1938 Minnesota gubernatorial election

The Farmer-Labor Primary election was between incumbent governor Elmer Benson and former governor Hjalmar Petersen.

The Republican Primary Election was held between four candidates. Harold Stassen won the election with a 47.42% plurality.

• Elmer Benson, Incumbent (Farmer-Labor)
• Harold Stassen, Dakota County Attorney (Republican)
• John William Castle, Painter (Industrial)
• Thomas F. Gallagher, Attorney (Democrat)

Incumbent Benson found his position weakened in 1938. President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not endorse him for a second term, and former governor and primary opponent Hjalmar Petersen refused to fall in line with him. Former political allies from Wisconsin, Governor Philip La Follette and Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr., also broke with Benson, openly preferring Stassen. The La Follettes has sought to unite the Farmer-Labor party with the Wisconsin Progressive Party into the National Progressives of America, with candidates already slated in Iowa. Benson refused the union, resulting in the collapse of relations between the two.^[4]

Stassen called Benson's administration "the three R's; reactionary, radical, and racketeering." Benson explained his reasoning as; Reactionary, as in Benson's ideological control of the Farmer-Labor party, Radical in its encouragement of strikes, which Stassen claimed were 'violent', and Racketeering as in attempts to implement sales tax and liquor tax. Stassen further accused Benson's administration of being more focused on maintaining control than benefitting the people.^[5]

Benson attacked Stassen for his call for 'tolerance', stating that Stassen's tolerance was nothing more than tolerating special interests, big banks, and big business. Benson stated "You cannot serve God and Mammon."^[6]

One local Farmer-Laborite leader from Floodwood, S. B. Ruohoniemi, had endorsed Stassen and other Republican candidates. Ruohoniemi allenged that a group of fellow Farmer-Laborites accused him of being a traitor, and went as far as threatening his life.^[7]

In early October, Stassen proposed a debate with Benson, that would have been the first gubernatorial debate in Minnesotan history. Benson refused.^[8]

Stassen's image was heavily impacted by a strike that happened while he was Dakota County commissioner, in November of 1933. A strike in South St. Paul by 1,233 workers of Armour and Company was poorly resolved by Stassen after he ordered the illegal arrests and raids of union leaders. The strike was broken and the workers returned with work with no new pay or compensation, and the strike leaders were blacklisted from jobs. However, the compliance board chairman of the National Recovery Administration, M. J. O'Toole, argued instead that Stassen was uninvolved in the raids or arrests, and fought for the re-instatement of the workers and, upon its founding, brought the issues to the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of the workers in 1935.^[9]

• Benson, Elmer A. "Politics in My Lifetime." Minnesota History 47 (1980): 154–60. online
• Haynes, John Earl. Dubious alliance: the making of Minnesota's DFL Party (U of Minnesota Press, 1984)
• Kirby, Ales, David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann. Harold E. Stassen: The Life and Perennial Candidacy of the Progressive Republican (2012)
• Lovin, Hugh T. "The Fall of Farmer–Labor Parties, 1936-1938." Pacific Northwest Quarterly (1971): 16–26. in JSTOR
• Sofchalk, Donald G. "Union and Ethnic Group Influence in the 1938 Election on the Minnesota Iron Ranges." Journal of the West (2003) 42#3 pp: 66–74.