On the afternoon of Aug. 14, U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, former U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger and a handful of local experts prepare to field questions about health care reform as an audience at the Kandiyohi County Health and Human Services Building spills into a hallway.
With ObamaCare getting a royal vetting around the country, angry Minnesotans from the western half of the state had driven many miles for a chance to confront Peterson, the long-serving Democrat from Detroit Lakes.
One man holds a sign scribbled with a standard rallying cry of the right: “I pay for mine. You pay for yours!” On the other side of the proverbial aisle, a young woman wears a T-shirt that says “Health Care for All!”
Alas, all that heats up during the two-hour session is the air in the crowded room, which was partly a reflection of Peterson, a plain-spoken, cowboy-boot-wearing CPA who just weeks earlier had created a stir by telling the online political newspaper Politico—in a story about the “birthers” who believe President Barack Obama was born in another country—that he didn’t hold town hall meetings because “25 percent of my people believe the Pentagon and Rumsfeld were responsible for taking the Twin Towers down.”
That was a reference to 9/11 conspiracy theorists known as “truthers.” The comment was a bit of hyperbole that Peterson came to regret (he issued an apology), but it suggested the difficulty of satisfying a mostly rural constituency that is spread over 35 counties and more than 300 towns.
Not that his sentiments didn’t strike a chord in the land of Lake Wobegon. As a St. Cloud Times editorial quipped: “True cynics and wannabe comedians might respond with, ‘Really, only 25 percent?’”
Ron Bartsch, the “Windshield Wizard” of Johnson (according to his business card), a village 20 miles west of Morris, says the comment bothered him. He drove 70 miles to the Willmar forum so he could discuss health care and big government.
“Politicians think we’re a bunch of hicks out here,” he says. And as for the prospect of “truthers” in his midst, Bartsch says: “Well, I’m not into conspiracy theories, but I do have to say I have talked to several people who tend to be out there on the wacky fringe on the other side. But I suppose they say that about me.”
Another questioner at the forum, Glencoe insurance agent Glenn Gruenhagen, shows up with a three-chapter booklet he had written specifically to combat liberal arguments for health care reform. After revving up the crowd—topping off his turn at the microphone with a cry of “Tell Obama to stop coddling terrorists!”—he approaches the panel and drops his pamphlet on the table.
Here in the 7th Congressional District, a far-flung region of sugar beet farms, college towns and hamlets that went for the GOP ticket of McCain/Palin last fall, Peterson has carved out a winning niche (he took 72 percent of the vote in ’08), and his political versatility was on full display at the forum.
To wit: For conservatives in the crowd, he expressed skepticism about the “government option” in health care reform plans and promised to reel in trial lawyers and continue his blue dog crusade for deficit reduction. For the ears of liberals, he singled out the Department of Veterans Affairs, FEMA and Medicare as worthy—even exemplary—government programs. Plus he’s good at speaking in straight talk, which goes over well in the district.
As University of Minnesota political scientist Lawrence Jacobs puts it, Peterson’s pragmatism and direct personality make for “the full metal jacket of incumbency protection” in this district of no-nonsense Scandinavians and Germans.
That’s no small feat for a politician who represents the largest congressional district in Minnesota, a 350-mile stretch of prairie, forest and lake country that covers the western half of the state and extends from Highway 14 in the southwest to the Northwest Angle on the Canadian border. So massive is the district that Peterson traverses it in his Beechcraft Bonanza, which he flies from town to town, mostly solo, when he’s not in Washington. This year alone, he had appeared in 30 parades by mid-September—from the Fourth of July parade in Spicer to the Greater Moorhead Days parade—while spending many weekends at agriculture-related events like Farmfest in Redwood Falls and the State Fair 4-H Beef Show.
“He has a monumental logistical problem of how to represent a district that is as large as some states,” says Jacobs. “But he has a professional staff that does a lot of the work for him. It’s not just Peterson; it’s Peterson and his football team. There are a lot of folks working with him to make sure he makes connections.”
Populist sentiment has long run through the 7th, the fictional home of Garrison Keillor’s feuding Lutherans and Catholics. It’s where the satirist Sinclair Lewis pondered small-town provincialism (in Sauk Centre) and the Minneota essayist Bill Holm penned his odes to prairie life.
At the forum, Peterson absorbs the barbs and stands nearly motionless for the entire two hours. Unruffled in an open-collar blue shirt and dark pants, he seems to relish the give-and-take, appealing for civility while at the same time telling the crowd, “I’m fair game, so I don’t mind if you want to give me what-for.”
Afterward, he is eager to gas up his plane and fly to Paynesville for a personal engagement, though he sticks around for several minutes to speak to constituents who want personal attention. He has been flying alone for years, joking that he stopped taking staffers with him to events because he always had to drop them off afterward before he could fly home.
Finally leaving the dwindling crowd behind, Peterson heads for his Beechcraft and then into the air, flying high above the massive district sprawling in all directions—geographically and philosophically—beneath him.
“Yeah, I get up there by myself and nobody can call me on the phone and give me hell,” he says. Flashing a playful glance at one of his aides, he adds: “There’s nobody up there to drive me nuts.” L&P
—Gregg Aamot teaches journalism at Ridgewater College in Willmar, Minn.
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