Mike Hatch
Michael Alan Hatch is an American politician and lawyer. He was the Attorney General of Minnesota from 1999 to 2007, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Commerce from 1983 to 1989, and chair of the Minnesota DFL Party from 1980 to 1983.
Early life and career
Hatch is a 1966 graduate of East High School in Duluth. In the 1960s, he attended the University of Minnesota, Duluth before dropping out and serving 18 months in the Merchant Marine. There he earned $1.91 an hour shoveling coal into the engines of ore boats crossing the Great Lakes, and made stops in the ports of Rust Belt cities along the shores of the Great Lakes. He was in port in South Chicago during the riots after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 and witnessed the clashes between Vietnam War protesters and police during the 1968 Democratic convention. He got mugged at a port in Milwaukee. Hatch later said of this time in his life, "I wasn't political at the time, but I was awakening to this stuff." He got into a scuffle with a ship's officer who made a derogatory comment about Robert F. Kennedy's defense of African Americans. "And that is when I became a Democrat," Hatch said. He hitchhiked to Cleveland, called his father for money to return to Minnesota, and returned to the University of Minnesota Duluth to finish his degree with honors. Of the problems in the Rust Belt cities he saw while working the boats, Hatch has said, "There was despair. I took an interest. I thought, 'you know what, I'm going to do something about it.'"Hatch earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1973. He was a trial lawyer in private practice in the 1970s and became chair of the state DFL Party in 1980. In 1983, Governor Rudy Perpich appointed Hatch commissioner of the state Department of Commerce, a position he served in until 1989. In 1998, he was elected state attorney general, a position to which he was reelected in 2002, receiving more votes than any previous candidate for any statewide office.
State Democratic chairman (1980–1983)
In 1976, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor was Minnesota's dominant political party. It held two U.S. Senate seats, the governor's office, four of eight Congressional seats, 104 of 134 seats in the Minnesota House of Representatives and 49 of 67 seats in the Minnesota Senate. In 1978, the DFL suffered devastating losses in what is known as the "Minnesota Massacre." The two U.S. Senate seats and governorship went Republican, Republicans picked up an additional Congressional seat, and the DFL lost its majority in the state House, ending up with a 67–67 tie.The DFL party chair was elected at the state party convention, conducted in June of each election year. In 1980, the prevailing issue was how the DFL could recover from the devastating loss in 1978. There were six candidates for chair, all but one of whom had significant interest groups or officeholders supporting them. Hatch, the one candidate without significant support from an interest group, ran a geographically based campaign focused primarily on the support of county and congressional district chairs. The convention was tumultuous, with various interest groups opposed to each other over abortion, labor, and farm issues. Hatch, who had the least amount of political experience, campaigned as a centrist who focused on economic issues and promised to elect more Democrats in the 1980 election. He was elected chair on the third ballot.
At the time of his victory in June 1980, the mortgage on the party headquarters was in default and the party had no campaign funds for the 1980 election. Under Hatch, the DFL became the first state Democratic party to acquire a computer and jet printer. He published a monthly newspaper that was printed on the computer and mailed to each contributor of a "Sustaining Fund." In spring 1981, Hatch invited Vice President Mondale and Senator Ted Kennedy, the likely Democratic presidential candidates in the 1984 election, to a "Jefferson-Jackson Day" dinner. The invitation to Kennedy to a dinner in Mondale's home state was controversial, but the dinner, with 5,000 in attendance, was the largest and most profitable in the history of the DFL Party.
In 1980, the DFL Party was deeply divided over issues ranging from abortion to gay rights to gun control. The party rules encouraged division by requiring delegates to be elected from "sub-caucuses" organized around specific issues or interest groups. In 1981, Hatch printed political buttons, posters and letterhead under the name "The Centrists," promoting the notion that the party had to stand for more than just a conglomeration of interest groups. Feminists, pro-lifers, gun control organizations, and gay rights supporters opposed the "Centrists," who tried to end the sub-caucus system but were defeated by a united coalition of pro-life and pro-choice activists.
