Core of Conviction : My Story (9781101563571) (16 page)

In reality, of course, when the bureaucrats do their thing, educational verities erode, reduced to their lowest common denominator. Moreover, the many localities out in the provinces are disempowered—not by accident but by design. The bureaucrats' hope is that the public will give up and a passive fatalism will set in, so that the rule makers rule, overseeing a long slide into politically correct mediocrity.

As my friend Allen Quist, a former Minnesota state legislator and Republican gubernatorial candidate, said at the time, the Profile was a power grab. Yet it was not just a power grab of our schools, but a power grab of our whole way of life as free Americans. Students were now to be seen for their value to the economy, for their usefulness to a future employer. No parent sees his or her child only in such utilitarian terms, but central planners do—and that was the problem. Embedded in the Profile was a vision of top-down control in which children become mere cogs in a vast bureaucratic machine.

For my part, as an ordinary citizen, I came to understand that if a leader isn't actively paying attention to the procedural workings of government—that is, if he or she isn't drilling down into the day-to-day shuffling of papers—then a reckoning will come, and he or she will discover that cunning underlings, operating on little cat feet—or, I should say, bureaucrat
feet—have altered the political landscape to their own liking. Corner offices for all!

In other words, it was the Minnesota bureaucrats—not even the elected politicians—who now had the power of the federal government behind them. So these functionaries could do what they had always wanted to do, and if they ran into resistance—from either a politician or a citizen—they could say, “Hey, don't blame me, I'm just following orders from Washington.” It was a nifty way to pass the buck. So the politicians usually went along meekly, even heedlessly, with the new education rules; for one thing, they had more important goals to worry about—such as getting reelected.

So the pushback on all these policies, if there was to be any, would have to come from the people. Can you fight city hall? Can you fight the statehouse? And the federal government? Sure you can. It just takes a lot of work. I joined a citizens' group called the Maple River Education Coalition, and we found that together we were more than just a group, or even a team. We were a movement—a volunteer movement of concerned citizens and activists. We were a proto–Tea Party, you might say.

So I started researching the Profile, decoding the bureaucratic spin that came with it. Just as I had once studied the innards of the tax code, I was now studying the innards of our education system. It was hard work—I put in five years of my life—but it was important work.

I teamed up with another education activist, Mike Chapman, and soon we had put together a report on the Profile and then a presentation that we could show to other parents. In our presentations, Mike and I would analyze the components of the Profile, examining each part in turn, highlighting all its flaws and false assumptions. And because there was so much material, our presentations grew increasingly long and comprehensive. Yet we found that Minnesota parents, once engaged, were riveted—and then galvanized. And so our audience grew. Mike and I did all the work at our own expense—and at the sufferance of our families—because we knew that what we were doing was important. Our sessions with groups of parents, including the inevitable questions and answers, might easily stretch into two or more hours. And by the time we were done, our audience—who beforehand might have known nothing about the Profile—was ready to grab a pitchfork. They'd say, “Not with my kid, you don't!”

Soon we each traveled to various venues around the state, packing our materials in the trunk of a car, getting lost on snowy roads as we went from one living room—or auditorium or gymnasium—to another. And wherever we went, Mike and I, plus a growing number of friends and allies, learned more and more about our state's educational malpractice and malfeasance. We'd meet parents whose kids hadn't been taught multiplication tables. And interestingly, we met public-school teachers who had protested against this foolishness but had been punished by their bosses for speaking out.

Of course, we wanted to share our concerns with our elected officials, but precious few of them were interested in listening. As I have mentioned, my own state senator didn't wish to be bothered. And he was hardly alone. Our governors back then viewed us as nothing more than a nuisance. The governor at the time was a Republican, although in the years after he left office in 1999, he would go on to endorse John Kerry against George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election and Barack Obama over John McCain in 2008.

His successor as governor turned out to be Jesse “The Body” Ventura, the ex–pro wrestler, who won in a three-way election. Ventura ran as a member of the Reform Party, and yet, for all his populist fervor, the reform we saw was lowering the tab fees for license plates. That was great, but at the same time, he also pushed the biggest government intrusion into education that the state had ever seen. Even before he was sworn in as Minnesota's thirty-eighth governor in January 1999, he was surrounded by liberal Democrats. And so despite populist hopes, the permanent St. Paul establishment seemed to continue to rule the day. And that meant, among other things, ignoring the pleas of Minnesota parents and teachers and our reform-the-schools campaign.

