Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

KAREN BARTA: Good morning. I'm Karen Barta with news from Minnesota Public Radio. This is the final day of campaigning before tomorrow's general election, as Minnesota Public Radio's Karen Louise Boothe reports, candidates for US Senate are burning up the campaign trail.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: Democratic senator Paul Wellstone and his challengers, Rudy Boschwitz and Dean Barkley, are all keeping a hectic schedule today. Wellstone meets with government employees in Hennepin County and workers at Northwest Airlines. He's also making stops to meet with members of the Senior Federation and phone banks, where his campaign's volunteers are pulling out all the stops, calling thousands of voters statewide.

As for Republican Rudy Boschwitz, his calendar includes a stop at a middle school in Mounds View, where he'll lecture a class of sixth graders, and Reform Party candidate Dean Barkley has a series of radio appearances at stations in greater Minnesota. For Minnesota Public Radio, this is Karen Louise Boothe at the Capitol.

KAREN BARTA: Hennepin County district judge Kathleen Blatz becomes the state's Supreme Court's youngest member today. At age 42, Blatz has been a prosecutor, a Republican state representative, and a social worker. She replaces retiring justice Imogen Coyne, who turns 70 next month.

The state forecast today rain is likely in the south, and there is a chance of rain in east central Minnesota, becoming cloudy in the north, with highs from the upper 30s in the far north to around 50 in the south. For the Twin Cities, cloudy with a chance of rain, and a high around 45 degrees. Tonight, a chance of rain during the evening, then remaining mostly cloudy with a low around 40.

Around the region, in Rochester, it's raining and 42 degrees. It's cloudy and 37 in Duluth. In Saint Cloud, skies are sunny. It's 35. And in the Twin Cities, it's cloudy and 41. That's news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Karen Barta.

PAUL SCHROEDER: It's six minutes past 10 o'clock. This is Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Paula Schroeder.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Minneapolis advertising executive Lee Lynch is alarmed at the negative advertising being used in politics. He and others this year undertook a big campaign of their own to clean up political advertising. Today on Voices of Minnesota, we'll hear Lee Lynch talk about the results. Lynch is a native of Belle Plaine, Minnesota. He's a founder and head of Carmichael Lynch, a Minneapolis advertising agency. He talked with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson about the political advertising code.

LEE LYNCH: The specific principles, first of all, the candidates signed and said, I take full responsibility for approving and reviewing my advertising. This means they can't say the staff did it or they didn't see it. The second thing is, I will be on my commercials 50% of the time or more, and that links the candidate to the commercial. And it's amazing how a candidate does not do cynical stuff when he or she is on the commercial. So that was an important fundamental precept of our code, to link the candidate to the message.

The third thing was that I won't do any insulting cartoons or morphine or distortions or colorizing of my opponent's likeness, their face, or their video. So that's a trend that's been so sickening.

And the fourth one and the one that we had the most problem with, that is I will renounce publicly independent expenditures that are placed on behalf of my candidacy that are not in keeping with the spirit of our code. And that means you would have to come out and say, if the Democratic National Committee or the Republican National Committee ran a scurrilous commercial on your behalf, that you'd have to say, I renounce that, I repudiate that, I do not like them, I do not want to be associated with that commercial, and this is where we all fell apart.

DAN OLSON: At the beginning of the political season, I believe the two major parties rejected the code.

LEE LYNCH: Yeah, neither party wanted to-- actually, we made a mistake of announcing or previewing the code with the party handlers, the professionals within politics.

DAN OLSON: Why was that a mistake?

LEE LYNCH: Well, because before it got out of my mouth, when I presented it at the Citizens League annual meeting last November, the handlers, the party chairs and handlers, by handlers I mean the professional campaign managers, they saw right away that this was taking away some of the tools of their trade, and the tools of their trade are nasty tools. And so they were against this. And so I started out in the hole.

DAN OLSON: Well, so are you a little depressed over the fact-- or maybe you're not depressed because maybe the code had some de facto effect? Maybe they said, well, we reject it, but, gee whiz, and they went back to their office and said, you know what, he has something. We better maybe start paying attention here.

LEE LYNCH: Well, we kept going after our rejection after the annual meeting of the Citizens League and formed a group of advisors, steering committee advisors, which include three former governors, which include two former party chairs, which includes a former congressman, which includes four heavy contributors, totally bipartisan. And they became our steering committee, and we said, let's go on, let's continue, and let's try in a small way to make an impact.

DAN OLSON: What's happening across the country? Do you have people saying to you, Lee Lynch, that is just exactly the thing to do. We're going to join you and we're going to clean up the media advertising and this political advertising in this country?

LEE LYNCH: Well, first of all, across the state, and then I'll go to across the country, across the state, we had finally about 93% of all elections for the state legislature, the House and the Senate and Congressional races, 93% of all races have one or the other candidates signing our code. We've got almost 240 candidates totally that have signed our code, and that it's been a factor, an important factor in some races.

Our code is being used heavily in the first district between Mary Reeder and Gil Gutnick running for Congress, and it's become an issue of who has been a signature. Mr. Gutnick did sign, Miss Reeder did not sign, and that's become an issue. In the district here in the Twin Cities, Bill Luther running for Congress against Tad Jude also runs the seal of our code in his advertising, saying that, I have signed and my candidate, and this is a candidate that had a little bit of a history in troublesome advertising in his past campaigns, has not signed. And so we've affected a couple of Congressional races, I think, in a big way.

