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[GUY'S ALL-STAR SHOE BAND, "WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD (THE INTERNET SONG)"] (SINGING) Don't know much about the internet

Don't know which software to get

Don't know modems, and I don't know ports

I go online and the screen aborts

But I do know that I love you

And I know that if you loved me too

What a wonderful world this would be

Tried to send an email to your house

Nothing happened when I clicked the mouse

All I got was just an hourglass

I pressed the switch, my files crashed

But I do know that you're so fine

GARY EICHTEN: Well, GK would have been in better shape had he been using one of those Apple Power Macs, Lorna Benson.

LORNA BENSON: That's absolutely right, Gary. He certainly would not be singing the blues, that's for sure. The Apple Power Macintosh is a wonderful computer that we're able to give away to one lucky pledger. Tomorrow we're going to have the drawing. So you've got a few hours today to get your name in the hat, so to speak, and you can do that by calling 1-800-227-2811, signing up as a new or renewing member. You don't even actually have to pledge to enter.

And when you give us a call, we'll put your name in the hat for the Apple Power Macintosh with a color printer. And it's a great computer. You can send email to your friends. And of course, Garrison had a problem with it, but with a brand-new computer like this, you're not going to have any trouble sending email. And just think, you're going to be saving a little money on stamps along the way, too. So call us. 1-800-227-2811. Get your name in that drawing, and sign up as a member here at Minnesota Public Radio while you're on the phone.

GARY EICHTEN: We need to raise, according to the membership week gurus, $3,000 this hour, Lorna, to stay on track if we're going to make our membership week goals. $3,000 this hour. And we have about $2,800 to go, about $200 in the kitty right now. Six callers on the line, and we'd love for you to join them. 1-800-227-2811.

Now, who are we talking to? Well, if you've never been a member, or if you used to be a member and you're not a member right now, if you are a listener, then you're one of the folks we're talking to. Call us up, join, become a member, and at least try it for a year. If it turns out to be a bad deal, then don't renew.

Some of you, many of you, thousands of you, called and tried it last year at this time, and you are coming up now for renewal. Now, some of you probably were dissatisfied with what we did the past year, and I'm guessing you're not going to renew. But the vast majority of you, I think, found what you hear on this station to be pretty useful.

Well, this is the time to renew. We can't afford to lose you. So give us a call and renew your membership. If you're all paid up, and you want to make an additional contribution, that too will help us reach our goal this week. So if you fall in any of those categories-- and Lorna, I'm guessing 99.5% of all the people fit one of them-- time to call 1-800-227-2811.

When you call in, you will be automatically entered in our drawing for the Apple Power Mac. And we should note, too, that even if you have no intention of pledging and you'd just like a shot at winning that computer, you can call in as well. The number is the same. 1-800-227-2811. There are no commercials on Minnesota Public Radio. Instead, we depend on those of you who listen to pay for the programs that you listen to. Very simple deal.

LORNA BENSON: We have 11 callers on the phone right now. They've all called 1-800-227-2811. A lot of people who signed up a year ago or within the last couple of years signed up as a result of public radio funding crises that we were talking about. We were telling our listeners that we were gradually losing some federal government money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Well, since 1993, we've lost about $700,000, and we need to make that up with memberships. We did that. Now those people who called need to keep renewing their membership, or it puts us right back in the same boat. 1-800-227-2811. When you call, your membership money goes right back into the programming that you hear on Minnesota Public Radio, including Midday.

This second hour of Midday is a special hour. It's one of the ways that public radio is able to provide news and information to listeners in a fashion that a lot of other media and news outlets are not able to. We're going to have a long conversation with George Latimer coming up in a few minutes. And Midday is a place where you can hear voices of people at length, especially during this segment of the program coming up. If you value that, now is the time to help pay for it. 1-800-227-2811.

GARY EICHTEN: $5.50 a month is all it really costs you to join at the basic level. And math is escaping me here, but it's about $1.75 a week, something like that. And that's a pretty good value, when you think about it, when you compare it to other things that you'd spend, let's say, $2 a week on. $2 a week. Now, I don't know about you, friends, but I can fritter away $2 pretty easily.

LORNA BENSON: Gum.

GARY EICHTEN: And-- [LAUGHS]

LORNA BENSON: Parking ramp.

GARY EICHTEN: And that's fine. You figure what you're spending your money on is worth spending it on. But this is a pretty good investment, and I think in some respects probably pays back more dividends to you during the course of the year than some other things. A couple of bucks a week, it works out pretty well. Give us a call. 1-800-227-2811.

