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John Marty: DFL candidate for governor
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Jun 02, 2008 04:09pm |
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| Category | Profile |
| News Date | Thursday, August 18, 1994 10:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The Minnesota Senate was in session that morning in April when about a dozen stern-faced Veterans of Foreign Wars members, their service caps scrunched on their heads, asked Sen. John Marty to step outside the chamber and meet with them.
When he did, they demanded the return of a U.S. flag the VFW had given him two years before and which he displayed in his Capitol office.
Eight days earlier, Marty had voted against a seemingly innocuous resolution asking Congress to make flag burning a crime. The resolution was not binding on Congress, and 51 of Marty's colleagues, for various reasons, took the politically safe course and voted for it.
Marty explained to the vets that outlawing flag burning as a form of political protest would be a restriction on free speech. That's an assault on the very Bill of Rights that Americans fought and died for, he told them.
They were unmoved and insistent. Marty finally told his staff to give them the flag.
Marty was a declared candidate for governor at the time and knew his vote could come back to haunt him. "I'm perfectly clear how hot that issue was," he said recently.
Still, the 37-year-old senator from Roseville said he did what he considered to be the right thing, the correct thing, the principled thing, even if it was not the politically safe thing.
That's a trademark with Marty, one that helped him win party endorsement in June and one that supporters hope will catapult him into the governor's office.
But it is also a characteristic that detractors contend makes him an unlikely and unelectable candidate.
His refusal to take the practical path, his go-against-the-flow record in the Senate, his upfront call for a significant tax increase on the wealthiest and his self-imposed limit on campaign contributions may attest to his character and vision, but they also are considered political liabilities that prompted four of his fellow DFL senators to consider running against him in the primary. |
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