DAN OLSON: A seal of good housekeeping.

LEE LYNCH: It is a good housekeeping seal in a sense. And we are sorry that Mr. Boschwitz and Mr. Wellstone did not. Mr. Wellstone said he would sign if Mr. Boschwitz would, and Mr. Boschwitz did not want to at all.

DAN OLSON: But if I'm the US Chamber of Commerce, if I'm the AFL CIO and a candidate I support signs your code and goes along with it, then in good conscience, do they have to reject my money? Well, they don't even have anything to say about how I spend my money.

LEE LYNCH: They don't have to say, but the candidate can repudiate it. I think the interesting case study is happening with William Weld, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, and John Kerry, the existing current senator of Massachusetts, where they agreed to a cut a cap in spending hours.

They said, we're not going to spend any more than $5 million in media. We're not going to contribute any more than $500,000 of our own wealth. They're both millionaires. And if an independent expenditure runs, it is deducted from our $5 million. So if the AF of L or the NRA ran a commercial, the candidate, and this has happened, Mr. Kerry and Mr. Weld are both saying, oh my god, I wish that weren't running.

Now, these whole independent expenditures are not independent. You can't tell me that when we see commercials by the Republican or Democratic National Committee that happen to be on the same issue that the other candidate is are independent. And so theoretically, Mr. Weld or Mr. Kerry in Massachusetts, they can't say to the Sierra Club, please don't run, that you're deducting from my total because you're independent.

So they can't call them directly and tell them not to run it. Instead, they have to announce to the media, I wish they wouldn't run that. It's all a joke. The soft money thing was the biggest setback in our campaign.

It happened in June when the Supreme Court said, Katy, bar the door. You can spend as much money as you want in soft money, supposedly independent money. This was a depressing setback.

Had it not been-- we were about to fold up our tent because this really was undermining our efforts, and had it not been for a call out of the blue from one of my advisors-- it just was a call on a dreary afternoon for me. It was Elmer L. Anderson, a Republican governor of the state of Minnesota. And he says, Lee, I just was thinking about, and I think it's a wonderful thing that we're trying to do. And that little bit of encouragement kept us going, saying, well, let's keep it going again.

DAN OLSON: But is this nibbling at the margins? Aren't most voters now, in our sophisticated era of advertising, dismissive of negative ads, of attack ads? And notwithstanding the concern you and most of the rest of us have about money, the voters say, yeah, that's just what they're putting on TV. I'll go to the booth and vote my heart and my conscience.

LEE LYNCH: Right. Well, first of all, they don't go to the booth. If there's heavily negative and cynical advertising, that suppresses turnout. So a lot of people aren't going. And what alarms me is that sometimes, in certain places, a strategy, and that is to try to suppress so we can turn out our loyalists, and our hardcore loyalists are going to carry the day and the independents will be chased away.

DAN OLSON: But maybe in the spending of money on attack ads, negative ads, is there a self-correcting effect? I'm not even sure what I mean by that. By the fact that candidates will see after a while, you know what, we're not having the desired impact here. We are not getting the results we're seeking.

LEE LYNCH: I think that Minnesota now is being picked up in the national media a lot where this has happened. It has now been argued that the cynical advertising of Rudy Boschwitz against Paul Wellstone is costing him the election. Now, we don't know until the votes are counted, but it tracks very closely in research that we're doing, have done, and that different polls have done, and I think if he does lose the election, that the cynical advertising has had to play an incredible role.

And maybe we helped-- maybe our group helped by really sensitizing people to this, because we've done a lot of speeches and we've been to a lot of editors of little papers around the state of Minnesota. We've had great editorial coverage. Maybe in a small way, we sensitized people to reject this.

DAN OLSON: Is there a better approach? Granted, the good housekeeping seal is a great idea, but is there another approach of coming in through the back door? I don't even know the constitutional implications of lobbying the FCC to somehow limit what broadcast entities, for example, will put on the air that abide by your standard.

LEE LYNCH: Well, in my opinion, there is no way that, A, there's going to be free advertising given by the networks. This has become an enormous moneymaker for television. Candidates' advertising runs at a very low rate, because it's called the lowest unit rule that was adopted in 1962, that a candidate should have the lowest rate ever given to the station.

In other words, XYZ station should get the same rate as McDonald's. The candidate should get the same rate as McDonald's gets, for example, a heavy advertiser. But independent expenditures go at a very high rate. The stations get as much money as they can from the independent expenditures because they're not governed by this lowest unit rate. And, therefore, there's a great incentive for television stations to want to make money.

DAN OLSON: I suppose people hearing the voice of Lee Lynch saying that would say-- and I don't know your political affiliation. I think I've been told you've contributed to some Democrats who have run for office. Maybe you've been a lifelong Democrat, for all I know. This is your way of trying to give your chosen political party the upper hand. The Democrats in some cases typically have not had as much money to spend as Republicans.

LEE LYNCH: Well, I think that was what Mr. Vargas, our Republican state chair, said right away that I was a prolific contributor to Democrat. candidates. And I have. I would be known as a Democrat. I have contributed and voted for Republicans. I have supported Governor Carlson, for example.

