Moe’s Memories

You have to wonder how Richard Moe’s parents felt about their son becoming the DFL’s party chair in 1969. “They were Republicans in East Duluth,” says Moe. It wasn’t easy, but once he broke from the family political tradition, he went all the way, working with some of the biggest Democrats this state has ever produced.

“Adlai Stevenson’s [presidential] campaign in 1952 first got me interested,” he says. “And then I became very attracted to Hubert Humphrey and that group of Minnesota politicians in the late ’50s and ’60s that embodied both progressive and public service traditions.”

In fact, Moe was so inspired by Humphrey that after graduating from Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., he returned home to volunteer for Humphrey’s 1960 senatorial campaign. He then landed a job at Minneapolis City Hall, working closely with Humphrey’s aide and close friend, Mayor Art Naftalin.

“I left to manage Sandy Keith’s campaign for governor in 1963. And that fall he told me I should go to law school—which was the best advice I ever got. I graduated [from the University of Minnesota Law School] in ’66, just in time to come out and participate in the debacle of that year,” says Moe, referring to a dustup involving the party’s nomination of gubernatorial candidate Keith over populist incumbent Karl Rolvaag. (Rolvaag ended up winning in the primary but losing in the general election to Republican Harold LeVander.)

Moe was hired by the DFL shortly thereafter. Then, when DFL Party Chair Warren Spannaus ran for attorney general in 1969, Moe took the opportunity to run for—and win—Spannaus’ vacated position.

“We focused on taking control of the Legislature,” says Moe of his three-year tenure. “We got control of the state house in ’70, and the state senate in ’72. … So those were exhilarating times. But also, it was a time to work again with Hubert Humphrey, who was my political mentor.”

After the 1972 election, Moe headed to Washington to lead Walter Mondale’s Senate office. He continued to serve in this capacity until ’77, when he was named chief of staff in Mondale’s vice presidential office. At this time, President Carter also installed him as a member of his senior staff.

“And then, of course, we lost the election in 1980, so I had to go out and involuntarily practice law for a while,” says Moe, who settled in at Davis Polk & Wardwell in D.C. for 12 years.

By the late ’80s, Moe was indulging his passion for Civil War history. In 1993 he published a book on the war called The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers. This led Moe to his current job as president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for saving America’s historic places—such as the famous battlefields of the Civil War.

In Minnesota, for example, Moe and the National Trust have recently helped to preserve a few key structures at Fort Snelling—specifically, a series of deteriorating 19th-century buildings at the upper post. “We’ve put this on our national endangered list,” says Moe. “The hope is that, within a few years, we’ll be able to pull all the interested parties together to find a new use that serves the community.”

For all his national work, Moe’s thoughts have never strayed far from his home state. “Minnesota has this strong tradition of public service, as exemplified by Humphrey and Mondale,” he says. “I always thought of this as political and government service. What I discovered later is that there’s a lot of different ways to serve.”