By now, I was active in statewide education reform. That same year, 1999, five openings came up on the local school board. I'd spent countless hours trying to inform Minnesotans about the negative impact of the Profile; now, maybe, there was an opportunity for like-minded parents to take a majority position on the school board and push for academic excellence. I let myself, in my enthusiasm, be persuaded to run for office, for a post on the local school board in Stillwater. Five political novices agreed to run as a slate—what a mistake. We tried to squeeze all five of our names onto one sign. And while we had the best of intentions, the problem was, we didn't know the first thing about running a campaign. So while our goal was to work for local control and academic excellence, the local teachers' union wanted to retain its control of the school board. Meanwhile, the big guns of Big Education, Minnesota style, were all aimed at us. Even Planned Parenthood campaigned against us. Why would a proabortion group get involved in school elections? Well, that tells you a lot, doesn't it? It's a reminder that Planned Parenthood's true intentions go far beyond legalizing abortion; in fact, the group seeks to get to kids at an early age with their vision of sexual permissiveness.

And so in November 1999, all five of us lost that school-board election. It was a chastening experience; losing an election among your friends and neighbors is no fun. As a result, I resolved not to risk embarrassing myself ever again. Yet my resolution held firm for only a few months—until that fateful rendezvous with destiny in April 2000 at the Republican district 56 convention in Mahtomedi.

CHAPTER NINE

Taking On the Establishment in St. Paul

THE 2000 state senate campaign was on. Although I wrested the Republican endorsement away from the incumbent state senator in April 2000, the senator chose not to concede. So I had to face him again in the September Republican primary.

And I had to put together a real campaign. In political terms, I was nobody from nowhere, but because of my work against the Profile of Learning, many activists already knew me. Thanks to them—and thanks to their good hearts and boundless energy—we had more than a campaign. Once again we had a movement.

For my part, I went door knocking. And as I drove around, if I saw a stray voter, I would pull over and introduce myself. It was hard work, and it forced me to spend hours, days, and weeks listening to voter after voter at the door. It was there, at the door, that I learned the voice and dreams of the people I hoped to represent. I felt that I was doing something important—something that could potentially help all the families of Minnesota. And so with more activist zeal than political skill, I won the GOP primary by more than twenty points, 61 percent to 39 percent.

Okay,
I thought now,
because I'm the official Republican nominee, I will get real help from the state GOP.
But once again, I was naive. I had beaten a long-sitting member of the senate and some of the other members weren't amused.

And of course, the Minnesota senate hadn't been Republican since the early seventies. Even Ronald Reagan couldn't carry our state in 1984, even as he won the other forty-nine. Indeed, Minnesota has given its votes to the Democrats in twelve of the last thirteen presidential elections, and 2000 was no exception—Al Gore won the Gopher State that year.

Meanwhile, my Democratic opponent in November was positioning himself as a moderate. That was typically what liberal Democrats did in Minnesota for the general election. For my part, I campaigned as a far right conservative. And if the traditional media weren't interested in reporting on that message, happily I had newer media that were eager to cover my insurgent candidacy. I was on talk radio that fall, in particular the Jason Lewis show on KSTP-AM, 1500. And so I won—by almost twelve points, in fact. The voters of the 56th state senate district had put their trust in me, and I was determined to represent them and their view. The first Minnesota Tea Partier had been elected!

So two months later, in January 2001, as a newly sworn-in member of the 82nd Minnesota legislature, I set to work on the agenda I had campaigned for—improving education, of course, and also protecting life, lowering the tax burden, reducing spending, and improving the overall business climate. I expected that the Democrats would oppose much of what I had in mind, but I had not expected blowback from fellow Republicans.

I had become familiar with St. Paul politics as an education activist. I had appeared with politicians, debated with politicians, even testified before them in the state legislature. So I knew that sometimes politicians would talk a good conservative game at home, and then play the go-along-get-along game in St. Paul, thus letting the liberals have their way. I knew that the public picture was not always the true picture.

Yet even so, once I could see legislative workings from the inside, I saw that the problem was much worse. I would introduce bills to do what Republicans should do—what they had promised to do—and I'd find that support for dismantling big government wasn't a given. I introduced bills to eliminate the state inheritance tax and the state capital gains tax; I sought to guarantee needed taxpayer protections in a formal taxpayer bill of rights. After all, Minnesota had one of the highest tax burdens in the nation, and it was hurting us. We weren't just losing jobs to countries overseas, such as Mexico or China; we were losing jobs to states next door, such as the Dakotas.