But my co-chair is Governor Carlson's brother, Lars Carlson. My steering committee is absolutely bipartisan right down the middle. My executive staff, we have two people in our office. One is a Democrat from Connecticut who was a legislative aide to a Congressman. The other was the executive secretary to William Weld in Massachusetts, to make sure within our own office we have it bipartisan. And, in fact, we have just called for the removal of an ad the DFL is running on education. We think it is really distorted, and that is not helping the Democratic Party.

PAUL SCHROEDER: Minneapolis advertising executive Lee Lynch, one of the founders of the effort to clean up political ads. This is Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Paula Schroeder. It's 17 minutes past 10 o'clock. Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by 3M, who generously matches more than 900 employee contributions to Minnesota Public Radio.

Well, Lee Lynch says he's disappointed the cleanup effort hasn't had more impact. He says examples from around the country show candidates are more willing than ever to take political ads to a new low. Besides his ad business, Lynch is also a theater entrepreneur, and he's the chairman elect of the Minneapolis downtown council. One of his college classmates at the University of Minnesota was Arne Carlson. After college, Lynch did some political work for Carlson that had a big impact on both of their lives. Let's return now to Lynch's conversation with Dan Olson.

DAN OLSON: In your view, as I understand it, a negative ad is not one where a candidate full face on the television screen says, my opponent is whatever. A polluter, a speeder and a bad person. That's not necessarily a negative or an attack ad.

LEE LYNCH: Well, I think what we're trying to curtail is cynical advertising, and I think we all know what cynical advertising is. Now, we're saying that negative is OK, but it has to come from you. I mean, you can charge that this candidate voted environmentally this way. I mean, you can go after the candidate's record. You can be comparative in how you stand versus the candidate.

But it's the cynicism. It's the morphing of a man's face into an animal, or worse yet, in California, morphing a man's face into the killer of Polly Klaas. I mean, see, it's the direction. That's what we're trying to stop is the direction that things have been going. And the things have been-- I mean, this is a horrible.

DAN OLSON: I hadn't heard that one. Somebody had morphed the face of a candidate into the man convicted of murdering the 13-year-old girl?

LEE LYNCH: Yes, and that just ran two weeks ago. We follow what's happening nationally. We had a little celebration here on October 1, by the way, in Minneapolis for our supporters. We had the Academy awards of bad political advertising, and we had winners in various categories to show what was happening around the country to people here. And there we saw a man's face morphed into a German shepherd growling, and the German shepherd jumped off the chair and ran out of the room.

We just saw horrible things, because we see that Minnesota is going this direction. Because, I mean, it's much worse around the country than it is here. But we're headed that direction, and that's what's so disturbing to me as a Minnesotan.

DAN OLSON: Lee Lynch, Minnesotan, head founder of Carmichael Lynch. Is that so, founder?

LEE LYNCH: Yes. Founder, 1962. And this March I will be in this business-- it's my only job, by the way. I've never had another full time job, for 35 years.

DAN OLSON: And sitting square on Hennepin Avenue, and probably when Carmichael Lynch was founded, people returning to the company's front door now would recognize Hennepin Avenue because it is so changed.

LEE LYNCH: Yeah, our office building here at 800 Hennepin, we I think are the first non-subsidized purchase on Hennepin Avenue in 40 years. And my partner, Lou Bacic, and myself thought that it's time that someone stakes a claim on this part of Hennepin Avenue, and we moved in. We also acquired the building across the street where Metropolitan State University is and began the process of trying to help Hennepin Avenue in some small way, and it's been helped a lot. It's changed.

DAN OLSON: And you've become something of a theater entrepreneur. You either own or own an interest in both of the historic theaters, the State and the Orpheum.

LEE LYNCH: What I have is a management contract with my partner, Fred Krohn, and the two of us through our company, The Historic Theater Group, we manage the State and the Orpheum theaters. We do that, and I've been involved a little bit in Tony and Tina's wedding, which is right down the street, and bought that building and resold it to the hay people and kept a pornographer out of there.

DAN OLSON: Why have you decided to become something of a private downtown developer?

LEE LYNCH: Well, I mean, I love downtown, and a great city has to have a great central city. And Minneapolis is a city now that's either 20 years ahead of a renaissance, in a renaissance, or it's 20 years behind decay, and the jury's out. I think we're winning big. It's a city now that's vibrant.

We're bringing a million people a year down to our theaters. 700,000 people go to Twins games. 750,000 people are going to see the Holidazzle parades this year. We're the only city in America that can have night parades. Large city, because we're the safest city in America, and we can-- working together in a public-private partnership can keep it that way.

DAN OLSON: There's a real disconnect, I think, in some minds about what you just said about Minneapolis downtown being a safe city, because, of course, many of us walk downtown day and night and feel safe, but still, I think even in our own minds, we have the impression, yeah, but it's not safe. So what's the truth?

LEE LYNCH: Well, I think, first of all, I think the analysis, a micro analysis of crime in downtown Minneapolis is going to show that possibly Portland might be as safe as we are, but for all major cities, we're the safest. The police beats now downtown, it's fairly boring. Minneapolis has got a reputation of being dangerous because of the drug problems and the drug on drug killings that are taking place in our neighborhoods, which is disastrous.

