Jim Swenson and Marshall Tanick
Randy Kelly (Tribute before) was only a one-term Mayor, siding – against my advice – with George Bush over John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Given Minnesota was represented by Republican Senator Norm Coleman (the previous Mayor of Saint Paul), Randy told me he thought Saint Paul would fare better under a Republican administration.
With Chris Coleman being the new Mayor, I was out of a job again. Not wanting all the stress of once again being a solo practice attorney, I started job searching. First, I tried to market myself as a consultant to other cities to adopt Saint Paul’s successful program using “City-Initiated Tenant Remedies Actions” to combat slum-landlords. That lasted one gig. After presenting to the Duluth City Council, the Duluth Tribune ran an editorial saying what Dawkins didn’t tell you is that Saint Paul had been sued for using that law. (See Tribute before – at that time the US Supreme Court decision was still pending.)
Next, I thought maybe Hamline, my alma mater, would hire me to be a law professor – nope, you’re not published, they said. Then I saw the Wilder Foundation was hiring a Director of their housing programs – didn’t even get an interview despite having been the City’s Director of Housing. Things looked bleak.
Meanwhile, I had applied to be a Child Support Magistrate (CSM) in Hennepin County. As a legislator I had gotten enacted a number of controversial changes in family law, not just in child support, but also changing child custody laws from favoring one parent as a primary parent to maximizing the involvement of both parents. (That full story can be read either by clicking <Here> or going to the Archives and scrolling to “A Sea Change in Politics Takes More than One Session”).
I didn’t figure my chances of becoming a CSM were very good. It would have been easy for Hennepin County Chief Family Court Judge Jim Swenson, 
who was doing the CSM hiring, to wonder if Dawkins, who was controversial, would maybe go too easy on child support paying fathers. But no! Instead Judge Swenson recognized that fairness should be a chief attribute of a CSM, and he offered me the job. I literally jumped for joy upon hearing the news. This was the first time in my life where I felt like something was handed to me, rather than getting it by luck or pluck. It’s like I always had this glass ceiling, so nothing came easy.
Thank you, Judge Swenson, for that opportunity, and I think I made you proud. I started each case saying:
“Near the end of the hearing I am going to announce how I’m thinking about your case – it’s not my decision – but if you think I’ve missed something important, or got something wrong, I’ll come back to you one more time.”
The clerks and bailiffs told me that litigants really appreciated knowing they’d been listened to, and on their way out of the courtroom, could be heard remarking how fair they thought they had been treated.
But being a Child Support Magistrate was only a part-time job. Right after jumping for joy, I called Marshall Tanick to see if his law firm would take me on “of counsel.” (The Court House where I would be a Magistrate half days and Marshall’s office were only a block apart.) As Chair of the Civil Law Committee at the legislature, I had invited Marshall to testify a couple times – him being a renowned constitutional law expert. We were acquaintances, not friends. Marshall said yes, he’d be happy to have me be of counsel.
caption: Marshall Tanick
Being of counsel is being a “rainmaker” – you don’t get paid a salary or share in the firm’s earnings; rather, for any business you bring to the firm, you share in the fee for that case, but you get an office, a secretary, a telephone, and everything else to also have your own solo practice – only this time I would be on the 17th floor of a downtown skyscraper instead of lawyering out of a storefront. No more just passers-by dropping in, and this time around I mostly accepted only paying clients.
With all the connections I’d made over the years of legislating, I was a pretty good rainmaker. Not only did I share in the fees for the cases I referred to Marshall or others in his firm, I also made money doing my own cases. Thirty years after finishing law school I finally found that being a lawyer also meant making money! Thank you, Marshall Tanick, for that opportunity – my kids got their college educations paid for – and, a few years later, at age 62, I started thinking about retirement.
Retiring at an early age was an easy decision once I looked into it. In 2012 son Jack was 15 years old and son Nick 13. Social Security provides a retired individual of sufficient age (62 – regardless of ability to continue working) a double benefit until your last child turns age 18. This meant five years of a double benefit in my case! I costed it out. If I waited until age 66 to retire it would be the year 2034 before the cumulative amount of social security I received would be more than what I got by retiring now. Heck, I thought, lets enjoy the next twenty-two years!
Being a stay-at-home father with fifteen and thirteen year-olds is not the same as with five and three year-olds – there’s not much hands-on needed, more just enjoying watching them grow to adulthood – so I had some time on my hands. I joined an over-55 senior softball league playing games in the mornings. (The year before Covid I had 350 At Bats.) I traveled east, west and south visiting friends and family. Indeed, my parents, Jack and Grace, were now in their 90s and it was great to enjoy their twilight years with them. I also wrote my memoirs – the “Growing Up Now and Then” I keep referring you to. And I wrote a novel, The Rumpkins (rejected by the one publisher I tried, but coming on-line soon).
Meanwhile, the coals of my marriage with Ellen began to cool. It wasn’t just that she thought it was a bad idea to write memoirs about acid trips as stories for our sons; it wasn’t just that she thought it a bad idea for me to run as the Green Party candidate for Attorney General while she served in Democrat Gov. Mark Dayton’s administration; it was just that we had both fallen out-of-love. Once both boys were off to college, we mutually agreed to call it quits. There was no animosity; neither had gone out on the other; it was a friendly divorce and we both ended-up financially okay. She has since happily remarried to a guy both kids think is great. And me? Well, that leads to three others I want to pay tribute to.
photo below: visiting with mom Grace and dad Jack
