Republican Primary Election, 1918

The Nonpartisan League nominated Charles A. Lindbergh Sr. as its candidate to challenge Governor Joseph A. A. Burnquist in the June 1918 Republican primary. Although Burnquist prevailed and went on to win the general election in November, the bitter, often violent campaign transformed Minnesota politics.

Founded in 1915, the Nonpartisan League was an alliance of farmers that sought sweeping agricultural reforms, including state control of marketing facilities. Their strategy was to run candidates in the open primaries of established parties. After winning a sweeping victory in North Dakota in 1916, the NPL moved its headquarters to St. Paul and began organizing Minnesota farmers. In early 1918, the NPL held caucuses that led to the nomination of Lindbergh and a full slate of state-wide and local candidates.

The NPL chose a difficult time to make its move. When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, Twin Cities business groups lobbied the legislature to create the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS) to govern the state during the war. The commission included the governor, the attorney general, and five men chosen by the governor. John McGee, a conservative former judge, became the dominant figure, pushing an agenda of “100 percent Americanism.” Under his leadership, the commission sought to curb unions and the NPL by branding them as disloyal.

To bolster its base of more than 50,000 farmer members, the NPL built a coalition with organized labor by supporting unions in the Twin Cities Streetcar Strike in late 1917. After the strike was broken by the transit company and the MCPS, Twin Cities unions felt betrayed by Burnquist and threw their support to Lindbergh.

Burnquist claimed that he would not campaign because of the war, but he addressed many patriotic rallies around the state. He focused on loyalty, which he said was the election’s only issue. Uniformed Minnesota Home Guard units often participated in these events. Burnquist never mentioned Lindbergh, nor any issue facing the state other than the danger of electing disloyal candidates.

Lindbergh campaigned on the NPL platform of economic democracy. He steadfastly supported the federal government after the declaration of war, but he had opposed the drift to war as a congressman and had also written Why Is Your Country at War, a book that argued that Wall Street bankers had dragged the country into war. Like the NPL, Lindbergh argued that if young men faced conscription, then wealth should be conscripted to finance the war. The MCPS and most newspapers painted Lindbergh as a socialist and a pro-German traitor.

Local MCPS officials, sheriffs, and city officials banned the NPL from campaigning in many parts of the state. Lindbergh, for example, was completely shut out from campaigning in Duluth. Where he could campaign, he was often threatened and harassed. County attorneys from three southern Minnesota counties brought sedition prosecutions against NPL leaders, and a week before the primary, Lindbergh himself was arrested for sedition.

The NPL’s signature campaign event was a massive car caravan decorated with Lindbergh banners that traveled around rural counties. When the farmers entered towns, banners were often torn off cars, leading to violent clashes between farmers and townspeople. On several occasions, Home Guard units were mobilized to thwart NPL campaigning.

Burnquist won the June 17 primary with 199,325 votes to Lindbergh’s 150,626. Turnout was high, and many Democrats crossed over to vote in the Republican primary. Lindbergh carried thirty counties, including all of the Red River Valley and most of the Minnesota River valley counties. Burnquist prevailed in the two tiers of southern Minnesota counties along the Iowa border, in the Iron Range, and in the Twin Cities and Duluth. Rural counties were deeply divided, as towns and villages tended to vote strongly for Burnquist while agricultural townships overwhelmingly went for Lindbergh. In the cities, Lindbergh had strong support in working-class wards. A majority of the NPL legislative candidates did well and appeared on the general election ballot in November.

The end of the primary was also the end of Minnesota’s progressive era. Moderately progressive professionals and businessmen, traumatized by the NPL and fearful of socialism, gravitated toward the conservative, big business wing of the Republican Party. The NPL, meanwhile, had assembled a new coalition of farmers, trade unionists, German Americans, and left-leaning progressives. In a few years, this coalition spawned the Farmer-Labor Party.