But that's happening in the neighborhoods. It's not happening downtown, and we are the safest city in America. Again, possibly tied with Portland. We're going to soon find out the-- or soon get in the analysis. But people, when they see funny people on the street, when they see a homeless person or they see a different kind of person that they're not used to seeing in their suburban lives, they are threatened by that, and they don't realize that if someone looks funny and is carrying a large knapsack, that they're not necessarily dangerous.

DAN OLSON: A Minnesota boy, born and bred?

LEE LYNCH: Belle Plaine, Minnesota. A graduate of Belle Plaine High.

DAN OLSON: That was countryside. That was countryside.

LEE LYNCH: Oh, yeah. I was raised around farms. My dad was a barber in Belle Plaine, and then he found when he had a straight edge to a man's throat during the recession that he could sell life insurance, and that's what he started doing, and finally left barbering and sold insurance.

DAN OLSON: Belle Plaine is still countryside, of course. We should make it clear to our Belle Plaine listeners, but a lot of pressure on Belle Plaine for development now. Twin Cities is expanding that fast. You moved to the city. Why?

LEE LYNCH: Came to the nation's largest single campus university, the University of Minnesota. My mom was a good Swedish Lutheran girl and she wanted me to go to Saint Gustavus, and my dad, being a good Catholic boy, wanted me to go to Saint Thomas, and I compromised by going to the University of Minnesota.

DAN OLSON: And you were a good student? You went to class, you took notes, you didn't skip lectures.

LEE LYNCH: I think my major was in activities. I was a very busy guy in terms of I debated for three years at the university debate team. I'd been on every campus college, I think in America. But I went into the-- I got drafted to the US Army during the peace time, and as I came out, I met an old friend of mine from the newspaper.

He used to be an artist and we used to play chess together a lot, and he had left the paper and he was a freelance artist, and his writer didn't show up. This was the day I got out of the Army, and I had to write a brochure on a subject I knew nothing about, and went out and brought it to this client, and he liked it and ordered another one. And that's when Jack Carmichael and I got together.

You should know that I did do political advertising until 1968. In fact, I did advertising for a candidate for Alderman of the city of Minneapolis, where a piece of literature that I wrote, this was in 1964, went to the Supreme Court and was ruled to be misleading, and my candidate, who won the election, 24 hours later was deprived because of the Supreme Court, and his opponent failed to file within 24 hours, so my candidate went from winning the election to losing the election to winning the election on a piece of literature I wrote, and that candidate is now the governor of Minnesota, Arne Carlson.

And if we look back at that piece of literature, I have it. It is so simple. What we did was put a-- we did a direct mail piece in the 12th precinct in Minneapolis that looked like the tax statement people were about to receive in a month. It was in the brown envelope with a window in it.

And as you opened it up, you could see that screened way back was the actual tax statement, just a blank tax statement, and then in big red letters, it said, "My opponent, Richard Franzen, said he would never vote to raise taxes, and on this date he did." In fact, he had to fly back from Washington to break a tie. That was viewed as misleading to the senior citizens of the 12th precinct, and my candidate lost the election based on that. Today, in politics today, that would be considered a sanctimonious compared to what's happened.

DAN OLSON: It was accurate. You hadn't lied.

LEE LYNCH: It was accurate. It hadn't lied. It was viewed as misleading, and this was my first experience, and then I went on and did a few other political ads.

DAN OLSON: That must have been pretty humbling for a young ad writer.

LEE LYNCH: Yeah, that was a dark moment. Of course, I had many dark moments.

DAN OLSON: And was that the seed of the code?

LEE LYNCH: No, no. That didn't really come until I just became so upset in the 1994 election with the direction things were going. And that was really the seed for it. But I've always been-- I've always been involved in terms of public policy. I've hated that people for many years would come to me and say, you guys in the advertising business are doing these terrible political ads.

And I went and did a search here last time, and not one member of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, and that does about 90% of all advertising in America, not one handles a political campaign. This is not done by advertising agencies as we know them. These are done by special handlers and people that make a lot of money. Some make over $1 million a year in personal income by advising candidates on some of this cynical advertising.

And so I would get mad when they say, why do you people in your industry do that? I'm going to say that's not us. We have ways. The Better Business Bureau's national advertising review board handles-- it's the best job, I think, of self regulation. It handles charges made by one advertiser against another.

It's done in a quasi courtroom setting or feeling, and you usually have a member of the public, a specialist that doesn't have a conflict, a specialist in advertising, along with someone, usually a retired judge. They hear the case, they rule on it, and no one who has ever gone before the advertising review board has ever won in a court of law. So in other words, when your peers rule on it, that's probably it. And it turns out it is it. It ends right there.

And I was on that review board for a number of years, and I wished we could develop that in political advertising. The Better Business Bureau of America started here in Minneapolis 54 years ago, and that's it. And it's now the Better Business Bureau of America, and it was to deal with truth in advertising. And that's why we said, what a better place than Minneapolis to start the Citizens Campaign Advertising Code?

PAUL SCHROEDER: Carmichael Lynch Advertising Agency president Lee Lynch talking with NPR'S Dan Olson. Our Voices of Minnesota interviews are heard nearly every Monday as part of Midmorning. It's 29 minutes past 10 o'clock. Coming up, a conversation with the South African ambassador to the United States. I'm Paula Schroeder. You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio.

