It was the DFL city convention of 1974. Delegates from around the city were meeting to re-endorse Larry Cohen for Mayor and select candidates for City Council and School Board.
Members of the City Council were elected city wide back then and this was to be the first election for which they all ran for specific seats [the “alley system”] and with party designation on the ballot. The party’s incumbents seeking re-election [Vic Tedesco, Leonard Levine, Ruby Hunt, Patrick Roedler] each had their alley already assigned, but the rules provided that the non-incumbents select the seat they would seek in the sequence they were endorsed.
The first non-incumbent endorsed was a young blond-haired man who had run a good campaign two years previously in the only run-in-a-pack for seven seats election. He approached the podium to announce his choice. He could have chosen the seat currently being held by Rosalie Butler who was vacating her seat to run against the DFL for Cohen’s spot, but instead with seeming bravery told the enthusiastic and partisan cloud that he would take on Dean Meredith, the long-time Republican [“call me an independent”] Dean Meredith, who had always had enough personal attraction to be able to maintain a seat running against the field.
The hall was filled with joyful enthusiasm as a young David Hozza made the announcement. Dean Meredith decided not to seek reelection, but to make his own ill-fated attempt to become Mayor, running as an independent against Cohen who won the DFL primary and Hugo Hagstrom, the official GOP candidate who really wasn’t running. [Maybe I will write about the Hugo Hagstrom matter some other time. It is a good story, although there are those who have better insights into than I do and is another reminder of the shenanigans which can happen when parties are not allowed control over their own labels and trademarks.]
History tells us that the DFL reelected Larry Cohen and won all seven Council seats that year with Hozza, Jack Christensen, and Bob Sylvester joining Tedesco, Levine, Hunt, and Roedler.
Dave Hozza seved three terms for six years [remember those were two-year terms back then] and, for reasons I never understood, decided to retire in 1980 when he was still in his mid-30s. When one considers some of the folks who have come onto and off of our city political stage since then, it can be interesting to wonder what might have happened had he decided to become a career politician.
He ran a bakery on West Seventh Street for a while several years ago, but I am not sure what he has been doing for the last 29 years. I knew he had been involved in banking, but it is the DFL’s dirty not-so-secret that many of its people participate in things like that.
But he resurfaced this week, in the major, front-page article in Monday’s paper about his enterprise to salvage millions of board feet of white pine from an old grain elevator in Superior, Wisconsin, an enterprise he got himself into as a result of his banking activity.
I am not sure that this venture is leftist-green or whether it may instead be capitalist chic or maybe something else. Maybe it’s a mixture. But it does seem like a good idea to preserve so much wood and it seems like such upper-class wood to save.
I guess my sentiment is to wish Dave Hozza luck on the venture. According to the article he is 64 years old now and thinks he might have five more years to go on the project. Who knows what his next venture will be?
Members of the City Council were elected city wide back then and this was to be the first election for which they all ran for specific seats [the “alley system”] and with party designation on the ballot. The party’s incumbents seeking re-election [Vic Tedesco, Leonard Levine, Ruby Hunt, Patrick Roedler] each had their alley already assigned, but the rules provided that the non-incumbents select the seat they would seek in the sequence they were endorsed.
The first non-incumbent endorsed was a young blond-haired man who had run a good campaign two years previously in the only run-in-a-pack for seven seats election. He approached the podium to announce his choice. He could have chosen the seat currently being held by Rosalie Butler who was vacating her seat to run against the DFL for Cohen’s spot, but instead with seeming bravery told the enthusiastic and partisan cloud that he would take on Dean Meredith, the long-time Republican [“call me an independent”] Dean Meredith, who had always had enough personal attraction to be able to maintain a seat running against the field.
The hall was filled with joyful enthusiasm as a young David Hozza made the announcement. Dean Meredith decided not to seek reelection, but to make his own ill-fated attempt to become Mayor, running as an independent against Cohen who won the DFL primary and Hugo Hagstrom, the official GOP candidate who really wasn’t running. [Maybe I will write about the Hugo Hagstrom matter some other time. It is a good story, although there are those who have better insights into than I do and is another reminder of the shenanigans which can happen when parties are not allowed control over their own labels and trademarks.]
History tells us that the DFL reelected Larry Cohen and won all seven Council seats that year with Hozza, Jack Christensen, and Bob Sylvester joining Tedesco, Levine, Hunt, and Roedler.
Dave Hozza seved three terms for six years [remember those were two-year terms back then] and, for reasons I never understood, decided to retire in 1980 when he was still in his mid-30s. When one considers some of the folks who have come onto and off of our city political stage since then, it can be interesting to wonder what might have happened had he decided to become a career politician.
He ran a bakery on West Seventh Street for a while several years ago, but I am not sure what he has been doing for the last 29 years. I knew he had been involved in banking, but it is the DFL’s dirty not-so-secret that many of its people participate in things like that.
But he resurfaced this week, in the major, front-page article in Monday’s paper about his enterprise to salvage millions of board feet of white pine from an old grain elevator in Superior, Wisconsin, an enterprise he got himself into as a result of his banking activity.
I am not sure that this venture is leftist-green or whether it may instead be capitalist chic or maybe something else. Maybe it’s a mixture. But it does seem like a good idea to preserve so much wood and it seems like such upper-class wood to save.
I guess my sentiment is to wish Dave Hozza luck on the venture. According to the article he is 64 years old now and thinks he might have five more years to go on the project. Who knows what his next venture will be?
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1 comment:
thank you.
I had forgot that Hozza and that he was on the council until I saw the article and I had forgot about merideth completely.
and somebody needs to remind us all of the Hugo Hagstrom story again.
Davyking
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