Mike Hatch

Michael Alan Hatch (born November 12, 1948) is an American politician and lawyer.

In the 1960s, he attended the University of Minnesota, Duluth before dropping out and serving 18 months in the Merchant Marine.

There he earned $1.91 an hour shoveling coal into the engines of ore boats crossing the Great Lakes, and made stops in the ports of Rust Belt cities along the shores of the Great Lakes.

Hatch is a 1966 graduate of East High School in Duluth.

He was in port in South Chicago during the riots after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 and witnessed the clashes between Vietnam War protesters and police during the 1968 Democratic convention.

He got mugged at a port in Milwaukee.

Hatch later said of this time in his life, "I wasn't political at the time, but I was awakening to this stuff."

He got into a scuffle with a ship's officer who made a derogatory comment about Robert F. Kennedy's defense of African Americans.

"And that is when I became a Democrat," Hatch said.

He hitchhiked to Cleveland, called his father for money to return to Minnesota, and returned to the University of Minnesota Duluth to finish his degree with honors.

Of the problems in the Rust Belt cities he saw while working the boats, Hatch has said, "There was despair. I took an interest. I thought, 'you know what, I'm going to do something about it.'"

He was a trial lawyer in private practice in the 1970s and became chair of the state DFL Party in 1980.

Hatch earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1973.

In 1976, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) was Minnesota's dominant political party.

It held two U.S. Senate seats, the governor's office, four of eight Congressional seats, 104 of 134 seats in the Minnesota House of Representatives and 49 of 67 seats in the Minnesota Senate.

In 1978, the DFL suffered devastating losses in what is known as the "Minnesota Massacre."

The two U.S. Senate seats and governorship went Republican, Republicans picked up an additional Congressional seat, and the DFL lost its majority in the state House, ending up with a 67–67 tie.

(The Minnesota Senate was not up for election in 1978.)

The DFL party chair was elected at the state party convention, conducted in June of each election year.

In 1980, the prevailing issue was how the DFL could recover from the devastating loss in 1978.

There were six candidates for chair, all but one of whom had significant interest groups or officeholders supporting them.

Hatch, the one candidate without significant support from an interest group, ran a geographically based campaign focused primarily on the support of county and congressional district chairs.

The convention was tumultuous, with various interest groups opposed to each other over abortion, labor, and farm issues.

Hatch, who had the least amount of political experience, campaigned as a centrist who focused on economic issues and promised to elect more Democrats in the 1980 election.

He was elected chair on the third ballot.

At the time of his victory in June 1980, the mortgage on the party headquarters was in default and the party had no campaign funds for the 1980 election.

Under Hatch, the DFL became the first state Democratic party to acquire a computer and jet printer.

He published a monthly newspaper that was printed on the computer and mailed to each contributor of a "Sustaining Fund."

In 1980, the DFL Party was deeply divided over issues ranging from abortion to gay rights to gun control.

The party rules encouraged division by requiring delegates to be elected from "sub-caucuses" organized around specific issues or interest groups.

In spring 1981, Hatch invited Vice President Mondale and Senator Ted Kennedy, the likely Democratic presidential candidates in the 1984 election, to a "Jefferson-Jackson Day" dinner.

The invitation to Kennedy to a dinner in Mondale's home state was controversial, but the dinner, with 5,000 in attendance, was the largest and most profitable in the history of the DFL Party.

In 1981, Hatch printed political buttons, posters and letterhead under the name "The Centrists," promoting the notion that the party had to stand for more than just a conglomeration of interest groups.

Feminists, pro-lifers, gun control organizations, and gay rights supporters opposed the "Centrists," who tried to end the sub-caucus system but were defeated by a united coalition of pro-life and pro-choice activists.

Hatch "ran the party with a focus on winning elections and an intense dislike of its internal squabbles."

By 1982 the "Centrists" began exerting influence on party affairs, and the interest groups turned their focus on Hatch for organizing the group.

Nonetheless, the "Centrists" remained an influence in the 1982 elections, stifling the intraparty fights between the interest groups during an important election campaign.

In 1983, Governor Rudy Perpich appointed Hatch commissioner of the state Department of Commerce, a position he served in until 1989.

In 1998, he was elected state attorney general, a position to which he was reelected in 2002, receiving more votes than any previous candidate for any statewide office.

He was the Attorney General of Minnesota from 1999 to 2007, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Commerce from 1983 to 1989, and chair of the Minnesota DFL Party from 1980 to 1983.