GARY EICHTEN: As polls close around the nation, stay tuned to Minnesota Public Radio for up to the minute coverage of election night '96. We'll have results from the presidential race, US Senate, and Congressional races here in Minnesota and around the country, legislative races, plus we'll be able to hear from the winners and losers as well. Gary Eichten here. Join Paula Schroeder and me Tuesday night for live coverage with reporters and analysts around the state and around the nation. Our coverage begins Tuesday night at 7 on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAUL SCHROEDER: Well, it appears that we're right on schedule weather-wise. This really has been a remarkable year in that summer was summer, as it's supposed to be. Fall was dry, but we had a pretty decent fall, and here it is in November, and sure enough, we have temperatures in the 30s and 40s, which is right where we're supposed to be. Rain is likely in Southern Minnesota today. There is a chance of rain in the east central part of the state, and it's going to become cloudy in the north.

High temperatures today from the upper 30s in the far north to around 50 in the south. Some freezing rain is possible in far northern Minnesota up around the International Falls area tonight. Otherwise, a light rain will be ending in the evening. Lows from the mid 20s to the lower 40s, and tomorrow's highs from the low 40s to low 50s, so actually pretty pleasant for Election Day. There's a chance of rain in the Thief River Falls area, otherwise mostly cloudy.

Now, as we look ahead to the rest of the week, it is going to continue to be cloudy with a chance of rain or snow, and then on Thursday, it's going to be blustery with a chance of snow showers, but still temperatures in the 30s and 40s. So it's not going to be very cold. In the Twin Cities today, look for a high temperature around 45 degrees. Rain will be developing. The overnight low should be around 40, and tomorrow, mostly cloudy with a high near 50 degrees.

Right now it's 33 in International Falls. 37 degrees and cloudy in Duluth. It's 39 in Saint Cloud. Sunny skies being reported there. It's 36 degrees in Fargo-Moorhead, 46 in Sioux Falls. In Rochester it's cloudy and 42, and in the Twin Cities, it's cloudy and 44 degrees at 29 minutes before 11 o'clock.

Well, perhaps nowhere in the world has the struggle for democracy been more dramatic than in South Africa. Free elections were held in 1994, the first since the end of apartheid. One of the leaders of the decades long struggle to bring equality to Black Africans was elected president in those elections, and Nelson Mandela is one of the most respected leaders in the world today. The Minnesota International Center brought the South African ambassador to the United States to the Twin Cities recently to kick off its year of South Africa, a year-long focus on the emerging democracy.

Franklin Sonn was named ambassador to the United States last year after living under white rule for most of his life. Both his parents were educators, and he became one of the country's leading Black intellectuals. He went on to become CEO of New Africa Investments, an industrial holding company controlled by Black shareholders. He believes that participation in world markets will best support the urgent need for reconstruction and development in South Africa. In an interview at Minnesota Public Radio, Ambassador Sonn said the long term effect of apartheid was to disenfranchise and disempower people.

FRANKLIN SONN: The liberation struggle was therefore directed at re-empowering people, and the process of empowering of South Africans led to the overthrow of apartheid and led to a new self-assuredness, which made the victims of apartheid turn upon their erstwhile persecutors and say to them, we want to do this with you. And that, I think, is the miracle of South Africa.

And now that we have achieved our political objective, we now stand before the big challenge to achieve our social and economic reconstruction as well, and it's in this regard that we have also been receiving enormous support from the United States of America. We are always very mindful of the fact that the United States of America supported us in our struggle against apartheid, and now is their opportunity to-- in their own interest, because this is a capitalist society. They want to see bottom line benefits. So in their own interest to participate in the reconstruction process in South Africa.

Right now I'm in Minnesota as part of the focus of the Minnesota International Center, which is this year focusing on South Africa and offering South Africa as an opportunity for industry and commerce in Minnesota. Already 100 Minnesota companies are in South Africa doing active business, and I'm very grateful for the support that the Minnesota International Center is giving.

And then also, I'm here also to support the Shared Interest organization, which is an organization by Americans who fought very valiantly against apartheid through the Free South Africa movement and have now transformed the organization into this Shared Interest organization, which is intended to raise loan guarantees for low income people who want to go into business and in other development projects, but do not have the capacity to raise loans in the normal manner at financial institutions. And they are providing-- at profit, they are providing they are providing loan guarantee for them. And I'm just very, very happy to be associated with Shared Interest.

PAUL SCHROEDER: It's interesting that you said that, of course, these corporations are in this for a profit as well, and I think that there is still some question here in the United States now that, as you say, the political struggle against apartheid is behind us, is this economically a country ripe for exploitation by corporations, or do you see more of a partnership with the people of South Africa by the US companies that are coming in to do business there?

FRANKLIN SONN: Well, yes, certainly. We are hoping to reconstruct our economy with, in the end, full benefits to the shareholders, to the stockholders. They must feel this is a worthwhile investment opportunity. If we can't do that, then we cannot hope for people to come into our economy. That is primary.

Then secondly, we also hope to reconstruct an economic system with partnership between the corporate sector, also the public sector, through the buying of stock that is held by the government. In other words, through the process of reconstruction or change and privatization. And also by building roads, for example, between major centers, that these are projects which could be tackled between the private and the corporate, the corporate and the government sector.

But then thirdly, also, we are also looking at cooperation between the corporate sector and the population and the people, and by so doing, harness their human skills and their resources, but also their capital, and therefore indigenize companies like 3M. Now become a South African company rather than an American company doing business in South Africa.