And for heaven's sakes, why not get your name in the drawing for the computer? Somebody's going to win this thing tomorrow. Between 9:00 and 10:00 the morning, a name will be drawn out of the hat. Some lucky person who listens to this station, now. This is not in the big universe. Somebody who actually listens to this station, like you, will be winning an Apple Power Macintosh, complete with the printer and the whole deal. Might as well be you. And you're automatically entered in the drawing when you call in with your pledge. You don't even have to pledge if you don't want to. Just give us a call. 1-800-227-2811.

LORNA BENSON: And you're guaranteed, even if you don't win that Power Macintosh computer, you're guaranteed of getting a special thank you gift when you call in and sign up at that $66 level. And a lot of our listeners-- they listen to news and information, but they're music lovers as well-- might be interested in some of the CDs that we have to offer. And just one example is that we have David Helfgott Plays Rachmaninov, and a number of people have been taking us up on that CD. We also have a CD from the original motion picture soundtrack of the movie Shine. Lots of other options as well.

So consider that when you call and you sign up at the $66 membership level, you can take away a thank you gift. And rest assured, know that you're helping pay for the programming right here on Minnesota Public Radio, and not only just paying for the programming, but enabling us to improve on what we've been doing for 30 years. 1-800-227-2811.

GARY EICHTEN: We have 21 Midday callers on the line right now, and plenty of room for you. Don't be discouraged, now, when you hear that big number. If you're thinking you're going to get a busy signal, I think we can handle 50 calls at a time. So you'll be able to get right through. It only takes a minute or two of your time.

And you do want to call right now, because I know a lot of you don't want to miss any of the conversation with George Latimer. And we'll be getting to that in just a couple of minutes now. So if you call, we'll be able to get your membership pledge in, and then you'll be able to listen to that interview. We'll get to that momentarily. Right now, we're urging you to take care of your business. Support your radio station, the station that you listen to. 1-800-227-2811.

LORNA BENSON: You know, a lot of people are driving around at this time, heading of to lunch or running errands during the noon hour. If you're in your phone and you have a cell phone, well, you can give us a call--

GARY EICHTEN: In your phone, Lorna?

LORNA BENSON: Oh, in your--

[LAUGHTER]

If you're in my head, you know.

[LAUGHTER]

Give us a call at pound 669 on your cell phone and we can sign you up as a member just as easily over your cell phone from your car. Drive carefully.

GARY EICHTEN: And we'll take the pledge if you're in your phone. That's all right. It doesn't matter.

LORNA BENSON: If you're in a phone booth. [LAUGHS] You can put it on your Visa, your Mastercard, American Express, Discover Card as well. We can sign you up as an instant member. Lots of different ways to make payment easy as well, when you give us a call. 1-800-227-2811.

GARY EICHTEN: Are you in the drawing yet? We sure hope so, and we sure hope you've done your part to support. Is it time to renew? Give us a call. Get that renewal taken care of. $3,000, we're supposed to raise this hour. And at last report, according to our more antiquated computers, we had still had $2,600 left to go.

Now, calls have been coming in fast and furious here. I'm thinking we're making good progress toward that goal, but do keep the phones ringing. Do make sure that you get through and give us a call at 1-800-227-2811. Again, the AirTouch cellular number is pound 669. It's a free call. Lorna, I think we should break now and get on to George Latimer, and then we'll update the pledge tallies a little later.

LORNA BENSON: All right, but make that pledge. Make that phone call right now. If you procrastinate, you might not get around to it. 1-800-227-2811. Call now.

GARY EICHTEN: Sixteen minutes past 12 o'clock. Back in 1963, Democrat George Latimer left New York to practice labor law in the city of St. Paul. The city, and the state, for that matter, would never be quite the same. George Latimer would oversee a major downtown building boom as St. Paul's longest-serving mayor.

He would serve on the University of Minnesota Board of Regents and the St. Paul School Board. He would run for governor and head to Washington as a top official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. George Latimer would become, and still remains, for that matter, one of Minnesota's most popular politicians.

Well, recently, we talked with George Latimer as part of Minnesota Public Radio's Voices of Minnesota series, and today we're going to hear some excerpts from that conversation. The story begins in the early 1940s, in Schenectady, New York, where George Latimer grew up as a shopkeeper's son.

GEORGE LATIMER: My father was really the child of farmer Yankee Protestants from Upstate New York who had been here forever, and my mother was a Catholic Lebanese growing up in a merchant family. And they those two cultures collided sometime in the '20s, and three neurotic boys grew out of that, my two big brothers and I.

And my father was a jack of all trades. Growing up on a farm, he could fix anything. None of it rubbed off on me or my brothers, but he could fix anything. So he'd done anything. He'd worked as a construction guy, run a few jobs. During the war he was what they called an expediter, which is really a quality control guy for aircraft parts at the General Electric company. We used to call it GE. But then through it all, my mother and father owned and ran a store their whole lives from 1942 until they retired, both in their 70s.