Yet for the most part, these reform efforts gained little traction, primarily because I was a fiscal and social conservative serving in an ultraliberal-dominated, Democratic-controlled state senate. I quickly noticed a pattern: The issues that some Republicans campaigned for in their districts seemed far less important to them once they got to St. Paul. And that's when I learned a basic truth: Not all Republicans wanted to fight, and even fewer were willing to take on issues that seemed “messy”—that is, issues that the liberal media championed. In the senate, stubborn and entrenched liberals were the norm, so discouragement went with the territory. Indeed, in the three decades that Republicans had been in the minority in St. Paul, for some a mind-set of passive acceptance had set in. Some would see the liberals feasting on political pork—which is to say, feasting on our tax money—and so would be careful not to upset the liberals in hope of a little project for their district. In return for such docile behavior, the liberal leadership would usually drop some little morsel onto the floor so that hungry Republicans could scamper after it. The general rule for Republicans was “Don't ever say anything bad about the Democratic leadership.” Indeed, this behavior was so endemic that the minority leader of the senate Republicans actually became a Democrat. And in a few years, the Democrats made him their majority leader! In other words, in the case of some Republican members, little or no difference, philosophically, could be detected between them and the ultraleft liberals.

So a committed conservative in the state senate back then not only had to oppose the dominant liberal Democrats but also had to overcome the lethargy of prolonged service in the minority. Fortunately, we had some steadfast fighters on our side. One such fighter was state senator Warren Limmer of nearby Maple Grove. He's always been true blue—or, I should say, true red. Together we would fight the good fight, with the help of other stalwart members.

For a while I served on the Jobs, Housing and Community Development Committee. Once again, as with Goals 2000, nice-sounding names—who could be against “jobs, housing and community development”?—were used as cover for the usual bankrupt, and bankrupting, liberalism. In addition to the standard routine of waste, fraud, and abuse, I discovered that the bureaucrats we were supposed to be watching had a bookkeeping problem, not because they were corrupt but because they couldn't keep track of their money. Some bureaucrats admitted that they were off by some $75 million; they literally didn't know which number was correct. But instead of fixing the problem, the bureaucrats just asked for more money. In that committee, we routinely listened to government emissaries, all saying, let's have more spending, spending, spending. Liberal members of the committee used that time to cultivate relationships with lobbyists; a few of us just voted no and threw up our hands.

So you can see how easy it was to be swayed by the business-as-usual nature of the state legislature. If you wanted to make friends and move up, you had to do things their way.

But for some legislators, when pressure is applied, they grow stronger in their convictions. That was true for some of us on the right, and it was also true for some on the left. For example, during my first term in the state senate, I met U.S. senator Paul Wellstone. He was a firebrand leftist, but he had an honest heart. He was not cynical; he was sincere. He told you where he was coming from, and if you disagreed with him, he would respect that disagreement, and do his best to beat you. He was true to his ideology until he and his wife were tragically killed in a plane crash.

Indeed, we are all subject to fate and the forces of history. On a bright Tuesday morning in September 2001, the course of American history was changed by those nineteen evil hijackers. Nearly three thousand Americans died, and the lives of three hundred million were altered forever. I was at home on 9/11, and as the news unfolded, I thought immediately of my brother living near New York City and my stepbrother working at the Pentagon. It turned out they were both fine, thank God.

Yet we all knew that more brave Americans would die during the coming global war on terrorism. I was proud of President George W. Bush for traveling to the ruins of the World Trade Center, showing solidarity with those firefighters and rescue workers. And I was proud too when he appeared before a joint session of Congress and declared that Uncle Sam would go on the offensive against the terrorists, as well as against the regimes that harbored them. As we watched the president on TV, I said to Marcus, “There is a strong man.” I saw in his eyes the resolve of a patriot committed to protecting his country. At that moment, he completely grew into his young presidency and assumed full command. America was a safer and better place because of his stout heart and conviction.

Yet at the same time, back in Minnesota, we still had our work to do. I had always opposed wasteful spending, but now, during wartime, it seemed all the more horrible that we were spending money on foolish projects. We needed that money for the military, I said to myself, or else we needed it as savings in our pockets. We needed fiscal prudence and safety, not the same old money wasting.

