Local View: On Minnesota VP lore, don't overlook Duluth's Berman

The Aug. 5 tribute in the News Tribune by Bob Moilanen to Duluth’s Richard Moe for developing an enhanced model for the vice presidency during his time with Walter Mondale, when the Minnesotan backed up President Jimmy Carter, was well deserved.

But with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s emergence as the vice-presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket this year, there’s another Duluthian who ought not be overlooked — again. He’s the late Michael Berman, a Duluth-born lawyer, mover and shaker, and inside-the-Beltway player who also occupied a key role in the Mondale vice presidency and who hung around the nation’s capital for more than four decades before his death at the beginning of this year. He was 84.

Regrettably, his passing was largely overlooked here in his hometown. But it ought not be now that Walz has the opportunity to become the third veep from this state following in the wake of Hubert Humphrey, who was vice president to Lyndon B. Johnson from 1965 to 1968, and then Mondale, who succeeded Humphrey and was Carter’s vice president nearly a decade later from 1977 to 1980.

Both of the latter ran for president and lost, Humphrey narrowly to Richard Nixon in 1969 and Mondale by a historic landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1984; Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota, and barely at that, as well as the District of Columbia.

It’s far too early to know if Walz will follow this path, but he says he does not intend to seek higher office (and there’s only one higher than VP), a modesty which has been cited as one reason Vice President Kamala Harris selected him.

Of course, they all say that, right? Since 1940, 11 of 16 vice presidents have sought the White House, and eight of them have made it, by election or otherwise, such as death and involuntary vacancies.That’s a pretty high percentage, nearly 70% — and six of them, close to 40%, have made it to the Oval Office while a seventh is seeking to do it this year.

Back to Berman, whose eclectic career, like Moe’s, began in Duluth and evolved until he was a quintessential Washington, D.C., insider.

Berman came to the nation’s capital as a Senate aide to Mondale, followed by his work as deputy chief of state, Moe’s subordinate during the vice presidency. He stayed on in D.C. as an organizer of Democratic conventions, lobbyist for various big companies and other power players, and author of a captivating book about his health struggles in a life well lived prior to his death following a stroke shortly after the first of this year.

One of his tasks was arranging the keynote speech at the Democratic Party’s convention in Boston in 2004. He tapped a relatively obscure-at-the-time U.S. senator, Barack Obama of Illinois.

Other causes he championed included LGBTQ+ rights in the late 1980s, at a time when the party and the country were still uncomfortable with such issues.

On the lighter side, no pun intended, was a 2006 book, “Living Large: A Big Man’s Ideas on Weight, Success, and Acceptance,” which was a poignant, occasionally amusing, and introspective account of his dealing with his problems with carrying 332 pounds on his 5-foot-9 frame.

Some of his post-Mondale pursuits brought him into the vortex of the administration of President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, including helping to prepare Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her Supreme Court confirmation hearings to assisting in the White House public relationship efforts to tamper down the Monica Lewinsky affair. He succeeded gloriously in the former, as the iconic jurist was confirmed by a 96-3 vote, the type of overwhelming bipartisan vote that is as absent these days as telephone landlines and telephone books. Not so good on the latter, as the president was impeached by the House and acquitted in the Senate.

Long before all that, Berman was born in 1939, the son of a dry-cleaning-owner father and homemaker mother, graduated from Duluth East and UMD, and then attained his law degree in the Twin Cities. Along the way, he befriended another Jewish youth of his age, Bobby Zimmerman, later known as Bob Dylan. The Duluth-born and Hibbing-raised troubadour spent a great deal of time at the Berman household, becoming a godson of Berman’s parents.

Berman’s relationship to the Northland endured. For instance, he mentored another East grad, Tom Nides, who served a stint as U.S. ambassador to Israel from late 2023 through the middle of last summer. The former Duluthian described his mentor as a “real Washington insider” who avoided the divisiveness of the current political environment.

He certainly was and, like many from the Northland, played an important role in contemporary American politics and history. Recalling that now compensates a bit for how he was overlooked after he passed away nine months ago.

Marshall H. Tanick is a Twin Cities constitutional and employment-law attorney and a regular contributor to the News Tribune Opinion page.