UPDATE 4/25: Since we posted about the matching logos on Sunday, and this post on Tuesday, multiple sources are reporting about the how DFL has asked the RLC to cease and desist with the name and logo.
Only one, KEYC-TV displays the original logo that gave rise in part to the cease and desist letter.
Forum Communications's Don Davis reports in DFL vs. RFL: Democrats demand GOP farm group change ‘confusingly similar’ name, logo:
Members of the RFL slightly altered the logo, but said they do not plan any more changes.
In DFL demands GOP lawmakers stop copying logo, MPR's Tim Pugmire reports only on the kerfuffle, but not the changes--indeed, only including a copy of the changed RFL logo. This gives rise to a battle in the comment section, wherein Max Halperin explains that the RFL Caucus changed its logo:
at 9:50 PM on Monday, April 23, 2018. In other words, after receipt of the cease and desist letter and even further after the Bluestem Prairie article.
Of media reporting on the story, we've only seen KEYC-TV display the original logo in DFL Warns Munson Over Similar Logos. Using the original logo that gave rise to part of the complaint makes the story more clear. No news source, however, gives even a nod to the historical origins of the "Farmer Labor" name [end update].
The logo for the newly-formed Minnesota Republican Farmer Labor Caucus, pictured above, looks rather familiar.
Where had we seen it before? Oh, here at the Democratic Farmer Labor Party:
We'll leave the potential copyright infringement issues to lawyers and cut to the messaging of the Republican trolls who put this page together. Right now, the caucus appears to composed on IBEW member and state representative Jason Rarick, R-Pine City; corporate consultant and boutique farmer Jeremy Munson. R-Lake Crystal, self-employed ambiguous occupation Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg; and undergraduate chemistry major and Go Kart salesman Jeff Baker, R-Browns Valley.
Above a video, the four horsemen of the rural DFL apocalypse share the motivation for their political appropriation on their Facebook page:
"The Minnesota DFL Party claims to represent our State's Farmer and Labor interests. We are here to say that this is false. The DFL has left both farmer and labor groups years ago. Republicans are fighting the DFL's destructive policies against farmers and our hardworking Minnesotans. We have formed the Republican Farmer Labor Caucus to shed light on these important issues and to be the true advocates for Farmers and Laborers."
None of these clever gents ever claimed to be history majors, so perhaps a brief lesson on the Farmer and Labor tradition in that name is in order. After all, if the RFL Caucus is going to reclaim the Democrats' lost tradition, they should know what was.
The Farmer-Labor Party
At the Minnesota State Historical Society's MNOPEDIA, Tom O'Connell writes in Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, 1924–1944:
Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) represents one of the most successful progressive third-party coalitions in American history. From its roots in 1917 through the early 1940s, the FLP elected hundreds of candidates to state and national office and created a powerful movement based on the needs of struggling workers and farmers.
The history of the FLP unfolded in four stages: emergence (1917–1924), consolidation (1924–1930), high tide (1930–1938), and decline (1938–1944). In the first stage, two broad-based organizations, the Farmers’ Non-Partisan League and the Working Peoples’ Non-Partisan League, joined forces. Together, they challenged Minnesota’s ruling Republicans by running their own slate of candidates in the primary elections.
In the fall of 1917, organizers from the League crisscrossed the state. They registered fifty thousand farmers for an anti-monopoly program patterned after the successful effort made by North Dakota farmers the year before. In response, the administration of Republican governor J. A. A. Burnquist carried on a campaign of harassment. His staff branded both farm and labor participants as unpatriotic and even jailed leaders for disloyalty.
Refusing to back down, farmers and workers continued to organize. In 1918, Congressman Charles Lindbergh came within 51,000 votes of defeating Burnquist in the Republican primary. In the general election, the Farmer-Labor coalition elected thirty three of its members to the state legislature and replaced the Democrats as the main rivals of Minnesota's Republican Party. Maintaining its alliance in 1920 and 1922, the FLP continued to elect state and local officials. These included two U.S. senators: Magnus Johnson and Henrik Shipstead.
In 1924, a second stage began when the two organizations founded the Farmer-Labor Federation. (It was replaced by the Farmer-Labor Association the following year.) The association was the educational and organizational center of the movement. The FLP was its electoral arm.
In the Republican-friendly 1920s, the FLP found itself swimming upstream. With its large network of committed members in both city and country, however, the party continued to elect candidates. It remained the strongest opposition party to the Republicans.
In 1930, the steady work paid off. Floyd B. Olson defeated the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor, beginning the third and most successful period of Farmer-Labor history. A gifted orator, Olson voiced the feelings of Minnesotans struggling with unemployment and economic hardship. Voters re-elected Olson as governor in 1932 and 1934. He was a sure winner for the U.S. Senate before he died of a stomach tumor in 1936.
Olson’s success, combined with skillful organizing, sparked dramatic growth in Farmer-Labor participation. Dues-paying membership in the party’s association rose to almost forty thousand as organizers set up clubs across the state. Hundreds of Farmer-Laborites held elected offices at all levels of government, from city council to U.S. Senate. In 1936, the FLP captured six of nine congressional seats, the governorship, and a solid majority in the state House of Representatives.
Although the FLP controlled the governorship for eight years, it was never able to win a majority in the state senate and enact their full agenda. Pieces of its platform, however, did become law. These included a moratorium on farm foreclosures, relief for the unemployed, banking reform, a state income tax, and thirteen new state forests. . . .
