Nation: Revolt in the Midwest

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Incumbents are unexpectedly underdogs in three election battles

Anyone who says he knows what's going on this year doesn't know what he's talking about." So said Minnesota Republican Campaign Strategist Vin Weber last week. He was assessing his own state's topsy-turvy politics, but his comment could be applied equally well to races elsewhere. Suddenly the power of incumbency—long an axiom of American politics—no longer seems to apply. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Midwest, where revolts by voters threaten to turn three veteran politicians out of office:

MINNESOTA. Democrat Wendell Anderson, 45, was a popular Governor from 1971 to 1976, but then he made the mistake of arranging his own appointment to fill Walter Mondale's vacant Senate seat. It was a self-serving act that angered Minnesotans, and many of them have never forgiven Anderson, even though he apologized in a series of TV ads. At the same time, Anderson's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party has been badly split by conservative Businessman Robert Short's upset primary victory over liberal Congressman Donald Fraser in the race for the Senate seat formerly held by Hubert Humphrey.

These liabilities have helped set the stage for an unexpectedly strong showing by Anderson's opponent, Rudy Boschwitz, 47, a lanky Republican who is the millionaire founder of Plywood Minnesota, a chain of home-improvement franchises. Boschwitz is making his first bid for public office but has been widely known to Minnesotans for years because of his firm's zany advertising campaigns. They included such one-liners as KEEP BULLFIGHTING OUT OF MINNESOTA and UNITE THE TWIN CITIES—FILL IN THE MISSISSIPPI.

Boschwitz has designated much of his $1.3 million campaign budget for a TV blitz pressing the issues of inflation and high taxes. He supports the Kemp-Roth proposal for a 30% cut in federal income tax rates. Boschwitz has won support from environmentalists by backing strong restrictions on motorboats in northern Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area. He has gained favor among right-to-lifers by offering to introduce a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion except in the case of rape or incest or when necessary to save the mother's life. These are issues on which Anderson has alienated voters by trying to compromise.

When the Minnesota poll gave Boschwitz a 23-point lead in August, a worried Anderson began to hit back hard, insisting that Kemp-Roth would require a 20% cut in federal spending and cause an "inflationary explosion." His name for his foe: "Big Business Boschwitz." One Anderson TV ad portrays Boschwitz as a cigar-smoking, pin-striped fat cat riding in a careering black limousine, forcing pedestrians to leap out of the way. Anderson also does not hesitate to remind voters that Boschwitz was state chairman for Nixon-Agnew in 1968. Complains Boschwitz: "Guilt by association. I thought that went out with Joe McCarthy." Anderson's tough tactics seem to have improved his prospects: the latest Minnesota poll shows him trailing Boschwitz by only four percentage points.