Gathering String (38 page)

The new governor proposed consolidating districts as part of a plan that would raise pay for teachers and create incentives for outstanding teachers. The plan also included stringent new curriculum and testing requirements, scholarships for Iowa students attending colleges in the state and grants for innovative programs.

“
The plan was full of land mines,” recalls Wright, whose Republicans held a slim 26-24 edge in the Senate.

Even critics now concede the plan was exactly what Iowa needed. And Erickson was as crafty and persuasive as he was stubborn.

Rather than letting the issue bog down in local bickering over which schools to close, Erickson spelled that out, school by school, in his proposal. “He knew exactly what he was doing,” says Carl Nordstrom, then president of the Lindsborg School Board. “Lindsborg was one of the high schools he proposed closing, which made us feel like he’d stabbed us in the back the minute he got to Des Moines.”

Jack Westphal, publisher of the Lindsborg Journal, thought the man he regards almost as a second brother was committing political suicide. “I called Swede and told him he’d better not show up here, or they’d find some tar and feathers.”

But Erickson came home to face the mob. Large-screen televisions in the cafeteria carried the action to people who couldn’t fit in the high school gym.

Nordstrom stepped onto the stage in an empty gymnasium to tell a recent visitor what happened. “Swede stepped up to a podium right here, this man we adored. We’d been to his inaugural ball just three weeks earlier. We all booed. Someone threw a snowball. It missed him by about a foot and landed right over there. For three and a half minutes we booed and hissed and hooted. I have the tape. I timed it.”

The videotape, embedded below, also records the spellbinding oratory that followed. Erickson delivered a preview of the dynamic style and smooth cadence that dazzled the nation 1½ years later when he delivered the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention.

This was the toughest test of Erickson’s famed charm, and his voice was choked when the boos subsided enough that he could be heard. “No one loves Lindsborg more than I do, or is prouder than I am to be a graduate of Lindsborg High School,” he told the crowd, prompting another wave of jeers to start.

Before the outburst could drown him out, Erickson’s voice boomed out, “You had your turn! Now hear me out! Someone who loves the small towns of this state has to do something to save them!”

The room grew quiet. And Erickson made his sale: “We’re ‘Iowa stubborn,’ just like in ‘The Music Man.’ You remember, I played Professor Harold Hill when I was a senior, right on this stage, and you laughed. Iowa stubborn – there’s nothing we resist like change. But let me tell you, change happens, and it doesn’t ask permission, and it doesn’t take polls, and it doesn’t care if it’s popular or if you’re stubborn.”

Erickson recalled that his graduating class had 78 seniors, nearly twice the current class. “When I graduated, you couldn’t find a parking place on the square,” Erickson said. “Now you can’t find a businessman who’s sure he’s going to be there next year.”

The governor swore he wasn’t trying to kill Lindsborg, but to save it. “Let’s be stubborn! Let’s resist these changes that are destroying our town. If we want this great town to last for another generation, we have to draw another wave of immigrants like our grandparents who came over from Sweden.”

Then Erickson paused and said, “Well, OK, mine came over from Sweden. Yours came from Norway, but that’s just a suburb of Sweden.”

“
You see,” says Nordstrom, pausing the tape, “he knew just the right moment to lighten things up. When we laughed, and we all did laugh, I knew he had us.”

When the laughter stopped, Erickson continued, serious again: “Our forebears came here for the abundant land and the rich soil. But the new immigrants who will keep our grandparents’ dreams alive will come for quality jobs and quality schools.”

Erickson won by his persuasive power and by respecting people’s fears. No town completely lost its schools and sports teams. If three or four districts consolidated in one, each town would keep an elementary school with at least kindergarten and first grade. The upper grades and sports teams were dispersed among the towns. Lindsborg got Calloway County Junior High and varsity girls basketball, while the high school and football team moved to Alston.

That snowy January night, Erickson convinced his hometown that its future depended on giving up its high school. “Listen,” says Nordstrom as the video reaches the new governor’s impassioned closing. Nordstrom taps “start” on his iPhone’s stopwatch and hands it to the visitor. The ovation lasted four minutes, longer than the boos that greeted him.

