Arne Carlson, Al Quie and David Durenberger are among those banished from the party. Minnesota GOP brings out the knives

In a dramatic display of the new Republican order, Minnesota’s state GOP banished 18 prominent party members — including two former governors and a retired U.S. senator — as punishment for supporting a third-party candidate for governor.

The stunning purge, narrowly passed by the state Republican central committee last weekend, suggests more than just a fit of pique: by banning some of the state’s leading moderates, the Minnesota GOP moved toward extinguishing a dying species of Republican in one of its last habitats.


Those exiled warned that the measure, which bans the 18 former members from participating in party activities for two years and bars them from attending the 2012 Republican National Convention, may provoke a backlash that undercuts the party’s competitiveness in a state that’s voted for the GOP presidential nominee just once in the past half century.

“The Republican party is trying to become ... you would call it introverted totalitarianism,” said former congressman and Gov. Al Quie, a onetime vice presidential prospect who plans to stick with the party despite the penalty. “It’s just plain dumb on their part. ... In the long run, if the party persists with this, [it's] going to just become smaller and smaller and eventually something else would come in its place.”

Among those rebuked along with Quie were former U.S. Sen. David Durenberger, former Gov. Arne Carlson and former state House Speaker David Jennings.

State Republican Chairman Tony Sutton said Saturday’s measure, which passed by 59 to 55 votes, was “a venting of frustration” that grew out of the belief that the candidacy of Republican-turned-independent Tom Horner cost GOP nominee Tom Emmer the governor’s race in November.

Emmer, who finally conceded the close race on Wednesday, finished behind by about 9,000 votes at the end of a recount. Horner, meanwhile, garnered 12 percent.

Down-ballot gains this year emboldened Sutton to argue that the party might be better off without the old-fashioned moderates, some of whom support abortion rights and tax increases.

Sutton’s candidates seized control of the state House, which the party lost in 2006, and the state Senate, which the GOP has not controlled since it became a partisan chamber. A conservative insurgent also toppled 17-term Democratic Rep. Jim Oberstar, the dean of the state’s congressional delegation.

“I think a lot of these people are not relevant politically,” Sutton said. “They represent a bygone era, sort of the era of the 'country club Republican' -– when we weren’t opposed to Big Government; we just said we could manage it better. This is [now] sort of the Reagan Era of the Republican Party.”

“It’s funny, we’ve had more success since we moved away from a lot of these folks,” he added. “You can argue we’ve become more successful as we’ve become truer to our principles.”

Still, Democrats swept all four statewide races this year — including attorney general, auditor and secretary of state — at a time when Minnesota’s outgoing Gov. Tim Pawlenty is weighing a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.

“Truth be told with the delegates there, there was just going to be no reasoning with some of them. They just wanted to take losing the governor’s race out on someone,” said one member of the central committee who voted against the banishment and fears. “We’re not into the acceptance phase of that yet.”

The excommunications bode poorly for Gov.-elect Mark Dayton, who must pass legislation through a Republican-controlled legislature that now understands there are serious consequences to departing from the party line. Some Republicans question whether there will be a chilling effect on newly elected legislators from swing districts who might otherwise have been inclined to cooperate with the new governor in tackling a $6.2 billion budget deficit forecast for the next two years.

Carlson, who served two terms as governor during the 1990s, compared his banishment to the toppling of three-term Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett this spring and frets that another veteran GOP pragmatist, Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar, could lose a Republican primary in 2012.

Carlson said modern GOP activists would probably try to eject former presidential candidates like Barry Goldwater, who supported abortion rights, and Bob Taft, an antiwar isolationist, if either was alive.

“Maybe it would be more beneficial if Tony Sutton left the Republican Party and took his philosophy elsewhere, and we could get a chairman who knows how to grow a party,” Carlson said.

Last Saturday’s central committee meeting, held in a suburb south of the Twin Cities, ran hours longer than planned. While the state party’s governing body has about 350 members, many left as the meeting dragged on. Some observers think the resolution, not technically enforceable, might have failed if more than one-third of the committee had voted.

Carleton College Professor Steven Schier points to research showing that Minnesota’s Republican Party is as conservative at the activist level as South Carolina’s.

“They’re on an ideological mission,” Schier said. “Their tactics seem to be consistently scorched earth now. ... A party with that ideological profile cannot afford to be tossing people out of its ranks in Minnesota.”

Sutton has not decided whether he will seek another term as party chair, but the committee’s vote to ban Horner's backers probably strengthens his position.

“In all honesty, in today’s polarized environment, it is probably in Chairman Sutton’s best interest to exploit the polarization,” Horner said. “He, as a political activity, needs to keep that polarization alive. This is one way to reinforce that.”

The ban, however, wasn’t without some provocation. In 2008, Carlson publicly endorsed President Barack Obama. Durenberger also voted for Obama, and in 2010, the former GOP senator endorsed both Horner — who had served as his chief of staff — and Democratic Rep. Tim Walz.

Quie’s banishment, in particular, came as a surprise. The 87-year-old, who served two decades in the U.S. House before winning the governorship in 1978, likes to talk about his grandfather coming to Minnesota in 1856 and helping Abraham Lincoln carry the state four years later. He cannot recall ever voting for a non-Republican candidate before Horner.

The former governor said he backed him because Horner supported putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would change the way judges are elected and wouldn’t rule out tax increases as part of a balanced approach to resolve the deficit.

“There are some moderate Republicans who have already left, but there are other moderate Republicans who are now going through what they’re going to do,” Quie said. “I’m not going to leave the Republican Party.”

He understands why activists are mad.

“I think back to when I was in Congress and some Republican conferees wouldn’t stick with me,” he said. “I called and left a message with Tony Sutton ... I said, ‘I don’t blame you for being unhappy about it. Don’t get ulcers. Just work with those people again.’”

Other targets of the state party’s wrath were puzzled by their punishment. Former state Sen. Ed Oliver, one of the 18, was an alternate delegate for Marty Seifert’s gubernatorial campaign at this spring’s state convention. Oliver thinks Seifert would have beat Dayton in the general election.

Just after he was banished, Oliver went to a Christmas party for a state House Republican he supports. A few central committee members were there too.

“The Republican Party leadership is being very vindictive to some persons who have been staunch Republicans throughout the years,” he said. “Most people I talk to don’t get it.”

Democrats, who seized on news of the ban, believe it will prove helpful in wooing back independents who have soured on Obama.

“The Republican Party has clearly chosen to represent a narrow fringe of ultra-conservatives and exclude the majority of Minnesotans — first in their policy positions and now in their internal party process as well,” said Brian Melendez, the state Democratic Party chairman, in a statement.

For his part, Pawlenty has made an effort to stay out of the brouhaha. A Pawlenty spokesman declined to comment.

Sutton made waves in October for blasting a group of Republicans who had endorsed Horner by saying, "There's a special place in hell for these Quislings."

Sutton, who technically didn't take a position on the resolution because he chaired the meeting, made his feelings clear by expressing befuddlement at what he calls the “faux outrage” over the temporary bans.

“I don’t understand people who are upset by it. You claim to be a member of a political party, of a team, and you’re supporting someone on the other team,” he said. “This isn’t a tickle contest. This isn’t ninth grade civics, where you’re running for class president. This is pretty serious business.”