GARY EICHTEN: Why didn't you do that? I mean, you'd be a good merchant.

GEORGE LATIMER: Well, maybe I did. Maybe I never left the store. I know it's corny, but I swear I worked for my mother and father when I was nine, 10, 11 years old in that store. And the store was in an old Irish and German Catholic parish in Schenectady, a real old factory town. And it gradually, from the '40s through the '70s, it became pretty blighted, old central city neighborhood. But in the '40s and '50s, it was a pretty strong neighborhood.

In any event, I just met every type of person. And I took them on one at a time, and you learn a lot about people in the store. And I honestly believe that so much of what I instinctively feel about people and what they're feeling like and how they are, I drew from that experience. It was that or my mother's milk, I guess. So maybe I never stopped being a storekeeper. I've never regretted those years.

GARY EICHTEN: You said that you, in part, became a labor lawyer because you had worked in union jobs and come to have some sympathy for working people. Back in those days, did you see the business owners as evil ogres trying to exploit the working man, or--

GEORGE LATIMER: Well, I'd like to clean up my act and say that no, I thought differently than that. I never was an extreme populist, thinking that having money or corporate was bad. But I must tell you that in the '40s and '50s when I grew up, the company was not, in my mind, a benevolent presence, the big companies. So the candid statement is that I cannot honestly say I was a brick-thrower. I wasn't, you know.

But I saw the power of large and wealthy corporations over the lives of people, and I became convinced that although you couldn't be a storekeeper as a kid and not believe in capitalism, at the same time, I very early developed a belief that you needed-- capitalism was good, but you needed to have fetters there. That companies were not just going to do the right thing because they're benevolent. You're going to have to keep an eye on corporate power.

And then I saw early, early examples of discrimination, right in the construction work. I saw Black laborers who could outwork any of us be sent down the road. We used to say if there was a layoff, there was no question the Blacks were first to go. So when I was very young-- although there weren't a lot of Blacks and not a lot of what we now designate as minorities, not a lot of Hispanics or Asians, but I saw enough even then in Upstate New York.

And then I did a lot of reading as a kid to become convinced that America was a big, open, wonderful place in many ways, but it could also be very cruel to people who are not on the inside, whether it was the poor or the people of color or the people who were disadvantaged. So I developed, without any real prodding from my parents, a certain kind of passion for justice around some of those issues.

GARY EICHTEN: Later on, I remember the whole silent majority debate and things during the Nixon years specifically. And at that time, it seemed like the organized labor movement was not in the forefront of social justice issues. Given how it grew up, given the things you saw, for example, why not? Why wasn't labor more active in terms of the civil rights movement?

GEORGE LATIMER: I think, remember that labor and the Democratic Party, for a long time in its early history, were really almost xenophobic, or really believed in tariffs and believed in barriers to immigration. It was a very, very powerful pull because immigrants represented, as they do today, people willing to work for less, and labor was about improving the wages of workers. So for openers, it was not unusual for unions not to be very happy about immigrants.

As to the color barrier, the unions were no different than any other institution. I think there were exceptions later on in the century. The auto workers, I think, were one of the early unions who really worked at integrating. I'm sure there were others. But my experience was, particularly the construction trades, and the construction industry, was pretty hidebound, discriminating, took care of their own. It wasn't blatant, but it was there. And a lot of it had to do with taking care of one's kids, so that the bricklayers would want to teach the kids how to lay brick and they'd come along and follow. And so it was very clannish. But make no mistake, there was powerful discrimination.

And when I, many years later, when I was on a school board and working for integration-- because I thought integration, as I now do as well, was an essential step in breaking down the discrimination that we have toward each other-- I can remember more people coming to me after I'd made a rather strong plea, coming to me and saying, you know, George, you're right. We really do have to do something about this, the issue of color and all that. And I don't know what happened, they said, because when I grew up here in St. Paul, there wasn't that kind of discrimination.

And I laughed, and I said, well, I must have grown up south of here, because Schenectady is just an old factory town. Schenectady is nothing but Duluth without a lake, is all it is. And there was discrimination everywhere I looked when I was a little kid growing up in the north. And so if we didn't have any here in St. Paul, I sure wish I could have grown up here, because I couldn't imagine not having-- well, of course, we had plenty of discrimination. But we were, I think, in the '20s and '30s and '40s, were less likely to confront it.

GARY EICHTEN: Why were you interested in running for mayor when you decided, in 1976, you jumped into the race, despite the advice of your wife and family? What were you hoping to accomplish?

GEORGE LATIMER: It was really kind of strange, because neither in my law practice nor in my political life had I been particularly active in and around City Hall. I ran for the school board because I felt strongly about some of the issues, including one I just talked about, the need to integrate and bring greater opportunity for everybody in the school district. And by then, I was active in my kids' schools.

