Karl Harold Phillip LeVander was born in Swede Home, Nebraska, but grew up mostly in Watertown, Minnesota, the son of a Lutheran pastor. At Gustavus Adolphus College he debated, played football, competed in the pole vault and was a champion high-hurdler. In 1931 he won a national oratory competition; two years later, Macalester College hired him to coach students in debate.
He graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1935, then went to work for Harold Stassen as an assistant county attorney. When Stassen was elected governor, LeVander became a partner in Stassen’s former law firm in South St. Paul. In 1938, LeVander and Fallon Kelly bought out Stassen and renamed the firm Kelly and LeVander. While working there, LeVander developed long-lasting ties with rural Minnesota through his representation of the South St. Paul Livestock Exchange and the Rural Cooperative Power Association (RCPA). Through RCPA he had a hand in bringing nuclear power to Minnesota at Elk River.
LeVander was active in the Republican Party throughout the 1950s alongside Kelly; his brother, Bernhard LeVander; and legislators Walter Rogosheske and P. Kenneth Peterson. He declined invitations to run for office, however, until late 1965, when he announced his candidacy to oppose incumbent Democratic Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) governor Karl Rolvaag. He got the party endorsement at the state convention in 1966, over John Pillsbury, but only after 16 ballots. He started the campaign with little name recognition, taking advantage of a deeply divided DFL to win the general election by over 72,000 votes; he carried more than 60 of Minnesota’s 87 counties. In that election the Republican Party also won big majorities in both houses of the legislature. In his inaugural speech, LeVander pledged to revitalize cities, strengthen civil rights enforcement, raise pay for teachers and all state employees, improve highway safety, reform taxes, and modernize care in Minnesota’s state hospitals.
LeVander proposed, and the legislature passed, creation of the Metropolitan Council and the state’s Department of Human Rights, the Pollution Control Agency, and increases of 30% or more in funding for schools, colleges and universities and the state’s mental hospitals. But the defining issue of his governorship was adoption of a state sales tax. LeVander had supported it as part of tax reform aimed at reducing property taxes, but he insisted that the sales tax issue go to the voters in a referendum. The legislature did not agree. LeVander twice vetoed sales tax legislation, and twice the legislature overrode his veto. He did prevail, however, in his insistence that the sales tax not include food, clothing, and medicine.
Despite his vetoes, the public blamed him for the sales tax, and his approval numbers dropped after both his legislative sessions (1967 and 1969). Though he had been a champion orator, his critics called him a poor communicator with the press and the public. LeVander did not enjoy the combat of state politics, and in January of 1970 announced that he would not run for a second term.
After his term ended in January of 1971, LeVander returned to his law firm and practiced law almost to the end of his life. Parkinson’s disease afflicted him his last few years. He died at age 81 on March 30, 1992.
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