Ellen Anderson

        Ellen in Amsterdam on our honeymoon:

After losing the Mayor’s race in 1993, I proposed to my best volunteer, Ellen Anderson. Jokingly, I told friends: “Pretty good runner-up prize,” but this was only payback for her telling her friends while she was running for the State Senate in 1992: “If he can do it, I can do it.”  Seriously, we were in love with each other and it was now or never for starting a family – she was 34 and me 43.  First marriage for both of us.

Ellen won that race in 1992 in classic Ellen fashion – great values, massive courage and sheer determination.  The 1990 legislative re-districting plan put her home in Saint Anthony Park in the same district as the leading pro-life Senator’s.  “No way do I want to be represented by a pro-lifer!” she said and announced her candidacy while others stayed on the sidelines, not wishing to tangle with a 15-year incumbent.  That courage enamored her with the more liberal and pro-choice portion of the newly created legislative district.  The incumbent, Gene Waldorf, saw the writing on the wall and announced he wasn’t going to seek re-election.  That opened the floodgates for a whole host of better-known aspirants, but the Democratic Party regulars who convened for making an endorsement stayed with the one with demonstrated courage.

Ellen went on to become the leading environmental champion in the legislature, starting the 100% carbon-free initiative – her sheer determination and political smarts often evident.  My favorite was watching her last-day-of-session filibuster of a tire burning bill that was bad for the environment.  The author of the bill had the votes to pass it, but time was running out.  It needed to get voted on before midnight or, by law, the Senate would adjourn sine die – that is, without life.  Ellen rises and makes a motion to set the time for adjournment.  The Senate President rules it a debatable motion and Ellen keeps the floor until the stroke of midnight despite the screams of the bill’s author to call the question.

                                                  caption:  Ellen on the Senate Floor

I could go on-and-on about Ellen’s values and courage leading the fight against pro-gun legislation (conceal and carry), being the first woman to wear pants on the Senate floor, becoming Gov. Mark Dayton’s Chair of the Public Utilities Commission …. on-and-on.

We had a blast being a husband-wife team in the legislature.  But first we spent two wonderful years planning a 1995 wedding and honeymoon.  (1995 would be a short legislative session and non-election year.)  We also planned a family around short sessions and non-election years (sons Jack in 1997 and Nick in 1999).

caption:  Andy, Nick & Jack at Rockefeller Center Skating Rink

Ellen was a great Mom as well as a fun companion.  We took family vacations to the Boundary Waters, the Jersey Shore, to Gold Hill, Colorado, even Hawaii and Puerto Rico.  There are many, many stories about her and our kids.  Go to Archives and read “Getting Married in a Baseball Stadium,” and all the daily doses in “Third Time’s the Charm” and “Pleasures of Being a Father.”  I hope – after you finish reading these 20 Tributes – that you do so because it hardly suffices to reduce our 23-year marriage to these snippets:

1.) On September 17, 1995, we got married in a baseball stadium, got an Amtrak sleeping car to NYC, found a Village Voice ad for cheap plane tickets to Europe, landed in Madrid and bought a month-long Eurail pass.

2.) In 1997 Jesse Ventura was just a talk radio host.  He had Ellen on asking, “Why are you spending time on such a silly little bill as not allowing men in women’s marathons when there are so many important things to work on?”  She answers, “Well Jesse, I tried to get on your show to talk about what I was doing about climate change, public safety, and education policy, but you wouldn’t have me.”  Dead silence – a cardinal sin on the radio.  (“Go Ace!’ my nickname for her.)                                             caption:  Jesse speechless as a radio host

3.) In 2002 we chose the near-by French Immersion school for kindergarten for Jack, and two years later for Nick.  They could, and did, canoe to school from Ellen’s Como Lake home.

4.) Also in 2002, we decided that one of us needed to resign from the legislature – not just because one of us needed to start making enough money to support a family – but also because we wanted to live together as a family.  (Up until then I had kept my apartment in Frogtown because we had two different legislative districts.)

5.) When Jack was 6 and Nick 4, Jack would climb the apple tree to get on the garage roof and Nick would follow him.  “Don’t let them do that!” Ellen says, “the neighbor lady said she’d call child protection the next time!”  My response: “Let her!  The kids you don’t let find their own limits are the kids who end up falling out of trees and breaking their legs.”

6.) Jack went on to win a math scholarship at Hamline Univ. and Nick pitched for the baseball team at Oberlin College.

Once the kids were both out of the house, we mutually agreed to call it quits on the marriage.  No animosity, just time-to-move-on, with the many great memories.

caption:  My mom and Ellen, two beauties