Nation: Demise of Hubert's D.F.L.

It was the house that Hubert built. Thus there was a certain historical tidiness when, in the first election since Humphrey's death, Minnesota's Democratic-Fanner-Labor Party came tumbling down. The coalition had produced two Vice Presidents and three presidential candidates (Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and, briefly, Walter Mondale) and dominated top state offices for some 20 years.

But this year, without Humphrey's personal buoyancy to keep its diverse elements happy, the D.F.L. let its natural factionalism run wild and handed the G.O.P. its sweetest sweep anywhere in last week's election. Republicans seized both of Minnesota's seats in the U.S. Senate, took over the Governor's mansion and loosened the D.F.L.'s grip on the state legislature by gaining a tie in its lower chamber.

The D.F.L. was, in a sense, a victim of its own success. It began to falter when once popular Governor Wendell Anderson resigned in 1976 and was immediately appointed by his former Lieutenant Governor, Rudy Perpich, to the Senate seat vacated by Mondale, who had moved into the vice presidency. Anderson's impatient act of self-promotion was resented by many Minnesota voters. Then Perpich appointed Muriel Humphrey to fill the remainder of her husband's term. That meant the state's three top offices were being held by members of the D.F.L. who had not been elected to those positions.

The D.F.L. might have survived its own overambition. Though Anderson made little impact in the Senate, Humphrey wisely decided not to seek a full Senate term this year, and the colorful Perpich began emerging as an able Governor. But without Hubert's healing hand the party fell into a fatal primary fight. Robert Short, a millionaire businessman-sportsman (truck-firm operator, former owner of the Minneapolis-now Los Angeles-Lakers and the Washington Senators), challenged a Humphrey protégé, liberal Congressman Don Fraser, for the nomination to Humphrey's seat and won the primary in an upset. Despite pleas for unity from Mondale, the party refused to rally behind Short, who was regarded by many party workers as too much of a maverick and too conservative.

The D.F.L.'s labor faction endorsed Short only after a heated floor fight at a convention of the Minnesota AFL-CIO. The party's executive committee, dominated by liberals and academics, refused to back him. The D.F.L.'s feminist caucus actually campaigned against him because of his antiabortion and anti-Equal Rights Amendment views. Other liberals paid for newspaper ads denouncing Short's opposition to national health insurance and environmental-protection laws. When Jimmy Carter went to Minnesota and urged a Democratic rally to support Short, the President was loudly booed. Predicted a gloomy Perpich just before the election: "Short is going to take all of us down with him."

He did indeed. D.F.L. voters abandoned their party in large numbers, and Short was trounced in the Senate vote by Republican David Durenberger, 44, a Minneapolis lawyer. Durenberger's margin was some 400,000 votes. Anderson was defeated by Rudy Boschwitz, 48, a lanky Jewish émigré from Nazi Germany and millionaire founder of a Midwestern chain of stores selling home-construction and remodeling materials.