Molnau at 2008 NLGA conference. Photo: MN North Star

Carol Molnau, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor and former transportation commissioner, has been re-elected chair of the National Lieutenant Governors Association’s (NLGA) Midwest Region.

From the official state press release:

“Lieutenant Governor Molnau was selected by a bi-partisan group of her peers from every region in the nation as a leader among her colleagues,” said NLGA Executive Director Julia Hurst.

“I am honored that my colleagues designated me to serve in NLGA leadership this year,” Lieutenant Governor Molnau said. “I look forward to working with them and share best practices that will benefit the constituents of Minnesota and other states.”

The state Senate stripped her of her commissionership following the I-35W bridge collapse, but Molnau envisions a political future for herself, even after Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s decision not to run for re-election.

She may run for governor or Congress in 2010 and in the meantime remains NLGA chair of all she surveys. Besides Minnesota, the Midwest region includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Including Molnau, five of the Midwest’s lieutenant governors are women, more than in any other region. Nationally, there are 12 women among the 55 lieutenant governors serving U.S. states and territories, with Molnau and Indiana Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman the only Republican women.

In the only two lieutenant-governor elections this year, in New Jersey and Virginia, both Democratic Party candidates are women (and both are Jewish). In fact, the tally of female lieutenant governors is guaranteed to increase because the Republican candidate in New Jersey is also a woman.

That’s unusual in most states but wouldn’t be so in Minnesota, where the last five gubernatorial elections have involved two or more women as major-party running mates, and the last five lieutenant governors have been female.

Marlene Johnson, elected on the Democratic ticket with Rudy Perpich in 1982 and 1986, was the first woman to hold the post. After Johnson came Joanell Dyrstad (Republican, elected with Arne Carlson in 1990); Joanne Benson (Republican, also elected with Carlson, in 1994); Mae Schunk (Reform Party, later Independence Party, elected with Jesse Ventura); and Molnau (elected with Tim Pawlenty in 2002 and 2004).

Photo: ESPN

One-time University of Minnesota football coach Lou Holtz now says he’s not mulling a run for Congress in Florida, as reported. If so, he’d be keeping a promise made in 1983 to the late Rudy Perpich, then governor of Minnesota, on WCCO-AM: “I assure you, I will have nothing to do with politics.”

Holtz had just taken the coaching job at the U of M at the time, and he was trying to live down appearances he had made in campaign ads for Sen. Jesse Helms, whose latest exploits then included filibustering a national holiday for Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In two seasons, Holtz led the Golden Gophers to a 10-12 record, en route to more illustrious coaching gigs, including the University of Notre Dame.

Lending credence to the idea that he at least was interested in challenging first-term Democrat U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas are meetings he had on the topic with Republican leaders in Washington, D.C., last week — not to mention his three donations of $500 each to the National Republican Congressional Committee in June.

Indeed, Holtz’s campaign donation history indicates that he strongly favors the right side of the political field — although his donations last year included $2,300 to Hillary Clinton in March. Holtz also gave then-fellow-71-year-old Sen. John McCain $1,000 in May.

Something he said as a TV sports commentator last fall in praise of Adolf Hitler as a leader was impolitic enough for him to later clarify that in his view, Hitler was bad — and that was good enough for ESPN.

Photos: sc.gov, mnhs

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is due back at work today following a mysterious several-day absence. For Minnesotans whose memories extend to the 1970s, news of an AWOL governor evokes the early days of Gov. Rudy Perpich’s first term in office — days Perpich spent out of the office, whereabouts (then) unknown.

Sanford’s activities since last Thursday haven’t been explained any better than have his attempts to refuse $700 billion in federal stimulus funds for his recession-ravaged state. But the Republican seems to have been seeking respite from his state responsibilities (whether alone on the Appalachian Trail or on his cell phone in the Atlanta airport).

That wasn’t the case with Perpich, though it’s said both men gave their security detail the slip. Here’s how Perpich’s absence is explained in the book “Minnesota Politics and Government,” by Daniel Judah Elazar, Virginia Gray and Wyman Spano:

In his first, short, two-year term Perpich was primarily a reactor to current events as opposed to the perpatetic idea-generator he would become during his second eight-year term. The first term began not long after permits had been issued for the construction of a major power line to run diagonally across the state. Farmers and more militant environmentalists strenuously opposed the line, and Perpich received extensive publicity for driving out alone and unannounced to talk to people along the line’s route. Staff from the period insist that Perpich’s actions were not studied. He was not trying to create the image of a caring populist. Rather, he simply decided he wanted to talk to opponents and then did it before anything could be organized.

One of the community organizers working with the outraged farmers and environmentalists was Carleton College political science professor Paul Wellstone, who later wrote about Perpich’s mystery trip in more detail. Here’s an excerpt from the book “Powerline” by Paul David Wellstone, Barry M. Casper and Tom Harkin:

Soon after Rudy Perpich became governor on December 29, 1976, he made headlines by disappearing mysteriously from his office for two days. When he returned on January 11, he disclosed that in an attempt to avert serious trouble brewing over the powerline, he had driven out to west-central Minnesota to meet with the protesting farmers. From the beginning of his tenure in office, Perpich personally committed himself to resolving the powerline controversy and publicly proclaimed it a high priority of his administration.

The governor had visited Pope County. While driving home from a convention in western Minnesota to nominate a successor to representative Bob Bergland, who was to become secretary of agriculture, Perpich decided to find out personally about the powerline. Evading his two bodyguards on the highway, he pulled into the local bar at Lowry and asked how to get to Dennis Rutledge’s farm. Rutledege, active in the protest and local DFL politics, remembers this evening well: “It was Sunday night. I was home early from the reserves because of a snowstorm. Jerry from the bar calls me and says, ‘There is a guy all dressed up in a suit who is asking for directions to the Dennis Rutledge farm. What do you want me to do?’ I said, ‘I don’t know who is playing a joke but send him out so I can see who this joker is.’ Pretty soon there was a knock at our door. My wife Nina answered and she shouts out, ‘It really is Governor Perpich!’”

Perpich talked with the Rutledges for about an hour and then they went out and met with the Rutledges’ neighbors. The governor drove the 150 miles back to St. Paul late that evening only to return the next morning to meet with more Pope County farmers throughout the day.

The antics not of Perpich but of another Minnesota governor, Jesse Ventura, qualified for the Associated Press’ shortlist of odd behavior by U.S. governors. Perpich did get a shout-out, in part due to his hair, from the Chicago Tribune — as Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s career began unraveling last summer.