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>Steve Keefe, 27, a Honeywell chemist, won a state senate seat from his south Minneapolis district last year, now spends more than half his time away from his job, politicking. "The company has been really good about it," says Keefe. "I come and go as I please and they reduce my salary accordingly. Frankly, I go more than I come." If he is sacrificing a promising and lucrative career for the vagaries of politics, Keefe has no regrets. "People in politics," he says, "are in it either for the power or they are idealistic. Most of the people I have met are the latter."
>Al Hofstede, 32, grew up in the working class, ethnic neighborhoods of northeast Minneapolis. He worked his way through Saint Thomas College in St. Paul, eventually won a seat as a Minneapolis city alderman at the age of 26. Appointed chairman of the metropolitan council in 1971, Hofstede two weeks ago announced his candidacy for mayor of Minneapolis in a bid to unseat Charles S. Stenvig. "I would like to make politics my life," says Hofstede. "There is a purpose here."
A man who embodies the state's virtues as much as any other Minnesotan is the state's young D.F.L. Governor, Wendell ("Wendy") Richard Anderson, 40. The grandson of Swedish immigrants, a handsome former Olympic hockey player from a predominantly lower-middle-class Scandinavian neighborhood in East St. Paul, Anderson was elected in 1970 by 116,000 votes—nearly a landslide in Minnesota.
Like the state itself, Anderson can sometimes seem almost too good to be true. The son of a meat packer, he is something of a populist, an anti-elitist and egalitarian. He has athletic dash and youthful charm that make many of his constituents think of a Midwestern Kennedy. But Harry S. Truman, not J.F.K., is Anderson's hero. He is uncomfortable with great wealth. Says he: "I identify with Truman, Humphrey and Mondale. All of them were poor, close to working people and came from rural backgrounds. It's tougher for me to identify with F.D.R. and J.F.K."
After two terms in the state house of representatives, Anderson was elected to the senate and marked as a comer. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey chose him to be his Minnesota chairman in the presidential race. He began thinking about the governorship and accepting speaking invitations all over the state. In June 1969, when the legislature adjourned, Anderson started a full-time campaign for the D.F.L. gubernatorial endorsement. For months he crisscrossed the state, appearing wherever he could gather an audience. He would drive miles to some small town, make his pitch, have dinner and return home at 2 or 3 in the morning.
Tax-Reform. It was a bold personal gamble. He had no money of his own; the campaign cost more than $100,000 and left him more than $30,000 in debt. Says his wife Mary, a bright and gregarious former Bemidji High School homecoming queen whom he married in 1963: "If we had lost, I think we would have had to sell the house, and I would be scrubbing floors today." Anderson was nominated on the sixth ballot. David Lebedoff, who served as his campaign