“
When I sold it in Lindsborg, I knew I had it nailed,” Erickson says.

After two vetoes and two special sessions, he pushed the plan through the Legislature. “That stubborn Swede just wouldn’t accept any sort of compromise,” says Daniel Livingston, then the House speaker and later the Democratic candidate Erickson whipped to win re-election.

“
The school issue showed all sides of Swede,” says Livingston, a grudging admirer and still a blistering critic. “He’s innovative, you have to give him that. He’s persuasive. And he’s one hell of a fighter.

“
But he’s about the most devious mother (expletive) you’ll ever meet. He got all kinds of credit, and even national attention, for being gutsy with that confrontation in Lindsborg. But he didn’t have the guts to tell them when he was trying to win their votes. You can’t craft a plan like that, naming the specific schools you’re going to close, in three weeks. That cowardly piece of (expletive) was planning that all along and knew he couldn’t get elected if he leveled with the voters. No telling what he’s planning to do if he becomes president. Let’s hope he’s right again.”

***

Swan August Erickson is the first of two sons born to Carl and Augusta Erickson, who married at age 19, two weeks before Carl left to serve in Vietnam as an Army private.

“
Carl was just like Swede as a kid, outgoing, funny and boisterous,” says Olaf Swenson, a childhood friend of Carl’s. “But the guy who came home from the Hanoi Hilton was an entirely different man.”

Augusta Erickson would not discuss her husband’s drinking. “Carl deserves to rest in peace,” she said.

Erickson and his brother, Peter, would not discuss Carl’s drinking, except to acknowledge it. “My dad’s not running for president,” Swede said. “I am.”

Inge Hergestad, Augusta’s longtime next-door neighbor, said on several occasions she provided shelter when Augusta and her sons fled Carl’s violent rages. Sometimes she saw fresh bruises. “I told Augusta she should leave him, but she said she vowed to stay with Carl for better or worse, and that what happened to him in Vietnam wasn’t his fault.”

Despite his drinking, Carl Erickson was a moderately successful grocer. “This town was thriving then,” Swenson says. “You could make a good living selling groceries. And Carl was a smart enough fellow when he was sober, and real friendly.”

Swede Erickson’s military experience was completely different from his father’s. After graduating from Lindsborg High School, Erickson enlisted in the Iowa National Guard. While he was still finishing his Iowa State business degree through evening classes, his unit was activated and sent to the Persian Gulf to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi invaders. He came home with a Silver Star and a Purple Heart.

Those military medals are well-worn Iowa political lore. Five Des Moines Record stories and a dozen Iowa sources interviewed recently repeated the same story: Corporal Erickson was driving alone in a Jeep in Kuwait when he heard gunfire and pulled to a stop. Grabbing his submachine gun and a grenade launcher, Erickson climbed a sand dune and looked down on a firefight between U.S. and Iraqi troops. A half-dozen soldiers, two of them wounded, had taken cover around a Humvee, caught between two squads of Iraqi troops. Erickson, with an elevated position, fired a grenade into the middle of one of the Iraqi squads and then opened fire on the other group with his submachine gun. The swift, single-handed attack killed seven Iraqi soldiers, injured three others, and sent the other Iraqi troops fleeing. The stories always say Erickson was injured in the left shoulder by an Iraqi bullet.

The story in Army records differs slightly from one told in Iowa. The official incident reports confirm the story of Erickson’s heroism in rescuing the other soldiers. And his shoulder injury did occur that same day. But it was about an hour later. The troops he had liberated took the injured Iraqis as prisoners, and Erickson continued on his way alone in his Jeep. Apparently disoriented, dazed or distracted by the recent battle, he crashed the Jeep, injuring his shoulder.