And I just ran for mayor, by the time 1975, late '75 rolled around, I'd been so active as a regent and school board member and all the rest, my kids growing up there, and I just liked the city. And I loved where we grew up around the St. Luke's neighborhood, and I felt the city had great, great possibilities. And I felt that a lot of it was frittered away by minor league arguing and foolishness, and that there were great, great opportunities for St. Paul to make it a more livable city and make it-- and so I just became convinced that-- it wasn't that I had ever planned previously to run for mayor.

I started to run on December 4 of '75, and was elected in the primary in March 15 or 16, and elected on April 27. So it was a real short campaign. There is no telling what I would have run for all my life if they made them all that short. But it was just because I liked the town, but did feel a little frustrated that we weren't fulfilling some of our possibilities.

GARY EICHTEN: Did you think at the time that, by golly, if you could just rein in government, that would be the way to solve all the problems? Or what did you see as the relationship between the government and the problems of the city was facing at the time?

GEORGE LATIMER: You won't find much rhetoric about reining in government out of the early Latimer years. [LAUGHS] I wasn't great at reining in. I know that's a very popular thing to do these days. But no, I did actually, early on, talk about the need to privatize in some areas, to offer the private sector some opportunities. I talked about that in the mid-'70s.

I did believe that we could-- the great need at that time was to broker between business and labor and the neighborhoods. It was clear that they were not talking to each other. And everybody talked about different plans to get things done, but they weren't getting done. A lot of planning had developed and a lot of good things had been done in previous years, many good things.

The housing, the open housing work that Tom Byrne led, that George Vavoulis was involved in. The aggressive neighborhood work all through the '60s and '70s really was paying off, but there was still a feeling of paralysis. And St. Paul has always had a kind of persistent paranoia, and so they tended to look over their shoulder at what the big city was doing across the river. And there was a particular stalemate in downtown.

It's very humbling, but also instructive, that when the current mayor ran, that they talked about bringing the city back to life and all that. And here I thought it was alive all those years. I thought it was alive. I didn't know it was dead. But it was a strong feeling that a good mediator, a good negotiator, a good leader, someone who brought everybody together around a table, could get the city moving in directions that it had not moved. And that's what moved me.

GARY EICHTEN: There were a lot of holes in downtown St. Paul when you became mayor. And when you left office at the end of the '80s, there were a lot of big buildings in downtown St. Paul. Is that good or bad?

GEORGE LATIMER: Well, to begin with the holes in the ground, the Ryan Hotel was torn down in 1961. Probably never should have been torn down. And it was still an empty hole in the ground when Minnesota Mutual committed itself, in the early '80s, to put $100 million into filling that hole. Can anybody say that wasn't good for the city? The St. Paul Companies, the oldest corporation in Minnesota, committed another $100 million to build its headquarters, or rebuild and expand its headquarters. You can't much complain about that.

I think if I look back at what I would have done differently or better, I think the architecture of the other things that went up left something to be desired. I think there was some overbuilding. But frankly, those things have swings about them. And the fact is that from '76 to '90, or from '76 to '86, really, while I was mayor, we had a 100-year building boom.

And it really was partly to do with what we tried to do and pull people together, but it was also because the market was there. 100 years earlier, we enjoyed a tremendous amount of investment. The Pioneer Press building, the Endicott building, awful lot of the grand old buildings were built. The great Landmark Center, all of them were built about 100 years ago. And we had a real stagnant period after the Second World War and even before that.

So there was no doubt, the hole in the ground with the Science Museum presently in, that was there for 10 years. So we had the Town Square building, which filled a hole that was there for 13 years. I have said that we had holes in the ground in 1976 that were competing for historic designation. That's how long they were there.

So maybe along the way, we overbuilt. But an awful lot of that was done by private corporations, like the ones I've just named, to get it up. It wasn't government saying, we want a building. It was because companies who had a hundred-year commitment to this area recommitted during that period. And they're doing it again, I'm happy to see.

GARY EICHTEN: A lot of hand-wringing now, a lot of concern about the concentration of poverty in the cities, deteriorating housing and the rest. Won't the marketplace ultimately take care of that? You can buy housing fairly cheaply now in some parts of cities. The job market is good. Presumably most people can get a job. Won't the marketplace take care of that problem, or does something more need to be done?

GEORGE LATIMER: I have a qualified, strongly qualified support for your suggestion. The fact is that one of the great glories of St. Paul is the affordability of the housing. We still have a median value house affordable to many working people for about $73,000, $74,000. You could point at that as saying, well, that's not a city that's booming.