PAUL SCHROEDER: You are an educator.

FRANKLIN SONN: Yes.

PAUL SCHROEDER: Even more so than a diplomat in terms of your experience, your work experience. Do you see the educational system in South Africa as critical to the development of the economy, and how much work needs to be done?

FRANKLIN SONN: That is a very critical area, but it's a very good question you're asking, because education at the end of the day is a process of socialization. The kind of people you want, your gear your educational system to produce that end product. And certainly that has been the reason why apartheid was such a success is because they used education. And then, secondly, also why you had the disparity between people, because the white people then had all the skills and the ability, while Black people were in fact prepared for domestication and therefore served rather than innovate.

One of the most wonderful things in South Africa if you visit there now is to see Black people in positions of leadership, not only in government but in the private sector and doing excellently, and that is also part of the empowerment. So we have to use our educational system to empower all our people, and what is then required of us to do is not only to focus our educational attention on the humanities, on the development of human skills, but also to develop technical and vocational skills.

And I'm very happy to say that my own activity in South Africa was in the area of tertiary university level vocational education. I believe in the kind of education that South Africa is providing, we are a leader in South Africa as far as this is concerned, conferring doctorates on people who with a vocationally-oriented educational tertiary educational institution rather than merely the theoretic. But you're quite right, the whole reconstruction of education is going to determine whether we are going to be a successful, non-racial, democratic society living at peace with itself.

PAUL SCHROEDER: I would think that there are a lot of people in the United States who are going to be very curious to see what happens in South Africa, because as you well know, the African-American population here in the United States has long been at a disadvantage.

FRANKLIN SONN: Oh, yeah.

PAUL SCHROEDER: And whether this experiment, this new political system where you say there are Black people in leadership positions, will be able to sustain itself, particularly if and when Nelson Mandela steps aside as president, because I think so much of the non-violent and the respectful transition that has taken place is due to his leadership. Do you have concerns about that yourself, about the longevity of this political process?

FRANKLIN SONN: I don't. I must be quite honest with you, I have other concerns about South Africa, but certainly about the democratic nature of our society, about the will of South Africans to build one nation and to become non-racial, the world to get to understand one another, and the world to come to grips with our past, to talk about our past and not sweep it under the carpet and hope it will go away and take offense if the past is raised, but really to look the past into the eye and say, what do we do in order to remedy and pay restitution for damages of the past and not to repeat the past in the future?

About that I really have very little doubt. We are very, very committed to that. The question of the president's retirement obviously is a problem because he is so central, he's is so important, he's probably one of the greatest figures of our time, and he's an unbelievable person. But I would like to believe, and I'm sure he will also agree with it, is he often does when he speaks publicly, that he is a remarkable apple on a tree of apples. And I don't think I want to focus on the apples. I want to focus on the tree that produced those apples.

South Africa has been enormously blessed with a quality of people, of Mandela and many others, and I would like to believe in a small way, I'm a little apple like that too, who look for the best in not only my own country, but the best for the world, and to find ways and means how people with a multicultural history, with a diverse history, with people who have suffered for various reasons, how we can overcome that and really focus on the future and build a new country and a new world and see value in difference rather than to devalue people who are Black or people who are pink or people who are different, but to be glad for differences and say viva la difference, and build a tapestry of a world at peace with each other, a more interesting world.

Nothing is more boring than a homogeneous society. Heterogeneous society is fun. It's beautiful. That's why God created men and women. They're different, yet they can't do without each other. Now, if that's so in a biological way between the sexes, why can't it be like that between the cultures and between the races? It's an excitement, just as exciting as a wedding is between a man and a woman. Never will the man bear a child, but a woman can't bear a child without a man. And that's excitement, exciting. In the same way, it should be exciting when Blacks and whites get together and live together.

On the point that you raised about the African-Americans, yes, they are people. We are people of the same kind. We suffered the same inequities. We have the same histories. We came up in the same way. They helped us in South Africa. They were the conscience of the anti-apartheid movement.

A lot of white people supported them because of their instincts, their sense of justice, and built also with them in the anti-apartheid movement a unity and a oneness, and we are very grateful for that, and we are also very pleased at the excitement with which anti-apartheid forces, African-American and other people, are now wanting to return to South Africa and help with the reconstruction. And certainly, I perceive that as one of our greatest assets, and I'm often left astounded by the degree of love and affection that people have for South Africa. And I'm in this wonderful position that I benefit from that personally.

PAUL SCHROEDER: You are clearly an optimist about the future of South Africa. There are still some people in the country, of course, who are very bitter about what has happened in South Africa and the history. There was a recent court case in which a number of people were acquitted for crimes against Black South Africans, and some people are very angry about that. Do you understand that anger?

FRANKLIN SONN: I understand perfectly. I understand the bitterness of people who have lost privilege, unearned privileges, who have lost power and are bit about that. I understand the frustration of people who thought that freedom will bring a house, a job immediately. But in the main, nothing is more compelling than hope. They are looking-- I often think of that when I sit on an aircraft and there's a sudden shudder. You all look up at the air hostess, and she's calm and smiling. Then you sit back and you know it'll be OK.

Now, that's how human beings are. We are like that. And while there's strong hope and a definite plan and action in the middle and in the leadership, we will overcome the right and we will overcome the left. We have a president that is devoting all his time to building reconciliation and peace, but it doesn't only rest on his shoulders.

