nominees presented the voters with a clear contrast on the issues. Dayton was for universal government-run health insurance (a position many of whose ardent backers are millionaires who self-financed their first campaigns: Dayton, Jon Corzine, Jay Rockefeller, Edward Kennedy), while Grams was for medical savings accounts. Grams favored individual investment accounts in Social Security, while Dayton argued that the current system would be sound until 2037. Dayton would have the government lower the price of prescription drugs; Grams' prescription drugs program would cover low-income seniors. Grams called for eliminating the estate tax and the marriage penalty and replacing the income tax with a flat tax; Dayton called for doubling the $500 per child tax credit (co-sponsored by Grams) and expanding the childcare dependent tax credit. But much of the campaign was dominated by negative charges and driven by Dayton's financial advantage. Dayton spent $11.9 million, almost all of it his own money, doubling the previous Minnesota record (set by himself in 1982); Grams spent only $6 million. Grams was hurt by publicity about two arrests of his 22-year-old son. Grams, who was divorced in 1996, was also dogged by rumors of an affair between him and his aide Christine Gunhus (they married the weekend after the election); in September 2000, four e-mails criticizing Ciresi that were sent to 100 DFL officials were traced to Gunhus' home telephone number--she plead no contest in June to a misdemeanor complaint alleging she sent them. In response Grams ran an ad showing his mother saying, "Have you ever had someone spend a million dollars a week telling lies about someone you love?" and dismissing Dayton with the Norwegian expression "Uff-da!" Given all this, Dayton won by only 49%-43%, with 6% for Jim Gibson, enough to give the Independence party major party status for 2002--a help to Governor Jesse Ventura. Dayton ran best in the Twin Cities core, leading there 54%-36%. In the remainder of the Twin Cities media market, the part of the state that voted heavily for Ventura two years before, Grams led 48%-44%. In Minnesota beyond the Twin Cities media market, Dayton led 50%-45%. Dayton entered the Senate 100th in seniority. His major focus was on getting a prescription drug benefit for seniors. But that issue was put aside by September 11. As Dayton said, "September 11 derailed everything I wanted to do. I figured there'd be a huge learning curve, but now it's exponential." In March 2002 he pushed successfully for two amendments to the energy bill, one providing a tax credit for diesel producers using soydiesel, the other requiring more ethanol to be used by federal cars and trucks--an idea, he said, that came from talking with a Minnesota farmer. He supported the farm bill in May 2002 which entitled Minnesota farmers to $1.16 billion in crop payments, third highest in the country, and a new national dairy program that got Minnesota dairy producers an extra $225 million. He and Wellstone went to the White House for the signing, their first such trip in the Bush administration. He and Wellstone sponsored a bill to give benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees: no White House signing on that. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced cancellation of the Crusader artillery program, Dayton tried to get Crusader technology and contractors used on its replacement; part of the system was to be made in an 800-employee plant in Fridley, just north of Minneapolis. The prime legislative achievement of Dayton's first two years was passage in May 2002 by a 61-38 vote of the Dayton-Craig amendment to the trade bill. It gave Congress the right to a separate vote on any provision in a trade agreement weakening U.S. dumping laws. Dayton and co-sponsor Larry Craig have very different ideologies, but both come from states on the Canadian border where many businesses complain about Canadian dumping. But George W. Bush indicated he would veto the trade bill if it contained Dayton-Craig, and it was dropped in conference committee in July. Dayton did get a provision granting unemployment benefits for steelworkers. In July 2002 Dayton participated in the lengthy debate on prescription drugs; no bill was passed. At one point Dayton proposed a 25% tax on the difference in the price of prescription drugs between the United States and Canada. Dayton voted for the September 2001 resolution authorizing military action against Al Qaeda. After Bush sought a congressional vote on military action in Iraq, Dayton criticized "this rush to vote." He wrote that, "Gaining political advantage in a midterm election is a shameful reason to hurry decisions of this magnitude." He was undecided until three hours before the vote and decided to vote no. On October 23, he embarked on a two-week trip to inspect Europe's NATO facilities, but he returned after Wellstone died in an October 25 plan crash. After the election, he revived his and Wellstone's bill to give wartime benefits to National Guard troops called up to serve; it passed both houses. He was less successful in pressing his and Wellstone's amendment to the homeland security bill barring contracts with companies that incorporate in other countries; it was defeated. In late 2001 he proposed in an open letter a four-step process to build a stadium for the Minnesota Twins with bonds backed by stadium revenues. Despite his baseball background--his stepfather Lee McPhail was once president of the American League--it did not seem to go anywhere. Dayton's seat comes up in 2006. In the 2002 cycle he gave more than $200,000 to other Democrats. He has said he will not self-finance his next campaign.
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