But you could also point at it and say, yeah, but it's a city where young working people not making an awful lot of money, but if they work hard, and they're careful with their dough, can move into their own home. And so I have children who now are working and not making a lot of money, and several of them are now owning their own homes, and I think that's a real plus. And I think part of that is the result of what you say, the market forces at work.

There's another part of the affordability gap which I worry about more. It's a prolonged production of lower-paid jobs. It's not a question of blaming anyone. It's a matter of looking at the numbers. The numbers are that in the last 10 years, and very likely in the next 10 years, close to 50% of the jobs produced in the whole region pay at about $22,000 a year. Well, making that kind of money does not make home ownership within reach for that family, even the ones working at one and one and a half and two jobs.

And so part of that gap is occurring all over America. So we now have close to 6 million families in America who are paying, I believe, more than 50% of their income for housing, either rental or ownership, or living substandard. That is a systemic national structural problem in which wages are not keeping up with housing and living needs. And that's a reality, and we better face it as a nation and as a region as well.

And so as long as that occurs, you're going to have either housing outside the reach of folks who are working hard, or housing deteriorate because they can't afford to maintain it as they ought to. So the withdrawal of support for affordable housing, I think, is going to accelerate that kind of problem, and I think the public awareness has got to be lifted in that regard.

GARY EICHTEN: What's the answer?

GEORGE LATIMER: We're going to have to be smarter about using the market forces that we've learned so much about to serve the good of the region and the public and the people. So I'm kind of a born-again Democrat in this sense, that I still believe that because I'm well-off, and my family, my wife and I have been blessed, that I don't believe that we have the right to turn our back on an awful lot of people who aren't doing very well, and through no fault of their own. They're working hard, and it's not realistic to think that all of them are going to make enough money in the long run.

So I still have an old-time religion view of society, which is that we are really stewards of our wealth. That we're not God, we're not emperors, that the earth and the community is ours together. And that yes, I believe in private property, but I believe a decent society says that a country and a community as rich as we are should not have people who are trying hard not to be properly fed, clothed, educated, or cared for medically. That's just where I am. That sounds like a liberal Democrat, doesn't it? That's what I am.

However, I also have lived a long time, and I've seen programs that are top down, and I've seen programs that tend to try to do the job for people fail. So I'm also a great believer that everyone's got to have an effort and a stake in the effort, and that the principles of the market matter a lot, that you can't ignore it. You can't say, oh, we're going to give this community a nice new supermarket. Well, if the market isn't there for a supermarket, don't be foisting half-used supermarkets on people. You can't foist market-needed things for people.

But on the other hand, you can say, how do we assure that-- not that everybody is equally well-off. Of course not. That's not going to happen in this world. But how are we going to make sure that there's a modicum, there's a base, there's a floor, especially for the children, so that they have some decent shot at life?

Well, the way we do it, I think, is a combination of what we've learned about the market, plus some public purpose. Medical care is a good example. I'm not expert on medical care, but I would come down on some blended, some use of competition, some use of nongovernmental delivery of the service, but also insist on very clear public purpose outcomes, meaning that somebody who's poor is not left to be sick and die in a society as rich as ours.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you wish you had been elected governor? You ran in 1986.

GEORGE LATIMER: No, I'm delighted that I ended my career as a total failure and a flop.

[LAUGHTER]

I ran a miserable campaign. And to this day I have people say to me, you know, George, you really ought to run for governor. And I said, well, I did, but no one knew it. That was all. Oh, sure, I wanted to be governor. That's why I ran. Fortunately, I've been blessed in a lot of other choices I've had. But it's very humbling not to be elected to something and to see how well the state is doing without you.

I mean, you really were-- this is a wonderful place, this Minnesota. And sure, there's still a lot of unmet needs and still a lot of dysfunction, and there's still a lot of acrimony over silly things. But we're still a wonderful place. And it's pretty hard, if you look at the various governors we had, we can survive almost any form of leadership. It seems that way to me.

And right now we're talking in 1997. You cannot look back over the last, what is it now, six years that Arne Carlson has been governor-- there's no way-- now, obviously, Roger Moe and the Democratic leadership has kept the course going in certain ways as well. It's a shared responsibility. But you cannot, with any intellectual honesty, point at this past six years as being a terrible thing for the state. It hasn't been. And especially because I'm a lawyer, judicial appointments, other things that a governor can do, have been done well.

So therefore, if you live a long enough time, and you see the changes in leadership-- I don't mean to get indifferent about who leads. It doesn't matter. It might have mattered. But the fact is that if I were governor, I know there are things that I wanted to do as governor. But I look over how we've come, reforming welfare in a way that is maybe more humane in Minnesota, more connected with real opportunity for poor people than in a lot of states. I think that's pretty good. That's the kind of thing I wanted to do many years ago. But the fact is we're getting there.

