​Rest In Peace, Governor Al Olson

By Jim Fuglie

Want to live to be really old? Get yourself elected Governor of North Dakota. Our governors live a very long time. I thought about that recently with the passing of former Governor Allen Olson. He was 87 when he died in December.

The governor who he beat in 1980 to take the reins of state government was Art Link, who died in 2010. Link lived to be 96 years old. Bill Guy, who preceded Link, was 93 when he died in 2013. George Sinner, the Governor who beat Allen Olson in 1984 after just one term (the first Democrat to unseat a sitting Republican Governor in North Dakota, by the way) was 89 when he died in 2018.

All governors elected since Sinner, who retired after two terms in 1992, are still living, although some are getting a little long in the tooth. They include Ed Schafer, 79, Jack Dalrymple, 77, and the youngsters, John Hoeven, 68, and Doug Burgum, who’ll turn 70 next year. None of them appear to be ready to leave us any time soon.

Oh, and our current Governor, Kelly Armstrong, is just a pup. He’ll turn 50 later this year.

But enough about age. I do want to write a bit about Al Olson. I won’t speak ill of the dead, but I will say we were not friends, at least until late in life. I took him to task when I was executive director of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party in a letter to the editor early in his term as Governor for not living in the North Dakota Governor’s residence, choosing instead to remain in his house in Bismarck (he was the first Bismarck resident to get elected governor in a very long time) so his kids wouldn’t have to switch schools. His choice not to move to the Capitol grounds kind of got him off to a rocky start and was the first of several public relations blunders he made during his four-year term.

I also helped Bud Sinner beat him in 1984. That election was the beginning of the “two governors” fiasco, when he refused to leave the Governor’s office on January 1, 1985, even though Sinner had already taken the oath of office.

The two were squabbling over the appointment of two Supreme Court Justices. Ironically, it was the Supreme Court who ruled in favor of Sinner, and he got to name an old political friend, Herb Meschke, and the first woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court, Beryl Levine, to seats on the court. Both were Democrats. They were selected from a list of names submitted by the state’s Judicial Nominating Committee to replace one deceased Justice and another who was retiring. There were a couple of Republicans on that list too, and Olson probably would have picked them instead of Meschke and Levine.

But Olson was never one to hold a grudge. He was just 46 years old when he left office and moved on to new careers, mostly in Minnesota, and our occasional meetings after that were friendly, as were his relations with Sinner, as well as with the gracious Art Link, who Olson had defeated to become Governor in 1980.

I remember well the end of the 1984 election campaign, when he got on the wrong side of the press. Just days before the election, Mike Jacobs, editor of the Grand Forks Herald, broke a story about Olson failing to pay his income taxes.

I don’t have a copy of the Herald’s story about all of this, but I found an old copy of The Bismarck Tribune, dated Saturday, November 3, 1984, (just three days before the election) which said, in part:

“Democratic Agriculture Commissioner candidate Bruce Larson this week questioned Olson’s 1983 sale of land in Towner County.”

Olson sold the land to state Rep. Gene Nicholas April 1, 1983, for $100,000. The next day, Nicholas sold the land to a Cando couple for $128,000. They financed the purchase with a $135,000 bank loan guaranteed through the state Industrial Commission’s agribond program, records show. Olson is a member of the commission.”

So Jacobs, apparently curious because of the timing being so close to tax time, asked Olson for a copy of his tax return — and, out of fairness, asked Sinner for his as well. Sinner complied.

But Olson’s campaign chairman, Myron Atkinson, told Jacobs Olson had not yet submitted his tax return that year. He said Olson had filed for and received two filing extensions, and had until December 15 to get his tax forms in. Atkinson said the Governor had needed time in April to get his father’s 1967 estate tax returns to get the purchase price of that family farm land, and then got busy with his campaign and asked for and received the second extension.

That was the Saturday before the election. Now I think I have a pretty good recollection of what happened next. I can’t find the newspaper stories, but here’s what I remember.

Jim Corcoran, an enterprising young reporter at The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, whose beat included the federal courthouse, apparently talked to someone at the IRS office and was told that second extensions are not allowed. Corcoran reported that news in the Sunday or Monday Forum.

The story was picked up by the Associated Press, and the whole affair was pretty widely reported statewide by Tuesday — Election Day. A Governor who had not paid his taxes was pretty big news. It was a pretty crushing blow for Olson.

A UND Bureau of Governmental Affairs poll, reported on in The Forum the Saturday before the election, had shown Olson leading Sinner 49% to 41%. A poll taken for the Sinner campaign, dated Friday, November 2 (four days before the election — I still have a copy) showed Sinner leading Olson, but within the margin of error, 46% to 43%.

On Tuesday, November 6, North Dakotans voted to elect Sinner as governor by a margin of 10% (Sinner 55%, Olson 45%). Likely much of that was the result of the income taxes stories. It was an ignominious end to what might have been a fruitful four years for one of the state’s youngest-ever governors.

But as I said, Olson moved to Minnesota after the “two Governors” fiasco and had a career there. I think he had a hard time figuring out how to have a legal practice in North Dakota after all that.

It was an interesting chapter in North Dakota’s long political story. I enjoyed my front row seat. I’m glad Al Olson lived a long time with a successful career in Minnesota. I wasn’t a big fan of his time in office, but I liked him, and I thought he had the best-ever middle name of any North Dakota Governor: Ingvar. Rest In Peace, Allen Ingvar Olson.

Reach the author at jimfuglie920@gmail.com.