The Farmer-Labor Party is a political party in the United States that originally emerged in Minnesota in 1918. Economic dislocation at the beginning of the decade set declining agricultural prices and workers' wages against rapidly increasing consumer prices, and farmers and workers sought to make common cause in the political sphere to address their grievances.
History[]
Foundation[]
The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party began as a merger between the Nonpartisan League (NPL) led by Henry Tiegan and the Working People's Nonpartisan Political League (WPNPL) led by William Mahoney. The NPL was a farmer protest movement that originated in North Dakota and moved to Minnesota in 1916, where it attempted to take control of the state’s Republican Party by nominating candidates in primary elections. It reached its apex in 1918 when its candidate Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., father of the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, made an exceptionally strong bid for the Republican nomination for governor. The WPNPL was formed in New Ulm in July 1918 by the Minnesota Federation of Labor, the Minnesota branch of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), as a parallel political organization to the farmer-oriented NPL. On 24 March 1920, the two nonpartisan leagues held conventions in the same hotel in Saint Paul and endorsed Henrik Shipstead, a dentist from Glenwood, as their candidate for governor in the Republican primary.
Although it lost the gubernatorial election, the new farmer-labor coalition immediately displaced the Democratic Party as one of the two major political parties in the state. The NPL’s strength in Minnesota came from the farmers of northwestern and west-central Minnesota and the state's burgeoning socialist movement. To this voter base the WPNPL added the emerging labor vote of Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Duluth, and the iron ranges of northeastern Minnesota, as well as the vote of radical Progressives epitomized by Lindbergh Sr.
Growth and Present[]
In 1922 the Farmer-Labor Party abandoned the previous tactics of the NPL and endorsed a full slate of their own candidates. A Farmer-Labor ballot appeared in the primary elections for the first time, and in the general election the Farmer-Labor Party's first major breakthrough came when Shipstead defeated the incumbent Republican senator Frank B. Kellogg. The need for a new organization resulted in the merger of the two leagues into the Farmer-Labor Federation at a joint convention in 1923. The party captured the state’s second senate seat in a special election that year, and despite failing to win the Governor’s mansion made significant gains in the House congressional delegation. Emboldened by its electoral successes in the early 1920s, the Farmer-Labor Party committed itself to assuming the role of a national third party.
The Farmer-Labor Party finally captured the Minnesota Governor’s office in 1930, when attorney Floyd B. Olson won that year’s gubernatorial election in a landslide following five years of economic depression and the failure of both the Democratic McAdoo administration and the Republican Hoover administration to address the ongoing crisis. Olson proved to be an incredibly popular governor and turned Minnesota into a bastion of the Farmer-Labor Party, which remains the seat of its electoral strength. To counter the threat posed by radicals from the America First Party (AFP) and the Socialist Party of America (SPA), several high-ranking Democrats, Republicans, and Progressives have proposed a coalition ticket under Governor Olson to prevent either party from taking power.
Party Platform[]
The Farmer-Labor Party advocates for various progressive policies such as a reduction in federal taxes, reducing corruption, a more democratic electoral system, federal aid to farmers and strengthening of labor rights, environmental conservation, and the nationalization of various industries related to energy and transportation.