Few governors of any state can claim a larger state policy legacy than could Wendell Anderson, who died Sunday at age 83. He served in statewide office for just eight years, six of them as governor. In that brief span, he presided over changes so sweeping that they can fairly be said to have invented modern Minnesota.

Anderson was the handsome angler featured on the iconic 1973 Time Magazine cover story headlined “Minnesota, the state that works.” That national acclaim followed several years of dramatic change at the State Capitol, much of it engineered by Anderson and the strong executive team he assembled.

Anderson was just 37 years old when elected governor. An East St. Paul native and former U.S. Olympic hockey player, he represented youth, vigor and a liberal shift in the state electorate as the baby boom generation came of voting age.

His signal achievement was the 1971 budget overhaul remembered as the “Minnesota Miracle.” Building on recommendations from the Citizens League, DFLer Anderson pushed through a Republican-controlled Legislature a major income and sales tax increase for the sake of a big boost in state aid to schools and local governments. That allowed for both reductions in property taxes and the narrowing of disparities in the quality of education and local government services between rich and poor jurisdictions. It improved the quality of public services in many places, setting the table for prosperity in subsequent decades.

Just as miraculous as the scope of that change was the bipartisanship that produced it. Anderson forged a bipartisan consensus through months of negotiation that extended well past the regular legislative session’s allotted calendar.

When voters in 1972 elected the state’s first all-DFL-led Legislature, Anderson was ready with an ambitious agenda. It included enactment of an environmental regulatory framework; a state minimum wage; state enforcement of federal workers’ safety standards; open-meeting laws; the first sizable state foray into affordable housing, and enhancement of Metropolitan Council planning authority.

Though tagged “Spendy Wendy” by the GOP, Anderson’s program was popular — and so was he. His re-election campaign achieved a rare political feat, carrying all 87 counties. But that success may have skewed his political judgment. His self-appointment to a vacant U.S. Senate seat in late 1976 was a blunder of major proportion. Voters in 1978 not only denied Anderson election to a full Senate term but also punished the entire DFL ticket, leading to the election of a Republican governor, two Republican U.S. senators and a Minnesota House tie, 67-67.

Despite his relative youth, Anderson never recovered politically from his 1978 defeat. His later life was spent as an attorney, a University of Minnesota regent and honorary consul general for Sweden. But the brevity of his political career does not diminish its impact or its value. For many in a generation of Minnesotans that came of age in the 1970s, Anderson set the standard of gubernatorial leadership against which they have measured every governor since. We join them in mourning his passing.