The Minnesota mob

Minnesota’s mob….more powerful than you think

I will continue to add to this as time allows, because this is the “entity” that has been harassing my family.  This is the “entity” that has apparently owned Minnesota since the 1920’s: Meyer Lansky’s Murder Inc/Purple Gang, not headquartered in Vegas or Florida, but safely snugged against the bosom of the political machinery in Minnesota.   While the information dug up by investigative journalist Rick Magraw only takes us through 1991, we found generational links from the past to the present.  

This is not conspiracy theory nonsense, but is simply historical information about business…..dirty, but extremely lucrative business where, in the current environment, rewards are great and risks are few.    

Are Minnesota’s Democrats the Most Corrupt?   

*This is a partial reprint of an article that appeared in the New Federalist Newspaper on August 5, 1991.  This article was for research purposes only.  

Homer Cummings, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Attorney General, called Minnesota’s Twin Cities, “the poison spot of the nation.”  Contrary to Minnesota’s image as a bastion of clean “liberal” politics, Humbert Humphrey’s Democratic Party machine has been, and is today, funded and controlled by thugs and thieves fronting for the late and notorious Meyer Lansky and his heirs.  Even Hubert Humphrey’s son, “Skip”, Minnesota’s Attorney General and heir to the Humphrey machine, today receives campaign contributions from this crowd.

And where are Minnesota’s Independent Republicans whom one would expect to capitalize on these juicy scandals and raw corruption?  Led by the secretive grain cartels, the GOP and its media friends provide protections through their silence.  While the Democratic mob does their dirty work, the grain cartels reap the benefit, particularly the depression era destruction of the populist Farmer-Labor Party.

In this first article in a series, we will look back to the early part of the century, examining Minnesota’s politics to find the open alliance of organized crime and Minnesota’s Democrats, and then trace the continuity of this alliance to the present day.

The Populist Revolt:

In 1916 and 1918, the agrarian populist Nor-Partisan league successfully ran in the North Dakota Republican party primaries and went on to win the elections with their conservative farm base.

In the 1918 Minnesota Republican primary, the NPL tried to duplicate its success, but lost by a narrow margin.  The NPL went on to run under the Farmer-Labor Party banner and became the second largest party in the state – ahead of the Democrats.

Both the Democrats and Republicans were determined to destroy teh Farmer-Labor Party because it challenged the power of the grain cartels, representing a popular and at times volatile threat to the cartels’ control.  The nature of that threat is illustrated by the ploicies of the Canadian Wheat Board.  Back in the 1920’s, as first the NPL and the F-L were organizing themselves in Minnesota, Canadian agrarian populists created a co-op marketing system known as the “Prairie Pools”, which to the day has prevented Cargill from controlling more than 8% of the wheat trade in Canada. 

Minnesota’s commerce was and still is typified by raw materials and agriculture, such as Weyerhauser’s lumbering, Cargill’s grain operations, US Stells Mesabi iron mines, and James J Hill’s Great Northern Railroad and related Northern Pacific Railroad, for the transport of said commodities.  

Not surprisingly, the state had a tough “boom town” reputation.  Turn of the century Duluth resembled a gold rush town, complete with swarms of cheap immigrant labor to work the mines and man railroads.  A Rockefeller-Carnegie combine controlled the ore production and the Democratic Party “vote early and often” machine collected the tribute from the mob’s booze, gambling, and prostitution operations.  In the Twin Cities the mob connection was based on huge shipments of Canadian and bootlegged whiskey down the Mississippi to St. Louis and various points in Illinois.

The O’Connor System:

Alvin Karpis, one time public enemy #1, once said, “Every criminal of importance in the 1930’s made his home at one time or another in St. Paul.  If you were looking for a guy you hadn’t seen in a few months, you usually thought of two places — prison or St. Paul.  If he wasn’t locked up in one, he was probably hanging out in the other.”  A June 1991 Minneapolis Star and Tribune article front page story was titled, “The Scene of the Crime: St. Paul Once Home to Nation’s Most Notorious Gangsters.” 

This distinction was due to the Twin Cities’ O’Connor System, which prevailed through the 20’s.  Known criminals were free to stay and avoid extradition if they paid off a trio of politicians: St. Paul Democratic Party head Richard O’Connor, his brother, St. Paul Police Chief John J. O’Connor, and speakeasy owner, Danny Hogan.  Star and Tribune reporter George Matheny explained, “The crooks had to follow three rules: check in with Dapper Danny on arrival, pay off regularly and commit no crimes within city limits.  The Minneapolis version of this triumvirate was Mayor George Leach, Police Chief Frank Brunskilll, and County Attorney Floyd B. Olson.  

Veteran reporter Nate Bomberg of the St. Paul Pioneer Press described it this way a number of years ago: “Everybody was in on the take.  You can’t have an underworld without an overworld….You can’t have the rackets unless you have the mayor, the chief of police and the county attorney in your corner.”  

With the advent of national Prohibition in 1920, the organized crime operations got a double boost; from massive profits from illegal liquor and related operations; and from the dependency of the Democratic Party machine on the mob to wipe out any opposition through coercion, bribery and murder.