We have the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sits under the chairmanship of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and they sit there and they hear atrocities of the past, and they give amnesty to people, and they give people who have been harmed an opportunity to hear the other side saying sorry. And they see a president and a government and a nation urging them on to take the hand of apology and to take that in as a token of your contribution towards building a future that will seal the past, but at the same time make the testament that never, never again will that happen.

And this in itself is exciting. There is a way that you can live with the past in a bitter and a sullen way, and this normally happens if you don't want to face the past. And often I come to societies that don't want to talk about the past. I don't want to mention names, but I know of such societies. But then there are societies who say, look, the past will influence the future and let's deal with it in a constructive manner. When it's bad to talk about the past is if you deal with it critically and in a destructive way, and that's not what we stand for. But you're not going to fix the future if you deny the past.

PAUL SCHROEDER: Ambassador Sonn I think that there is a great experiment going on in South Africa, and I cannot think of another country that has faced its past, its recent past, with such graciousness. And you must have a great deal of pride to represent a country like that.

FRANKLIN SONN: Well, these are the values of America. These are the values of the West. These are the values of humanity to be at peace with your neighbor, and it always extracts a price. And when you pay the price, you do feel proud. You feel better when you've forgiven an enemy than you do after you've taken revenge.

There was the experiment of the Nuremberg trial. It brought temporary relief, but it reopened another cycle of revenge. We just feel wonderful every time we forgive a enemy.

Still today we pay a high price for apartheid. For example, people who were allowed to buy property in white areas now make big sums of money. Us who bought property in Black areas lose money and then have to pay in the better areas a premium for new property, and it costs us, the poorer people we are, it costs us thousands and thousands of dollars. But we do that because we believe that even from us it is going to continue to extract a price if we want to build a society, a world that is better.

PAUL SCHROEDER: Franklin Sonn is South African ambassador to the United States. It's 12 minutes before 11 o'clock. This is Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. We're talking about the importance of voting today on Minnesota Public Radio, and during the noon hour today, Gary Eichten will be talking with US Senate candidates Rudy Boschwitz and Paul Wellstone about their last two days of campaigning. They'll also want to hear from you about what your thoughts are about voting day tomorrow. Today's programming is sponsored in part by Identification Services of New Hope to thank their customers for 25 years of business.

Well, it's difficult for people in places like South Africa to understand why so many Americans don't take advantage of their opportunity to vote. Saint Paul resident Elizabeth Mishi says she can't understand it either. For her family, voting is a tradition.

ELIZABETH MISHI: I am not young. I voted for the first time at the age of 18, the year the federal voting age was lowered to 18. Now in the '90s, citizens so young that everything is at stake prefer to be silent and passive. They opt to be off the hook if the electorate chooses badly, and without any credit should we choose well. This state of affairs seems to me more than merely sad. It reeks to me of tragically bad parenting.

I make this judgment with considerable smugness, as the young eligible voter to whom I am closest is registered to vote and will. Why does Sarah, my firstborn, a busy college student with responsibilities and considerable dismay over the state of civil life in America, vote when others of every age will not? Why do children who are read to at an early age grow up to love good books?

Sarah rode to her first voting place in a carrier on my back and hung over my shoulder to see what I was doing with that ballot. She walked her way into subsequent polls, in school buildings, churches, once in a mall, as well as to town board meetings, a caucus, and a couple of rallies. When I got an I Voted sticker, she got one too.

At first I took her and her two sisters along with me because voting was an event for which I didn't need to arrange child care. She could hold up the younger girls to see what kind of ballot or voting machine was available, to see who we were voting for, or just to assure that they weren't all kidnapped while I was behind that curtain making civic magic. Sometimes, especially when a school board referendum was on the ballot, we would wait, overdressed, indoors in line to cast our vote. More often, the wait was regrettably short.

With the birth of each daughter, I acquired more excuses not to go out to vote. The weather was bad, the candidates dull, the polls vastly tilted, the hour late. But after their first few elections, the girls themselves started to draw me into the game afoot. The election judges were setting up in the school cafeteria, so they would be eating at their desks tomorrow.

Did I know that so-and-so's mother or father had never voted? Did I know that women, Blacks, and other people hadn't always been allowed to vote? They had a straw ballot during social studies. Did I want to know who they elected? Over breakfast those November Tuesday mornings, they would ask, when are we going to vote?

Now, having a grown daughter about to cast her first vote in a presidential election is very cool. My daughter is old enough to have politics of her own. They're not identical to mine any more than my politics are like my parents, but she knows that she has a right, which she sees as one of the more palatable adult responsibilities, to help shape her world.

One of the coolest parts of this is that she is aware that she can only make the choices available to her in the time in which they must be made. In this way, she implicates herself in the polity. She is invested in the civil society and accountable in part for confronting its failures, as well as deserving of her share of pride when this American experiment bears good fruit.

Sarah's been waiting to get her hands on a ballot since she was a little girl. It's something our family does. She will seal up her absentee ballot. Not even her mother will know for sure. She will walk or bus or rollerblade her way to the post office hundreds of miles from where she first watched her elders exorcize this grave and irksome privilege, and on her way home from posting her momentous ballot, she can celebrate herself.

