Campaign for the Capitol 2010

A 6-year-old boy was hoisted into a tree by the arms of Martin Luther King Jr. in the early 1960s. Sitting in the tree with his brothers, the young boy saw the racial injustice in his hometown of Evanston, Ill., an all-white suburb of Chicago.
Almost five decades later, that boy is Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, and he wants to be Minnesota’s next governor.
At a young age, Marty was exposed to social injustice of all types via his parents’ involvement in the civil rights movement. Their activism rubbed off on him, and Marty keeps their commitment alive to this day.
“As a kid, you’re not involved in politics,” he said. “But I had those experiences as a kid, and so I guess it was always one of the things I envisioned myself working on.”
His desire to be outdoors and spend his days cross-country skiing brought him to Minnesota after graduating from high school. He fell in love with the state and has been a Minnesotan ever since.
After graduating from St. Olaf College with an ethics degree, Marty began his life in politics, working for various nonprofits and state legislators. In 1979, he began working with the DFL Party for two years as a campaign aide and spokesman.
In 1986, Marty became a state senator, a position he has held ever since.
Now in his seventh term, he has frequently beaten his Republican opponents by more than 20 percent.
“In 23 years in the Senate, I haven’t ducked,” Marty said.
At the top of his list of priorities: creating a single-payer health care plan, a feat he hopes to accomplish within his first year in office, if elected.
The issue is not unique to Marty’s gubernatorial campaign. As the chair of the Health, Housing and Family Security Committee, he has frequently introduced a bill in the Senate that would create the Minnesota Health Plan, his solution to the current system that he said has left 400,000 Minnesotans without health insurance.
“I’m running because I think if I am governor, we can make single-payer health care a reality,” Marty said. “I just don’t think the other candidates will do that.”
On Jan. 10, the DFL Progressive Caucus announced its unanimous endorsement of Marty, the first time the organization had officially endorsed a candidate in a statewide election.
Gubernatorial past and present
This isn’t John Marty’s first time in the gubernatorial spotlight.
Marty was the DFL’s gubernatorial candidate in 1994 but was soundly defeated by Republican incumbent Arne Carlson, 63 to 34 percent. It was a tough year, Marty said.
In addition to his defeat, Marty had been suffering from back pain throughout his campaign. He delayed his surgery until three days after the election ended.
Larry Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, said that election may come back to haunt him.
“The crude way of putting it is that, in the eyes of some, including among Democrats, John Marty is ‘damaged goods,’ ” Jacobs said. “I think there’s a sense among Democrats that they need to nominate someone that is going to have broader appeal.”
Marty acknowledged that the defeat may hurt him and said that some would-be supporters aren’t sure he can win a statewide election. But he also stressed the importance of his experience.
“It’s not a question of whether you’ve had things go wrong,” he said. “It’s a question of whether you learn from things, and I’ve learned plenty from it.”
Marty also has other factors running against him.
He ranks among the bottom candidates in campaign contributions, with just more than $100,000 given to him in 2009. And in the straw polls performed at DFL caucuses Tuesday night, he got just 9.6 percent of the vote. While that was good enough for fourth place among DFLers, it is half the amount top vote-getters got.
Jacobs said it’s far too early to count Marty out of the race.
“John Marty is in this election to advocate for the ideas he believes in,” Jacobs said. “I think for some candidates it’s only about winning. I think for John Marty, it’s more than that.”