Possible Senate Candidate in 1988 : This Humphrey Is at Ease With His Famous Name

Hubert H. Humphrey III used to bristle at suggestions that he was a popular Minnesota vote-getter because of his name.

“I’m me,” Minnesota’s attorney general told a reporter in 1973, when he was a freshman state senator. “Some people are going to be sadly mistaken if they thought they were voting for me because they thought I was going to be like my old man.”

“Skip” Humphrey, who is seeking reelection as Minnesota’s attorney general this year and is a top Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) prospect for the U.S. Senate in 1988, is far less sensitive these days to comparisons to his late father, the former vice president and senator.

“Frankly, it’s a compliment . . . the name is great,” he said recently. “Lord sakes, if anybody can stand up to that standard of public service, we’ll all be in great shape.”

Little Resemblance

Prematurely gray at 44, Humphrey bears only a slight physical resemblance to his father. But he has acquired the speaking mannerisms, such as a cadenced delivery, which made the senior Humphrey one of Minnesota’s best-ever stump speakers.

Humphrey is poised for a bid to regain for DFL the Senate seat once held by his father. The seat currently is held by Independent-Republican David Durenberger.

While he insists that his current interest is in being reelected attorney general, Humphrey has left the door wide open for vacating that post at midterm.

After he was endorsed by acclamation at the DFL state convention in June, Humphrey was asked if he intended to serve a full four-year term as attorney general. “My pledge is to serve the people wherever they want me,” he responded.

Reluctant Challenger

Independent-Republicans initially had some trouble coming up with a candidate who would take on Humphrey, the state’s top vote-getter in the 1982 general election, when he garnered 1,082,539 votes. Ultimately, they recruited and nominated former DFLer Lewis Freeman, a 38-year-old Minneapolis lawyer and president of the Minnesota-Dakota Conference of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

After 10 years in the state Senate and nearly four as attorney general, Humphrey says that Minnesotans now recognize him and his accomplishments separately from those of his father.

“This year, the responses at parades and the places that I’ve been are beyond my farthest dreams,” he said. “Over the four-year period, I think people have gotten to know me personally. They identify more with me as a person than they ever have before. They speak very directly about some of the things we’ve been doing.”

Humphrey cites his office’s investigation into the handling of child sexual abuse cases in Scott County and his efforts on behalf of financially strapped farmers--including a mandatory farm-loan mediation program--as among the programs that have gained him recognition.

Detriment Seen

Freeman agrees that voters are beginning to differentiate between Humphrey and his late father, but he says it will be to young Humphrey’s detriment.

“It’s one thing to run against a mortal and another to run against a ghost,” Freeman said. “I’m not afraid of ghosts. More and more, I think people will judge Skip by his own performance and the legacy of his name will diminish.”

For his part, Humphrey says he loves what he’s doing now.

“If I was smart, I probably wouldn’t ever run for anything else,” he said. “But I’m frustrated. I see a lot of things I can’t accomplish here.”

Fatherly Advice

Asked what was the most important thing he learned from his father about politics, Humphrey hesitated, then said, “Try to remember everybody’s name.”

He quickly added: “Don’t write that down, because I can’t (remember names). That’s the worst thing that has happened. Not only, No. 1, was he good at it, but as the time separates from when he was here . . . the stories are getting bigger and bigger. It is impossible to keep up with that tradition.”

Turning serious, Humphrey said: “The key thing I learned from my father . . . was he was his best source of information.

“He went to the people. . . . He never got that far away that he couldn’t walk a street somewhere in Minnesota and be willing to take whatever comes to him from any individual and absorb it as information.”