The Congress: Filling Hubert's Shoes

• Share

In Minnesota, politicswise, whomever Hubert Humphrey wants, Hubert gets. And last week the whom that he got was Walter Frederick ("Fritz") Mondale, 36, appointed by Democratic Governor Karl Rolvaag to take over the remaining two years of the Vice President-elect's Senate term.

Why did Humphrey want Fritz Mondale? The son of a Methodist minister, Mondale worked part of his way at St. Paul's Macalester College for a canning company, inspecting peas for lice. He soon decided that this kind of life did not appeal to him. Turning to politics, Mondale attached himself to the cause of then Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey, helped Hubert carry a traditionally Republican district in his 1948 Senate campaign.

Aid to Gideon. Mondale went to Washington with Humphrey, became an official of Students for Democratic Action, at 30 managed Orville Freeman's successful campaign for a third term as Governor. In 1960 Freeman appointed him to fill the eight-month unexpired term of the state's attorney general, who had resigned. Mondale was elected on his own later that year; in 1962, running for reelection, he led everyone on the Minnesota ballot, Democrat and Republican.

A working liberal, Mondale made a name for himself outside Minnesota by his part in the case of Clarence Earl Gideon, subject of New York Timesman Anthony Lewis' excellent book. Gideon's Trumpet. Gideon, an impoverished Florida convict, based an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the ground that he could not afford counsel, in effect asked the court to extend to state courts the federal requirement that indigent felons have a right to free counsel. Florida's attorney general, in fighting the Gideon case, wrote the attorneys general of every other state asking them to write briefs protesting Gideon's plea. Mondale not only refused, but was instrumental in having a brief drawn up urging that the Court find in Gideon's favor. He also helped to get 22 other attorneys general to sign the brief.

All that was enough to make Humphrey want Mondale in Washington—and enough to make him an interesting U.S. Senator.

Scalded Skin. Mondale's appointment filled only one of the two vacancies left by Humphrey's election. There still was the matter of who would get Humphrey's job as Senate majority whip, to be decided at a Senate Democratic caucus early in January. Front runners since the Democratic Convention have been Rhode Island's John Pastore, Louisiana's Russell Long and Oklahoma's Mike Monroney, with Pastore generally considered to enjoy the edge—at least in the beginning.

Pastore, the Johnson-picked keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, made his bid by sending a form letter to every Democratic Senator, announcing his availability for the post. Monroney mounted a frantic campaign that has included calls to Senators traveling in Yugoslavia, Japan, the Virgin Islands and throughout the U.S.