Minnesota Candidate Will Stay in Race, Despite Sex Allegation

Jon Grunseth, the gubernatorial challenger in trouble over reports he swam nude with teen-age girls in 1981, announced late Thursday he will stay in the race after planning earlier to withdraw.

“I came here tonight to withdraw from this race,” Grunseth told about 100 supporters.

“But there has been just an incredible outpouring of love . . . and prayer for this family that has overwhelmed both Vicki (his wife) and me. We are going to press forward no matter (what),” he said.

A source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said earlier that Grunseth would withdraw on the condition that the party’s 325-member state central committee name his successor on the ballot.

Grunseth kept reporters and anxious supporters waiting for hours as he huddled with advisers far past 7 p.m., the time he set for a news conference at which he had been expected to announce his withdrawal from the race.

Grunseth had been running close to Democratic incumbent Rudy Perpich before Oct. 15, when two women charged in sworn statements that Grunseth encouraged them to join him in a nude swim in 1981, when they were 13 and 14.

Grunseth, 44, denied the allegation but had been under increasing pressure from his party to quit the race. He had consistently vowed to remain on the ballot.

The source in the Grunseth camp said Grunseth would throw his support to Cal Ludeman, a Tracy farmer and former state legislator who was the Republican candidate for governor in 1986.

Ludeman scheduled a news conference for later Thursday in the same Bloomington hotel, but it was never held.

The Grunseth partisan said Grunseth did not want to automatically hand the GOP spot on the ballot to Arne Carlson, who launched a write-in campaign on Monday after losing to Grunseth in the Sept. 11 primary.

Grunseth, who considers himself a moderate-conservative, had said Carlson, a leader of the moderate wing of the party, is not acceptable to him as the party’s candidate.