Choice in education, keeping the quality up, we have to keep our close eye on that. It's a tough issue because I'm not sure, if I were governor, how far I would go in choice. It's a difficult issue. It's a difficult political issue as well. That is to say, can you continue to get the support for good public education at the same time you fritter away all the resources by saying it will give the same amount to any kind of education, private, public, or whatever, all under the guise of choice? Is there not a fear and a risk of the diminution of the public commitment to public education? I worry about that even while I'm supportive and sympathetic of the idea of moving toward diversity and choice.

You've let me ramble on something awful. But I guess what I'm saying is that sure, there are some things that I would have liked to have done as governor. But it's pretty, pretty humbling to see in the long haul both the number of good things that get done without you, as I said earlier, and also you'd have to question how many of the bad things you could have avoided if you were governor.

GARY EICHTEN: What do you think of politicians voting or taking certain actions based almost exclusively on how it will affect their re-election? That is to say that--

GEORGE LATIMER: You know, I--

GARY EICHTEN: Is that legit?

GEORGE LATIMER: It is legit, to a point. I always erred on the other side, where I had such a level of trust in the people. And to be immodest, but honest as I know how, there was enough trust both ways with the people toward me and me toward the people, so that I knew I took votes and did things that I knew were at least temporarily unpopular and maybe long-run unpopular. But I believed in them fervently.

You could begin with gay rights. I believed in that in '78. It's not a question of espousing a lifestyle. It's a question of saying that these are all God's children, and we cannot deprive anybody of a job or a house, a place to stay, because of who they are, what they are. That seemed to me so fundamental. I had supporters say to me, Mayor, people are real mad at you about that gay rights support that you're giving. And I said, well, no kidding. I know that. I'm not stupid. I know where the votes are. But I didn't believe in it. And so in '78 I did that.

The Job Corps. The Job Corps and the old Bethel site, I think it's had its 15th-year anniversary. I think we've had now more than 2,000 or 3,000 young people from 16 to 21 who had dropped out of school, who now have learned a trade, placement level of 90%. Very unpopular when we passed it. But I just had a belief that the values of the people of St. Paul were, kids should have another chance. And I took a gamble and said, I'm going to go for what I think the values of my people are and what I believe is right, and trust that I'll survive this bad political period. So that was a terrible political fight.

So you could go on and on about issues that you-- but on the other hand-- and so therefore, that's my way of saying that I have no time for an elected official who has no stakes in the ground. I don't even understand why someone who lacks passion about what the purpose of life is and what the purpose of society is to the point where all they need to do is to check out the polls.

I got to tell you, I'm a very smart politician, and I always knew what the most popular move was. It doesn't take a genius to know what's popular. But Edmund Burke, when he wrote to the electors of Bristol, wrote a wonderful letter that's often quoted. And they would criticize him about a vote he took that was contrary to their wishes.

And he said that I have a commitment, yes, to represent you. But I also have a commitment to represent the silent majority, those people who've come before us and are now gone, and what they lived and died for. And I have an obligation to the constitution, the liberties, those laws and those principles by which we protect ourselves. And I have an obligation to the children and the people of the future as well. And it's that total commitment and trust that I've got to vote on, and that's my view of it.

Now, there were probably times in which I erred on the side too much of just looking at my own conscience. But there are plenty of times that I changed my view, qualified my position, or changed my position, when I knew that people were adamantly in favor of something. If I felt that it didn't harm people who needed some protection, and if I felt that I could do it without bankrupting the city, and if it didn't violate a sacred principle to me, and you want stop signs in your neighborhood, or the time that I went over to--

I'll never forget Riverside Library over on the West Side. They're wonderful people. A lot of Hispanics, a good number of older people. And they filled the Lutheran Church over there, right near St Matthew's, about 1,000 people that night. I had previously announced we were closing down the library. We had done a study, and you know those studies cannot be argued with, and the per capita use was too low. And we were going to close it down. And so we were lined up, and my staff, Bob Perryman, Kathy Stack, and all the people who had led me to that righteous decision, were there in the front pew of the church.

And one after the other-- and these folks knew me so well-- I think they led off with Sister Giovanni, and they began with a nun, and it got worse from there. All the most wonderful people in the world. And they all knew me so well. They didn't any of them holler at me or tell me I was terrible or tell me they were going to penalize me, because they knew me well enough to know that would have got my back up. Instead, they just said they knew I didn't mean to do that, and I'd just made a mistake, and I ought to do better and think about this.

So at the end of all their testimony, about an hour of it, I got up. And strangely enough, they put me at the pulpit, where I had to respond to all these comments. First words out of my mouth, I said, Dolly Latimer did not raise any dumb children, and that library will remain open for as long as I'm mayor. And I brought the house down. And of course, all the staff people, the poor souls who had led me through the facts and who I said, all right, let's do it, and I pulled the rug out from under them.

