The Power of We

When his second term as Minnesota’s governor ended in January 1999, Arne Carlson left public life—sort of.

He went on to serve for the next seven years as chairman of the board of RiverSource Funds, a group of more than 100 mutual funds managed by the RiverSource Investments, LLC, subsidiary of Minneapolis-based Ameriprise Financial, Inc. Earlier this year, he was named Trustee of the Year by Institutional Investor News.

Carlson is still a director for RiverSource and since 2003, also on the board of Montreal-based Rideau Recognition Solutions, Inc. Rideau formed a partnership two years ago with Ceridian Corporation, the Bloomington-based human-resources management firm, which now offers Rideau’s employee incentive programs to its clients. More recently, Rideau and Ceridian’s LifeWorks division have developed incentives that encourage employee participation in health and wellness programs.

But Carlson, perhaps more than other former governor, has remained outspoken on public affairs. In local media and in speeches to civic and business groups, he’s warned against the corrosive effects of extreme partisanship, argued against the expansion of gambling in Minnesota, and—this past July as part of the First Tuesday speaker series at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management—argued for more positive and effective leadership in the state. (Download Carlson's full speech here.)

We need to start thinking about people who are centrist, reasonable, and committed to the future of Minnesota to run the state.

His remarks at the university were the basis of this conversation with Twin Cities Business. They called for a nonpartisan embrace of what Carlson terms the state’s “natural leadership.” That’s in keeping with his politics. A Democrat early on, he moved to the Republican party in the early 1960s, but feels a need to add a disclaimer: “I’m a Republican, but I’m not a neocon.”

He has long found himself outside of the Republican party core. Carlson was first elected governor in 1990 without seeking party endorsement, then was re-elected in 1994 after vying for the endorsement and not getting it. From 1978 to 1990, he was state auditor, and earlier in the 1970s, served several terms as a state legislator. He was a member of the Minneapolis City Council in the 1960s.

Carlson’s call for unified public efforts and for leaders to convey a positive vision is also in keeping with another early post in his career: executive director in 1970 and ’71 of the Alfred Adler Institute of Minnesota (since renamed the Adler Graduate School). Adler, a prominent psychologist of the early 20th century, theorized that encouragement, a sense of belonging, and of making a positive difference were keys to both the optimal development of the individual and the betterment of society.

An elder statesman at 73, Carlson provokes and still wants to push Minnesota forward. “If there is a drawback in a democratic society, it is that we tend to be focused more on the present moment than on the future,” he says. “In the last decade, both nationally and in Minnesota, we have leaned much more in the direction of catering to today as opposed to laying out a vision for tomorrow.”