Hatch "ran the party with a focus on winning elections and an intense dislike of its internal squabbles." By 1982 the "Centrists" began exerting influence on party affairs, and the interest groups turned their focus on Hatch for organizing the group. Nonetheless, the "Centrists" remained an influence in the 1982 elections, stifling the intraparty fights between the interest groups during an important election campaign.
A longtime political reporter said of Hatch's tenure as chair: "He worked to rebuild the bitterly divided, debt-ridden DFL Party after its disastrous 1978 election losses. He showed his prowess, both at raising money and organization building. He raised $50,000 to pay off the mortgage and head off the foreclosure on the party headquarters in south Minneapolis, scrounged up another $50,000 to buy a state-of-the-art, 5-megabyte computer the size of a piano, and raised a total of $1.2 million. The DFL is believed to be the first Democratic Party in the country to use the technology of computers, direct mail and telemarketing."
The DFL had a banner year in 1982. It won two additional Congressional seats, the House of Representatives, the State Senate and the governorship. In September 1982 Hatch was instrumental in getting the DFL Party to endorse Rudy Perpich, who defeated DFL-endorsed candidate Warren Spannaus for governor in the primary election. It was the first time that the DFL endorsed a candidate for statewide office who had defeated the convention-endorsed candidate.
In January 1983, Perpich appointed Hatch commissioner of Securities and Real Estate.
Commissioner of Commerce
On December 7, 1982, Governor Perpich appointed Hatch commissioner of the Department of Securities and Real Estate. Hatch's first task was to reorganize the Department of Insurance, the Department of Banking, and the Department of Securities and Real Estate into one Minnesota Department of Commerce. The reorganization was completed in July 1983.Insurance company accountability
The Minnesota insurance industry was largely unregulated in 1983. The Associated Press wrote that "Hatch vigorously embraced the role of consumer advocate." One of his first actions as commissioner was to create an enforcement division that eventually handled 40,000 complaints a year from the public. Hatch proposed a series of regulations to provide protections for insurance policyholders. He got enacted into law several dozen new standards to provide fair processing of insurance claims for policyholders. These provisions are collectively called the Unfair Claims Practices Act. He also got enacted legislation to provide that an insurance agent and company must not sell a policy that is not suitable for the policyholder. To limit the arbitrary cancellation of automobile policies, Hatch established a point system to determine when an automobile policy may be cancelled by an insurer. He also implemented a set of regulations to stop misleading statements in insurance solicitations. Hatch adopted rules that made agents holding themselves out as "financial planners" owe their clients a fiduciary duty. President Barack Obama proposed a similar provision over 30 years later at the federal level. Hatch also proposed that commercial insurers must give 30 days' notice of any change in the terms of a commercial policy or increase in rates.Farm crisis
Hatch was commerce commissioner during the farm crisis of the mid-1980s. In 1983 Minnesota had over 430 banks and savings and loan associations. Most were in rural areas and depended on the success of the rural economy. Interest rates were at record levels, with a few banks paying up to 15% annual interest on some deposits. The combination of volatile interest rates and the failure of rural farms affected the banking industry. Farmers couldn't pay back the loans, falling grain and land prices shrank the value of collateral, and double-digit interest rates on deposits put banks in an impossible squeeze. Bank examiners forced banks to write down the value of the loan collateral, which resulted in more banks being labeled insolvent and subject to liquidation. This accelerated foreclosures. The depth of the rural recession resulted in few buyers willing to buy used equipment or land at auction, causing further depreciation of farm assets.Hatch helped enact several laws to help farmers. One was the mandatory Farmer-Lender Mediation Act of 1986, which required a lender to offer mediation with the farmer before instituting a foreclosure proceeding. Hatch also created an "Interest Buydown Program" in 1985 to pay a portion of the farmer's interest on farm loans. To lessen the regulatory pressure from bank examiners, Hatch directed them to allow banks to value collateral at the appraisal made at the time of the loan. Minnesota also established a rural farm advocate program to assist farmers through the loan process and instituted a voluntary mortgage foreclosure moratorium.
Despite these programs, the Commerce Department shuttered over 25 financially unstable Minnesota banks between 1984 and 1989.