So I'm not pretending to ever have been so noble that if a lot of folks feel real strongly about something-- and after all, it's not arms and legs. It's just keeping a library open. And so it seems to me that's merely my usual long way of saying that there's time to hold, and there's time to fold. And if you can't fold when it's a matter of giving people a convenience that's dear to their heart, and it doesn't harm others, then what's the point of being a politician?

GARY EICHTEN: What would you like to be remembered for, if you had to pick one thing?

GEORGE LATIMER: Oh, boy. Only one, huh? Well, I'd like to pick two. I think when you're all through, we built Lowertown. Now has nearly 5,000 people living there. There was no one there before. When you started your career in radio, you could look out of public radio and it'd be all but empty spaces around you in the warehouse. Now it's brimming over with life. Energy Park has done great. All those things are good.

But finally, you get pretty modest about the difference you can make, and I think it's trees and kids. I think we planted about 75,000 trees, and they're all grown now and they're all beautiful, and we got clobbered by the Dutch elm disease. And kids, I think that if you have a place where kids can enjoy playing and can safely go to school, and kids who maybe didn't do so well go back to a place like the Job Corps, then you've done all right.

And so I think that maybe in the 14 years I was here, and before that on the school board, that to make St. Paul a green and comfortable place for older people and a place of opportunity and hope for young people is all anybody can hope for. And I want to claim that, but I'll let others decide whether, on both counts, we're better off than we would have been.

GARY EICHTEN: Former St. Paul Mayor George Latimer. Latimer is currently the CEO of the Chicago-based National Equity Fund and a professor of urban studies at Macalester College in St. Paul. We spoke with George Latimer as part of Minnesota Public Radio's Voices of Minnesota series.

Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Savatt and Company, a national market research, advertising, and public relations firm. 10 minutes now before 1:00.

ALEX CHADWICK: This is Alex Chadwick. All this week, we're talking about the value of public radio, partly through the voices of the journalists you've come to rely on-- Scott Simon, Cokie Roberts, others-- and also by reminding you that this is a place where you hear many other American voices, and hear them at length.

These are people in the news or affected by the news, people who know that public radio wants more than a fast quip. One man we interviewed said it was nice to come to a place where he could speak in paragraphs. Public radio is where people can still come to speak about what matters to them. If that matters to you, please call the station right now and become a new member today. Thanks.

GARY EICHTEN: 1-800-227-2811 is the number to call, if you enjoy that long-form programming that you hear every day here on our Midday program over the noon hour. Lorna Benson is here, and Lorna, it is true that people that we interview tend to get to speak in paragraphs rather than just soundbites.

LORNA BENSON: And more than paragraphs, actually. At length, as you were saying, we can listen to the comments of former St. Paul Mayor George Latimer. We've been listening to him for the last half hour now. And we've heard some interesting comments that he made, particularly near the end when he was talking about the greening of St. Paul and the trees.

And comments like that are interesting and valuable in a historical context, and yet a lot of times that stuff does not really make the news. And so you don't have many opportunities to sit down and hear these important people speaking at length, except right here on Minnesota Public Radio, right here on the Midday program. If you value that-- and chances are if you're listening today, you do value the programming-- now is the time to call and become a member. You can do that so easily by calling 1-800-227-2811.

GARY EICHTEN: I don't mean to frighten anybody here, but there's a computer screen in front of me which says that our goal this hour is $3,000 for this little segment. For eight minutes? Could that be possible? Well, anyway, let's keep working away here, friends. This is membership week, and-- $1,500. OK, that sounds a little better. $1,500. That's about 25 of you, if there are 25 of you out there who have not yet had a chance to call in.

If your name isn't in that Apple Power Macintosh drawing that we'll be holding tomorrow, we'll be giving an Apple Power Mac, with the color printer, away. We'll be giving that away at about 9:00 to 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, and all you have to do to get your name in the drawing is to call us. You don't even have to pledge. So give us a call. Make sure your name is in the drawing. But we sure hope that this being membership week, you'll take the opportunity to sign up, become a member, or renew your membership. Very, very simple. Give us a ring here at 1-800-227-2811.

A lot of you, I know, listen in your car as you scoot about over the noon hour. AirTouch cellular, all you have to do is dial pound 669 on your car phone. Pound 669 and you'll be able to get right through. 1-800-227-2811. $66 is the basic membership rate. A lot of people are joining at higher levels. For example, if you'd like to pledge a dollar a day, a $360 level, we will send out to you as a special premium a Sony Sports Walkman radio, a great value in and of itself. Go out and exercise with it. Take the doggy out for a walk with the radio. Whatever you'd like to do. Give us a call. 1-800-227-2811. Don't try it, though, with two dogs. I have. It doesn't work.