The FLP was far more than an electoral party. It was a genuine social movement with its own educational and cultural outlets. Thousands participated: farmers, workers, professionals, and owners of small businesses. The movement included militant farm organizations like the Farm Holiday Association, groups representing the unemployed, labor unions, and cooperatives. These movements often connected directly to the Farmer-Labor Association as affiliates. Even when they did not, the collective energy of popular protest in Minnesota built support for Farmer-Labor candidates and programs.
The Farmer-Labor movement reflected diverse social traditions. Some Finnish and Scandinavian immigrants brought socialist ideas with them to their new homes in Minnesota. Temperance and suffrage activists transferred their crusading spirit to the FLP. Generations of rural populists passed on the tradition of farmer solidarity and opposition to the railroad and grain monopolies. . . .
If that's what the four gentlemen wish to recover, Bluestem knows plenty of folks who cheer its revival, minus the temperance part. We'd love to see boot-lickers in both parties recant their allegiance to global corporations such as Bayer-Monsanto, Syngenta, support banking reform, and the like--while abandoning efforts to suppress popular protest. It might not make Nick Zerwas and Paul Marquart happy, but were the Republican Farmer Labor Caucus to be more than a smart-ass re-branding messaging ploy, Minnesota might actual some substantive policy discussions instead of whiny posturing about goose shit and drinking water.
If only those who didn't learn the lessons of history were doomed to repeat it.
Jeff Backer must have slept during history lessons growing up in West Central Minnesota; it's a hard habit to break, we fear. Since Miller was raised in Illinois, we can't fault him for missing the legacy of Farmer-Labor Party governor Elmer Benson, who hailed from Appleton, near the line between Backer and Miller's districts. MNOPEDIA says of Benson:
As governor, Benson championed the most ambitious legislative agenda in Minnesota history. His platform combined support for the unemployed with New Deal-style social programs financed by increased taxes on big business and the wealthy.
Most of Benson’s proposals passed the Farmer-Labor-controlled House of Representatives. Only a few, however, survived the Republican-controlled Senate. One critic famously pointed out that although Floyd Olson had made radical statements in the past, “this SOB [Benson] actually means them!”
To an unprecedented degree, Benson used the power of his office to support the rights of labor. In the bitterly cold January of 1937, he ordered state officials to provide food and shelter to striking timber workers throughout northern Minnesota. That same year, he deployed the National Guard to protect the Newspaper Guild’s right to strike. He also refused to renew the notorious anti-labor Pinkerton Agency’s license in Minnesota. In perhaps the most dramatic intervention, Benson ordered Albert Lea’s anti-union sheriff to release striking workers from jail. He then personally took charge of talks between workers and a reluctant management.
Alas, we haven't seen any bills introduced by these four to revive that old spirit of the Farmer-Laborites, Munson's new at the job, but one clear illustration of their failure to measure up is last year's vote on the Uniform State Labor Standards Act (H.F. No. 600),now lurking in conference committee.
The National Law Review reported in 2017's Minnesota Bill to Preempt Local Sick and Safe Leave Ordinances Advances in Legislature:
As expected, the Uniform State Labor Standards Act (H.F. No. 600)—a Minnesota bill to preempt local employment law ordinances, including the Minneapolis and St. Paul safe and sick leave ordinances—passed in the state House of Representatives on March 2, 2017, by a 76–53 margin. All Republican members of the chamber who were present supported the measure, and they were joined by two Democrats. The bill will now go to the state Senate, where a companion measure (S.F. No. 580) has been introduced.
Legislators faced strong opposition against this bill from members of the public, labor unions, and city officials. And Governor Dayton, a Democrat, is expected to veto the measure if it reaches his desk as a stand-alone law. As this year’s session continues, the preemption bill may be combined with other bills that have been introduced—particularly those that would provide family leave, extend safe and sick leave benefits to all workers in the state, and increase the state’s minimum wage to something closer to $15.00 per hour (the Democrats’ wish list)—to create a single bill. Republicans mostly oppose all of the proposals with which the bill is likely to be joined. . . .
Elmer would not have been on board with that, so these guys have some distance to hike to recover the old Farmer Labor part of the DFL (for that matter, Ken Martin's crew on Plato Avenue has some work to do as well).
The story of Floyd B. Olson is told here, but we'll close with the Los Angeles Times obituary for Benson, Socialist Elmer Benson Dies at 89 : Radical Played a Prominent Role in Minnesota Politics:
Elmer A. Benson, an unreconstructed leftist radical who served one stormy term as governor of Minnesota and helped create the Democratic-Farmer-Labor coalition that continues to dominate Minnesota politics, died Wednesday night. He was 89.
Benson, who had been in ill health in recent years, died at Mount Sinai Hospital.
Benson had been state banking commissioner under Gov. Floyd B. Olson, who appointed him in 1935 to serve the 1 1/2 years remaining in the U.S. Senate term of Thomas D. Schall, who died in a car accident.
Then Benson came home to run for governor and won a landslide victory in 1936, only to be turned out by Republican Harold Stassen in 1938.
Although the 1937 Legislature had given Benson--an early Socialist sympathizer--little of what he sought, many of his proposals became law during the 40 years that followed--property tax relief for homesteads; higher income tax rates for high-income individuals and corporations; mandatory workers' compensation coverage for employees; a state Civil Service system; expanded state aid for schools, financed by income taxes; party designation for legislators. . . .
After leaving politics, Benson grew wealthy in banking. A television reporter once asked him how his wealth squared with his critical views of capitalism.
"It worked for me," he shot back. "But look at all the thousands of people it hasn't worked for."
We'll see if this cohort can recover that spirit. And policy agenda.
Images: 2018 Farmer Labor images and one from the 1930s.
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