By William Souder
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, December 29, 1996; Page A03

They're back.

Humphrey. Freeman. Mondale. The next election for governor here is not until 1998, but three of the most revered names in Minnesota politics are already in a race that's been dubbed the "My Three Sons" campaign. At stake in this next-generation contest are friendships and shared political fortunes going back half a century.

Hubert H. "Skip" Humphrey III, 54, is the state's attorney general and son of Hubert, the former senator and vice president. Mike Freeman, 48, is the Hennepin County attorney and son of Orville, former Minnesota governor and agriculture secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Ted Mondale, 39, is an attorney, a two-term state senator, and the son of Walter F. Mondale, the former senator and vice president. The three sons have begun raising money, chasing delegates for the endorsing convention and wishing comparisons with their fathers would go away.

"It's really unfair to all three of them to compare them with their fathers," says Vance Opperman, a Minneapolis attorney who chairs the Humphrey campaign. "They all have records of their own. But it's most unfair to Skip, who after all has more than 20 years in office."

All three sons belong to Minnesota's Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, the coalition put together by Hubert Humphrey and Orville Freeman in the late 1940s. All three say they'll carry their fight into a primary regardless of who wins the endorsement.

The three are not alone in their ambition to be Minnesota's next governor. Mark Dayton, 49, heir to a department store fortune and a former one-term state auditor with unfathomably deep pockets and an unfulfilled desire for high office, is also in the DFL primary race. In 1982, he spent more than $7 million of his own money running a losing campaign for the Senate against incumbent David Durenberger (R).

On the Republican side, where Gov. Arne Carlson has said he will not run for a third term, his would-be replacements could include former representative Vin Weber, Lt. Gov. Joanne Benson or newly-minted party member Norm Coleman. Coleman, the popular first-term mayor of St. Paul, switched from the DFL to the Republican Party this month. Coleman's last job before becoming mayor: He worked for Skip Humphrey in the attorney general's office.

Bill Morris, a pollster and former GOP state chairman, says the winnowing process will be unlike any the state has ever seen. "This race is unique," he said. "The three royal houses of the DFL are going against one another."

It was not always so. For nearly 50 years, the Humphreys and the Freemans and the Mondales helped each other. Orville Freeman ran Hubert Humphrey's 1948 Senate campaign, and later, during the last of his three terms as governor, appointed his own campaign manager, Walter Mondale, as Minnesota's attorney general – paving the way for Mondale to move up to the Senate when Humphrey became vice president.

"What we're seeing in this state now is a marked example of the professionalization of politics," said Steven Schier, head of the political science department at Carleton College. "Here are three kids who learned their trade from their dads. For them, it's like going into the family business."

Skip Humphrey, who has the strongest political resume of the three, has also lived in the longest shadow. For much of his 10 years in the Minnesota Senate and 14 as attorney general, he endured a perception that he is a watered-down version of his father – Humphrey Lite.

"Skip Humphrey's father was a force of nature, one of the most eminent statesmen in our national history" said Schier. "It's no wonder that Skip suffers by comparison."

Humphrey, a genial, outgoing man with a booming voice, has never seen his name as anything but an asset. "I don't mind being compared to somebody who was my mentor, somebody I loved, somebody who was the epitome of a public servant," Humphrey said. "In the end it's not going to matter who our fathers were. In my experience, people want to test you. The voters are going to have to take the measure of each of us for what we are here and now and for what we've accomplished."

Humphrey seems to be outgrowing any negative comparisons to his father. He's been handily reelected attorney general three times, is well known in every corner of the state as a consumer protection advocate who has used his office to look out for the little guy. Indeed, there's only been one glitch in his career. Like Dayton, Humphrey lost in a bid to unseat Durenberger for the Senate, despite a well-financed effort in 1988.

These days, he is enjoying a high profile as attorney general of one of the 19 states suing the tobacco industry. Minnesota's case – each state's is separate – is regarded as one of the most potent. With a trial date set for early 1998, it is conceivable the case could be settled by election time, and a win would give Humphrey immense political capital.

Mike Freeman's strength is that he already has a huge lead in inside-the-party support: He's the early front-runner with delegates to the endorsing convention. That is because he has been working for the 1998 endorsement ever since he lost the 1994 endorsement in a bitter upset at the convention. Freeman was the presumed favorite then, but arrived at the convention tied with state Sen. John Marty for delegates. Marty ended up with the nomination after a small group of antiabortion delegates unhappy with Freeman's abortion rights stance blocked his nomination. A stunned Freeman had promised to abide by the endorsement process and he did – to his regret. This time he says he's going to the primary no matter what.

"I've already fallen on my sword once for the party and I'm not gonna do it again," he said.

Freeman, a lanky former football player at Rutgers, can remember taking a teenage Ted Mondale and his sister, Eleanor, to the Minnesota state fair back in 1972 when he worked as an advance man on Walter Mondale's Senate reelection campaign. He is still working out how he will deal with his opponents. "I can't control what the others are going to do," he said. "I just know I'm running for governor for the next two years, and I don't care if that's against Skip Humphrey or Elmer Fudd."

Or Ted Mondale. Of the three, Mondale is the least known to voters and therefore has the greatest chance to define himself. He is also the one who can count on his father for the most help. Hubert Humphrey is gone. Orville Freeman, who is 78 and spends most of his time in Washington and Virginia, will provide advice and make a few appearances on behalf of his son. Walter Mondale, who returned to Minnesota this month after a four-year stint as ambassador to Japan, is 68 and still a vigorous political presence and a formidable fund-raising asset.

"I used to think the world was easily divided up," said son Ted, elected to the Minnesota Senate six years ago in the most expensive legislative race in state history. "I believed you were either a D or you were an R. But it turned out that my race for the legislature was about the role of government. Some people thought I was some kind of carpetbagger, just a guy who moved to the suburbs to run for office. Hello. I moved to the suburbs for good schools, a nice neighborhood, a good job – the same as everybody else. I ended up getting a lot of votes from people under 45 and hardly any from people older than that."

Mondale is trim, blond, cerebral. He bears a strong resemblance to his father. Unlike Humphrey and Freeman, his life has not been a steady progression into public service. At 15, Mondale began racing motorcycles, and he continued, working in a cycle shop until he was 21 before finally deciding to try college.

"Ted's a different sort of Democrat," says Schier. "And he's a different sort of politician, too. Ted is not a lifer." As a first-term state legislator, Mondale was so appalled by the paralyzing traditions of the Minnesota Senate that he almost quit. But he came back for a second term and won high marks for innovative legislation and a willingness to seek out Republican co-sponsors. His most important vote was for a reform of Minnesota's expensive workers' compensation system – a bill strongly opposed by organized labor.

"That was a gutsy vote," said Dick Cohen, a fellow DFL state senator from St. Paul. "And it's alienated him from a very important traditional component of the party."

Mondale could be the candidate in the general election with the greatest appeal to Minnesota's swing voters – the younger, two-income professionals living in the suburbs who now decide elections in this state. Mondale promises a campaign brimming with "content" aimed at those people. He's concerned with changing demographics, evolving relationships between business and government, Minnesota's place in the world economy.

"I think I'm in the right place at the right time," he said. "And if not, that's okay with me. Somebody else will take us into the next century and the state will probably do pretty good anyway."

That somebody else may be an old friend.

"It makes it hard to have everybody running against each other," said Jane Freeman, Mike's mom.

"Orv's out chopping wood right now, but we both think it's ironic," she said in a telephone interview from their retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains. "In our day, we all ran for different offices. But I guess you have to be pleased that three young men really care enough to want to run. Nowadays no child of a public servant in his right mind wants to run for office."