LORNA BENSON: [LAUGHS] Hey, Gary, we have an easy way to make up that $1,500 goal in just a few minutes. Right now we have a special match, an MPR 30th anniversary member match. If you've never pledged before, if you give us a call right now, you can actually double your contribution. Be one of the first 30 listeners to call and become a new member and your pledge will be matched, dollar for dollar, by current members Paulette and Steve Barnes. So if you call 1-800-227-2811 and make a pledge of $66 or $120, those dollars will be doubled, and we'll be well on our way toward making that $1,500 goal.

GARY EICHTEN: It adds up so very quickly. $66 automatically becoming $132 right now, if you call in with a new membership contribution. And of course, if you are already a member, don't feel left out. A lot of you joined at this time last year. More people joined this at this time last year than at any other time in our history. And that means in turn that more of you are due to renew at this time than any time in our history.

And we can't afford to lose you. You are the very foundation on which this station is built. Without you, you wouldn't be hearing programs like Midday or All Things Considered or Morning Edition. They wouldn't be on the air. Very simple. And if you find what we've been doing the last year pretty decent, pretty decent, give us a call. Renew your membership. 1-800-227-2811. Make sure you get your name in the drawing for the Apple Power Mac, and the drawing will be held tomorrow.

LORNA BENSON: You know, I think a number of new members or listeners think that the funding issue perhaps has been resolved, because they haven't heard a lot about it. But the fact of the matter is it was resolved because members made those phone calls and took out memberships here at Minnesota Public Radio. In order to make sure that it stays resolved, you need to keep renewing your membership. And this is the time of year, for a lot of people who signed up a year ago in February, where you have to go to the phone and make that phone call right now. 1-800-227-2811. Renew your membership.

And if you're in your car you can call on your car phone, pound 669, and we'll sign you up in just a matter of a few minutes. You can use Visa, Mastercard, American Express, or Discover Card. And consider that $66 household membership for just $5.50 a month will sign you up as a member here at Minnesota Public Radio, and you can take away a special thank you gift. And one thing that a number of news junkies might be interested in is that one-year subscription to Time magazine. So call now, sign up at $66, and you can take away a full year subscription to Time magazine. 1-800-227-2811.

GARY EICHTEN: Tomorrow we're going to have a call-in over the noon hour, and those are always popular. Tomorrow we'll be talking with Jack Gillis. Longtime Midday listeners know full well who Mr. Gillis is. He puts out The Car Book every year, a complete report on all the new models, and he'll be joining us with his assessment of the '97 models. Great opportunity to get your specific questions answered. Take advantage of that program tomorrow.

And in fact, take advantage of all the programs you hear on this station through the year by making those programs possible. They're tough to find elsewhere. You can make sure that they remain on the radio, when you want to listen to the radio, by calling in a membership pledge. Very, very simple. George Latimer was referring to the old days when you could look out over Lowertown. We had some studios down there, and well, there weren't very many people around.

What George failed to say was that the radio service, there wasn't much of that either at that time, because we didn't have very many members, listener members. The listener membership is growing. The programming gets better and better and better. 1-800-227-2811. Do what you can. $66 is the basic rate. We have memberships all the way up to $1,000. Some of you can afford that. In fact, seven people have called in with pledges of $1,000 or more. How about you, if you can afford it? 1-800-227-2811.

LORNA BENSON: You know, it's hard to find anything else on your radio dial that is even remotely close to Minnesota Public Radio, and in particular, Midday. Today we heard the comments of George Latimer, a former mayor of St. Paul, at length. Very wonderful and interesting conversation with George Latimer. You don't get a chance to hear that many other places. In fact, I'd say probably very few other places in the Twin Cities.

And just two days ago, we heard Maya Angelou for a whole hour here on Midday. A valuable opportunity for a lot of listeners to get insight and in-depth comments from these important and interesting figures in our history, and you can hear that right here on Midday. So help support it. 1-800-227-2811.

This is basically how noncommercial public radio works. The listener decides to become a member. It's a voluntary contribution. We're not knocking on your door. That's the wonderful thing about it. The people who listen to this program have made up their mind to just go to their phone and say, hey, they didn't send me a bill, but I know they need our support. I value this program. I don't have a problem at all supporting it. 1-800-227-2811.

GARY EICHTEN: Lorna, an unofficial guesstimate here as to where we stand. We started in need of $1,500, in this last little segment. We've got about a minute to go, and I'm guessing that we're probably about $500 short. So give us a quick call if you've not yet gotten through. We're matching new memberships dollar for dollar now, Paulette and Steve Barnes standing by. Get your new memberships doubled, get your name in the drawing for the Apple Power Mac, and do what you can to support good-quality programming. 1-800-227-2811.