Musical Chairs

In Minnesota, where politics is supposed to be as clear as the trout streams, the deal seemed clouded with back room smoke. Soon, two-term Governor Wendell Anderson, 43, will resign. His successor, Lieutenant Governor Rudy Perpich, 48, will then appoint Anderson to the Senate seat being vacated by Vice President-elect Walter Mondale.

The musical-chairs arrangement poses some risk of a backlash for Anderson when he comes up for election in 1978. He has a 70% popularity rating as Governor because among other things, he lowered local public education costs. But a Minnesota poll found wide disapproval of his Senate scheme.

First Tie. Son of an iron miner, Perpich is a fire-and-brimstone populist from northern Minnesota. As a boy, he shared a bed with two younger brothers. He delights in recalling that on his wedding day in 1954, his father Anton told him to leave behind "that pen you got when you left the eighth grade--one of your brothers can use it." Perpich became a dentist and was elected in 1962 to the state senate, where he pushed mining companies to pay more state taxes and reclaim pit-mined land. Predicted Ulric Scott, chairman of Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party: "We're in for some surprises."

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