PAUL SCHROEDER: Commentator Elizabeth Mishi lives and votes in Saint Paul. Got a quick correction to make here. Gary Eichten, who hosts our Midday program, of course, will be talking to Rudy Boschwitz and Paul Wellstone during the 11 o'clock hour of Midday, not the noon hour, so tune in for that. It's seven minutes before 11 o'clock.

GARRISON KEILLOR: Hello, this is Garrison Keillor, hoping you'll call next week during our fall membership drive to make a contribution to support Minnesota Public Radio. When you do, you'll be doing something very important, joining other listeners to help pay for the radio listening that all of us enjoy. Contributions from listeners are the most important source of income for Minnesota Public Radio, so please take a few moments next week to call with your pledge.

PAUL SCHROEDER: Minnesota Public Radio's broadcast journalist series featuring Mara Liasson is supported by the Lazear Agency, a full service literary agency representing writers and artists worldwide. By the way, Mara Liasson is going to be in the Twin Cities on November 12th to talk about her coverage of the campaigns of Bob Dole and Bill Clinton. We'll have more information about that appearance as it becomes available to us. We'll let the details of it probably after the election sometime. It's time now to hear a little bit more from Garrison Keillor and his Writer's Almanac.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is the Writer's Almanac for Monday. It's the 4th of November, 1996. It was on this day in 1841, the first wagon train of settlers reached California. It had left Independence, Missouri, on the 1st of May. The following year, 1842, on this day, Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd were married in Springfield, Illinois.

The first air conditioned automobile went on exhibit 1939, Chicago Automobile Show. It was a Packard. The refrigeration coils were located behind the rear seat. It was on this day in 1979 that about 500 Iranian militants seized the US embassy in Tehran, taking about 90 hostages, including about 60 Americans, of whom 52 were not released until January 20th, 1981. They'd been in captivity for 444 days.

It's the birthday of Walter Cronkite in Saint Joseph, Missouri, 1916. It's the birthday of Will Rogers, 1879, near Oologah in Indian territory that is now Oklahoma. He was part Cherokee, part Irish, grew up on a ranch, became a horseman and a skilled rope twirler, which got him into Wild West show and then into vaudeville doing rope tricks. Made it to Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies, where he began doing monologues on stage and became the cowboy philosopher.

Here's a poem for today by Pearse Hutchinson. It's entitled "Bright After Dark"

In the first country, what you must do when the cow stops giving milk

Is climb after dark a certain hill and play the flute to kill your scheming neighbor's curse.

If you can find a silver flute to play, the spell will break all the faster, the surer.

But silver is not essential, but the job must be done after dark, otherwise it won't work.

In the second country, when you send a child out of the house at night after dark,

You must, if you wish it well, take from the fire a burnt out cinder

And place it on the palm of the child's hand to guard the child against the dangers of the dark

The cinder in this good function is called Angeel, meaning angel.

In the third country, if you take a journey at night.

Above all, in the blind night of ebony, so good for witches to work in

You dare not rely on fireflies for light, for theirs is a brief, inconstant glow.

What you must hope is that some one before you has dropped grains of maize on the ground to light your way,

And you must drop grains of maize for whoever comes after you, for only maize can light the way on a dark night.

A poem by Pearse Hutchinson, "Bright After Dark" from his Selected Poems published by the Gallery Press and used by permission here on The Writer's Almanac for Monday, November the 4th, made possible by Cole's History Group, publishers of Vietnam and other magazines. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

PAUL SCHROEDER: Well, that's Midmorning for today, this day before Election Day. We were talking about voting. I hope you get out and do it tomorrow, and tomorrow on Midmorning, we're going to find out what goes on inside campaigns on Election Day. You think all their work would be over, but no, as it turns out, it's one of the busiest days of the campaign season. We'll find out more about that. Stay tuned for Midday coming up next. I'm Paula Schroeder. Thanks so much for joining us today.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JOHN GORDON: Free internet stock quotes. I'm John Gordon, and on the next Future Tense, can you trust free stock quotes on the net? Future Tense in one half hour on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW FM 91.1.

PAUL SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 44 degrees under cloudy skies at KNOW FM 91.1, Minneapolis, Saint Paul. It's going to be cloudy in the Twin Cities today with a high near 45 degrees, a chance of rain developing, and that rain will continue through early evening, then be cloudy overnight and tomorrow. The low tonight around 40, tomorrow's high around 50 degrees.

GARY EICHTEN: Good morning. It's 11 o'clock, and this is Midday on Minnesota Public Radio with monitor radio's David Brown. I'm Gary Eichten. In the news this morning, final pre-election polls show President Bill Clinton continuing to lead Bob Dole in this last day before the election. Polls show Clinton's lead ranging from 7 to 16 percentage points. Clinton will wrap up his campaign in Sioux Falls late tonight. Dole is finishing up his campaign in California.

Here in Minnesota, volunteers for Senate candidates Paul Wellstone and Rudy Boschwitz say they plan to call hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans as part of their campaign, Get Out To Vote effort. Tutsi rebels in Eastern Zaire have declared a unilateral ceasefire in their war against Zaire. The fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of refugees, and the Pentagon says another US jet has fired at an Iraqi missile site. Those are some of the stories in the news today. Coming up over the noon hour, a Talk of Minnesota edition of Midday. We'd like to hear from you on your choice for president and the US Senate.