So I will admit I was disappointed to see President Bush work with Democratic senator Teddy Kennedy and future House Speaker John Boehner to push through the No Child Left Behind Act, which the president signed into law in early 2002. No Child Left Behind was an updated Goals 2000, imposing new mandates on all fifty states—the same federal government good intentions leading to the same downward educational results. We made progress toward the repeal of the Profile of Learning in our state, and yet in the United States as a whole, we were handing local classrooms over to the federal bureaucracy.

Still, in 2002 we scored some successes. For example, we passed the Woman's Right to Know Act, which requires that twenty-four hours before an abortion takes place the pregnant mother be given important information; she is to be told the gestational age of her unborn child, she is to learn about the medical risks associated with the abortion procedure, and she is to receive an in-depth explanation of the abortion procedure itself, including the baby's ability to feel pain during the termination of its life.

As I have often said, the one issue that we absolutely have to get right is life. As Jesus told us in Matthew 25:40, “Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” And surely the least among us is an unborn child.

Enacting Woman's Right to Know was landmark progress. Yet it was still not the best response to the tragedy of abortion; the best response is a constitutional amendment protecting life as part of a renewed national reverence for the life culture. But at the same time, Right to Know was significant progress, because very few mothers, if any, truly don't want their own children. I felt gratified that we had managed to secure this protection. We pro-life activists had come a long way since the eighties, when we would stand in prolonged vigils outside St. Paul–Ramsey Medical Center in St. Paul. In those days, Marcus and I would take our little children with us, to stand out there in the cold with Pro-Life Action Ministries. They might not always have understood what was going on—at their tender age, it was probably best they didn't—but when I gazed at them and held their tiny little hands, I remembered why I was there.

Meanwhile, the liberal establishment made it clear it was aiming to get rid of me. In the wake of the 2000 census, Minnesota redistricted its legislative seats, and in 2002 I was thrown into the same senate district as a ten-year female Democratic incumbent, the chair of the powerful Environment Committee. She was a strong candidate boasting a strong fund-raising base among liberal-leaning environment and education constituencies. And of course, given my opposition to the Profile of Learning, the teachers' unions and their allies were out in force. She had money from the party and the lobbyists—the special interests. I was their foe and thus their target. Those words helped me too; I knew I would have to rely, once again, on God. For my part, I did what I always did: I worked hard. Door to door, driving around, introducing myself to folks in my new district. Yet of course, my opponent faced a challenge too—she was a liberal. For my part, I focused on commonsense conservative issues, including opposition to the Profile, and in November I won by more than nine points.

So in 2003 I was sworn in for my second term in the state senate. And we were joined by a new governor to replace Jesse Ventura; “The Body” had wisely decided not to seek reelection. The new chief executive was Republican governor Tim Pawlenty; finally, a few months later, we were able to repeal the Profile.

That same year, 2003, brought sad news. My father died in August. The word came early in the morning. It was a mile-maker moment. He had traveled a hard road in life, and sometimes he had made it harder for himself and for others, but he was my dad and I will always honor him.

Meanwhile, perhaps the biggest news to confront me in the legislature didn't come from Minnesota but from a different state altogether—Massachusetts. On November 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that same-sex couples had a legal right to marry and the court further ordered the Massachusetts state legislature to pass a law to that effect. How dare the court order legislators to pass a law in conformity with their personal morality and opinion of a bare majority of justices—the vote was four to three—not in conformity with the majority of people in the Bay State. America had always agreed that marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman. In addition, our Constitution prefers that the courts should interpret the law, not make the law. Otherwise, legislators are irrelevant, as is the will of the people.

Of course, at the same time, I wasn't completely surprised by the Massachusetts ruling, because I knew that judges had gotten in the habit of legislating from the bench. I could see why judges might like to run the whole government; the only problem was, it's unconstitutional. Indeed, in the U.S. Constitution, the judicial branch is listed third, in Article III. Thomas Jefferson said that the courts were to be the least powerful of the three branches of government. The federal branches are equal, but at the same time, James Madison chose to enumerate the powers of the judiciary after those of the other two branches. But here we were now, confronting a whole new vista of judicial activism, and who was to say it would stop with Massachusetts? Minnesota had a “DOMA” statute, modeled after the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that was passed with strong bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress and signed by President Clinton. But even so, I could see the possibility that the Minnesota Supreme Court could copy the Massachusetts ruling. That meant there was only one sure way to stop such a ruling: Pass a constitutional amendment in the state of Minnesota.