Six months after Erickson returned from the Gulf, Carl Erickson checked into the Veterans Hospital in Knoxville, Iowa, in an unsuccessful effort to dry out. Swede came home to run the store. He finished his business degree by taking night classes. “My first day in charge, I started making plans for a deli,” Swede says. “Pop kept the store stuck in the 1950s. People shopped there because they liked Pop. I wanted them to come because it was a nice place to shop. The world was changing, and we had to change with it.”

Every new wrinkle was met with skepticism. “But I never abandoned the personal service that made it the Corner Grocery Store,” Erickson says. “So they kept coming, shaking their heads and saying I was getting too big for my britches, and then heading to the deli or the salad bar or the seafood shop to get something quick for dinner.”

Erickson expanded into other towns, always insisting his managers provide the same personal service. He visited each store at least once a year, chatting up the customers, bagging groceries and making sandwiches.

The grocer became one of Iowa’s leading philanthropists, paying to build a new annex on the Lindsborg Lutheran Church, collecting clothes and food for the needy statewide every Christmas season in barrels at the entrances to his stores, and funding several scholarships at Iowa State.

His generosity was personal, too. When a fiery car crash killed his high school basketball coach, James Westphal, along with his wife, their older son, and young daughter, Erickson took the surviving son, an Iowa State freshman and basketball standout, under his wing.

“
I was dealing with a lot of anger and grief,” says Jack Westphal, the orphaned youth who went on to become editor and publisher of the Lindsborg Journal. “Swede knew when I needed someone to listen, and he knew when I needed to be left alone, and he knew when I needed a kick in the pants.”

While Erickson was building his grocery empire, he became active in Republican politics, contributing to candidates, attending national conventions and serving on the state Board of Regents and Economic Development Commission.

Five years ago, Republican Gov. Allen Waldorf’s popularity was sagging, and Erickson decided to challenge him. Erickson’s charm and energetic campaign style, along with promises to reverse the state’s economic fortunes, overwhelmed Waldorf in the primary and Des Moines lawyer Robert Ryan in the general election.

Ryan remains bitter. “In a debate, I challenged Swede on his promise to strengthen our schools,” the Democrat recalls. “He responded with a lot of flowery, vague rhetoric about restoring pride in our schools. Maybe his plan was better than mine, but I was honest enough to tell voters what I wanted to do.”

Ryan admits Erickson has been an outstanding governor, reviving the economy, reorganizing the schools, and leading an aggressive disaster response and recovery program after the state was devastated by floods.

Ryan doubts that success will transfer to the national stage. “Swede needs to learn to trust someone. I’m sure he’s a hell of a poker player, but I don’t think you can lead the country playing that close to the vest.”

Erickson brushes aside such criticism: “I don’t believe in trial balloons. I was busy running for governor and didn’t have time to work out the details that were essential for the school plan to stand up and succeed. It wasn’t a matter of trust. I told the voters I wanted to restore respect in our schools, and I did it.”

The governor and his friends agree he is difficult to get to know. “Swedes are, by nature, very reserved. I’d never presume to think that I know everything about him,” says Westphal, who turned down an offer to be communications director for the presidential campaign after Erickson fired Patrick Donnelly.

“
As outgoing as I am,” Erickson says, “I am protective of my private life. But the people of Lindsborg know me. Ask them. They’ll tell you everything about me. There are no secrets in a small town.”

But there are.

Longtime Erickson friends stated, when asked recently, that Rolf Olsen own The Pantry, the competing grocery store in town. Olsen does, in fact, run the store, as he has for 25 years.

But records at the Iowa Secretary of State’s office show that 11 years ago, Erickson Investments Inc., owned by the governor, became the majority owner of Pantry Foods Inc., which owns The Pantry.

Olsen, when interviewed for this story, claimed to own the store. When showed the state records, he declined comment.

Erickson said only, “I don’t discuss the competition.”

Other records indicate Erickson may have used his powerful position to secretly help friends and his own image.

Two years after his first election to the governorship, Erickson checked his ailing father into the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Knoxville, Iowa, where he remained until his death, nearly a year later. The elder Erickson was reported missing on an early April morning, and his body was found later that day in a maintenance shed.