Key Obama advisers cut their political teeth on Minnesota races

In 1997 Paul Tewes was a promising young Democratic political operative. A native of Mountain Lake and graduate of Carleton College, Tewes had worked on the 1994 U.S. Senate campaign of Ann Wynia and ran the successful 1996 re-election effort of U.S. Rep. David Minge.

“There was no end to the amount of energy he would put in at a moment’s notice,” recalls Olaf Minge, son of the former congressman, who worked with Tewes on those early campaigns. The pair shared an apartment in Willmar during the run-up to the 1994 election and Minge recalls the young politico driving a massive, 70s-era vehicle loaded down with campaign signs, rebar and fast-food wrappers all over the state. “It was a bomber,” Minge says.

Paul Tewes

In 1997, Tewes was tapped to run the St. Paul mayoral campaign of Sandy Pappas. It was a formidable task. The state senator was seeking to knock off Norm Coleman, a popular incumbent who had recently pushed through plans to build what would become the Xcel Energy Center and lure professional hockey back to Minnesota. Coleman had also recently abandoned the DFL Party for the GOP and was not-so-subtly eyeing a run at the governor’s mansion.

The incumbent thumped Pappas by an 18-point margin. It was undoubtedly a tough knock for Tewes’ fledgling political ambitions. “The Sandy race was a low point for anyone’s political career,” says John Thorson, political representative for AFSCME Council 5, who worked closely with Tewes on the Pappas campaign. “There was no chance of taking out Norm. Thank God he got an opportunity after the Sandy thing because I don’t think he was long for politics after that.”

Indeed a decade later Tewes is poised to lead the Democratic National Committee through the 2008 presidential election. He’s one of a trio of key political advisers to Barack Obama with Minnesota connections. Tewes’ consulting partner, Steve Hildebrand, served as executive director of the state Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in the mid-90s, and is now Obama’s deputy national campaign manager. Mitch Stewart ran the DFL Party’s coordinated campaign during the 2006 election cycle, then helped orchestrate Obama’s victory in Iowa as the campaign’s caucus director.

Tewes: Making an impact

Tewes’ meteoric rise through the political ranks began shortly after the doomed Pappas campaign. He was tapped to run the 1998 coordinated campaign for Wisconsin Democrats.

Thorson recalls Tewes unexpectedly showing up at his St. Paul residence late one Saturday night near the close of the 1998 campaign dressed in a tuxedo. He’d been at a buddy’s wedding in St. Cloud and missed his flight back to Madison. Lacking a credit card, he’d been unable to rent a car. Tewes had a question for Thorson: Could he use his credit card to secure a vehicle? Thorson agreed. “It was potentially one of the stupider things I’ve done in my life,” he laughs.

But the story ended happily enough. There was no damage done to Thorson’s credit card, and Tewes got back to Madison in time to work on the final push for U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold’s successful re-election effort.

In 1999 Tewes served as field director for Al Gore’s Iowa caucus campaign. Two years later he went to work for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Then in 2004 he was tapped to be political director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The next year he partnered with Hildebrand to create Hildebrand Tewes Consulting, which quickly established itself as one of the premier Democratic political operations in the country.

Tewes served as an early adviser to Feingold as he explored a 2008 presidential bid, but when that effort fizzled he joined his consulting partner on Obama’s upstart campaign. Tewes was eventually picked to lead the effort in Iowa, a crucial test of whether the Obama campaign could garner any traction. When the Illinois senator stunned the political world by winning the caucuses, Tewes was widely credited with overseeing a superb political organization that successfully convinced thousands of new voters to participate in the complicated caucus process. Turnout in Iowa was estimated at 236,000 — or nearly double the number of people who participated in 2004. Tewes then went on to lead efforts for the Obama campaign in Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania, among other states.

Next stop: running the Democratic National Committee. “To see the impact that he’s had it’s been really exciting,” says Minge, who’s kept in touch periodically with his former political ally over the years.

Steve Hildebrand

Hildebrand: Being a ‘one-man show’

But Tewes is not the only bigwig in the Obama camp with Minnesota ties. Hildebrand, a South Dakota native, also cut his teeth on local politics. He worked on Skip Humphrey’s unsuccessful 1988 bid for the U.S. Senate and was the finance director for Jim Scheibel during his 1989 St. Paul mayoral campaign. “He raised more money than anyone had raised for a mayoral campaign in the history of St. Paul at that point,” recalls Tom Welna, who served as Scheibel’s campaign manager. “He was a one-man show.”

Hildebrand worked briefly as a lobbyist for the Scheibel administration, but eventually returned to South Dakota. “He got the political itch,” says Welna. “Campaigns were more his calling.”

The political operative made a brief return to Minnesota politics in 1995, when he was tapped to be executive director of the DFL Party. But he stayed in the post for just six months, leaving to serve as Midwest political coordinator for President Clinton’s re-election campaign. By 1998 Hildebrand was serving as political director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and went on to run Senate campaigns for Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson in South Dakota. He was an early Obama confidant, eventually becoming deputy national campaign director.

Mitch Stewart

Stewart: Believing in grassroots

The final key member of Obama’s political team with Minnesota connections is Mitch Stewart. In the 2006 election cycle, during which Minnesota Democrats retained an open Senate seat and made wide gains in state legislative races, the South Dakota native served as the party’s coordinated campaign director.

“He was functionally like a part of our campaign team,” says Ben Goldfarb, who was the campaign manager for Amy Klobuchar’s successful Senate run. “He’s just a really good guy. Not your typical traveling political hack. He fundamentally believes in grassroots voters contacts.”

Following that election, Stewart was named caucus director for Obama’s crucial Iowa effort. “That was the whole race seven months ago,” Goldfarb notes. “If he hadn’t done well there the rest of it didn’t matter.” Then Stewart went on to guide Obama’s efforts in Texas, Nevada and Indiana.

Power trio: Playing a crucial role

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza credited this trio of one-time Minnesotans with playing a vital role in Obama’s unlikely success.

“Obama’s field operation—led by Iowa state director Paul Tewes, adviser Steve Hildebrand and caucus director Mitch Stewart—deserves a MASSIVE amount of credit for the work they did to recruit first-time caucus-goers,” Cillizza wrote shortly after the Iowa vote in January. “Tewes and Hildebrand were widely regarded as two of the best in the business, but even those who spoke glowingly of them didn’t think they could grow the electorate over 200,000. Well, they did that and much, much more.”

Lead photo: noodles2k50