Mourning Al Quie — and his era

Opinion editor's note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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Family, friends and citizens across Minnesota are mourning former Gov. Al Quie, who died at 99 on Friday.

Many may also be grieving the loss of an era.

It was a time reflective of — and in part shaped by — leaders like Quie, who throughout his life seemed guided by public service more than by politics.

Not that Quie wasn't electorally successful. Indeed, after growing up on a farm and serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Quie briefly served in the Minnesota Legislature before a substantial 20-year congressional career as the representative for Minnesota's First District, culminating in his election to governor in 1978, just a few years after Watergate had Republicans reeling across the country.

But budget shortfalls bedeviled Quie's tenure. True to character, instead of stubbornly sticking to orthodoxy or positioning for re-election, the governor compromised and allowed a tax increase to take effect to not only balance the books but position Minnesota for a more stable fiscal future.

In the process, "he really sacrificed his political future, his political career, for the sake of getting Minnesota's budget back on track," Lori Sturdevant, a retired Star Tribune editorial writer, now occasional columnist, told an editorial writer.

Sturdevant, who covered the governor, said that Quie later explained his decision by saying: "It's like a family and you set up your budget. And then you have a child who becomes terribly ill and you have to spend money on medicine to save your child. So you set the budget plans you made aside so you can buy that medicine."

Sturdevant added that Quie, a father of four and husband to Gretchen, who died in 2015, "loved Minnesota like a parent loved a child, and he served the state very well." Too often "we have got it wrong in our politics today," she added. "We value politics more than governance. Al Quie valued governance."

Politics — or at least some politicians — didn't always love him back, including some fellow Republicans who shamefully expelled him from the state party for backing a former Republican running as a third-party candidate in 2010. The partisans were wrong, and the party may have been more successful statewide in recent years if it hadn't driven people of character like Quie away.

The former governor in fact valued governance, but also valued individuals, driven by his quiet, but quite strong, Christian beliefs. He deployed that faith in many facets, including advocacy for prisoners, former prisoners and their families through his leadership roles with the Christian nonprofit group Prison Fellowship.

Quie had "unbelievable compassion and heart for those that were incarcerated," Tim Robison, Prison Fellowship's chief operating officer, told an editorial writer. Including for many men at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Lino Lakes, where Quie would drive up alone well into his 90s, according to Prison Fellowship's vice president of academy programs, Cody Wilde.

"It was not uncommon to be in a room with a group of incarcerated guys in a semicircle around Al listening to his stories" about his years of service in World War II, Washington and St. Paul, as well as about his family. "It felt like you were talking to Teddy Roosevelt; the guy did everything," Wilde told an editorial writer. Including showing genuine care for the incarcerated. "He loved them," said Wilde, "and they knew it."

The comparison to Roosevelt is apt at least regarding the outdoors: Quie developed a passion for horseback riding during his youth on a dairy farm and kept at it until he was 96. It's a fitting image for the former governor, who was close to the land, down to earth and rode tall in the saddle as he strove to do the right thing.