Elmer L. Andersen, 95; Ex-Minnesota Governor, Newspaper Publisher

Elmer L. Andersen, 95, a one-term governor of Minnesota and businessman who built a chain of weekly newspapers in his retirement years, died Monday in St. Paul, Minn., of complications from a blocked bile duct.

Andersen, who detailed his Horatio Alger life in the autobiography “A Man’s Reach” in 2000, was a Minnesota state senator for a decade before winning election as a liberal Republican governor in 1960. He lost his bid for a second two-year term to Karl Rolvaag by 91 votes, setting off a five-month recount that failed to alter the outcome. Yet Andersen earned his place in state history for creating Voyageurs National Park and securing a state constitutional amendment that, by reducing taxes on taconite, a low-grade iron ore, revitalized the Iron Range.

Andersen was born in Chicago, grew up in poverty near Muskegon, Mich., survived polio at age 9 and was orphaned by 15. He graduated from Muskegon Junior College and the University of Minnesota, and became a salesman for H.B. Fuller, which he bought for $10,000 in 1941. He offered innovative benefits for the era, including retiree health insurance and parental leave.

After retiring from Fuller in 1976, Andersen bought two squabbling weekly newspapers in Princeton, Minn., and combined them as the Princeton Union-Eagle. He added 16 more weekly papers and seven shoppers, and wrote respected signed editorials, publishing several in the book “Views from the Publisher’s Desk.”