From Minnesota Public Radio:

There’s plenty of buzz in Minnesota’s political circles today about former Republican Gov. Arne Carlson endorsing Barack Obama. But the move isn’t terribly surprising.

Carlson is a more traditional East Coast Republican — a Williams College educated intellectual with an appreciation of both social service and fiscal conservatism — a progressive Republican. That’s the kind of Republican the party purged in the ’90s.

Carlson was a thorn in the side of the party, even when he was its highest-ranking official as governor, so the endorsement is unlikely to sway many — if any — Republicans. During his term, the party consistently endorsed more conservative candidates for governor. Carlson usually ignored them, then beat them handily in the party primaries. Carlson was the first Republican governor in the state’s history to be denied the endorsement by his own party.

Alan Quist lost in a landslide to Carlson in 1994 after running a campaign based on moral issues — Carlson supported legalized abortion — but that was back before that became the party mainstay, and when Republicans in the state were known as Independent Republicans.

Since leaving office, Carlson has teamed up with former VP Walter Mondale to try to repeal the concealed carry handgun law in the state, criticized Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s budget plan to use money from the Health Care Access fund, which funds the state health insurance program, and went to the Legislature to lobby against Pawlenty’s cuts in a state program to curb fetal alcohol syndrome, which was his wife’s project. He’s also endorsed the occasional Democrat in state Legislature races, as he did in 2004 in DFLer Jim Carlson unsuccessful bid inDistrict 38B, and he endorsed DFLer Rebecca Otto in her successful campaign for state auditor in 2006.

And earlier in this campaign, the Washington Post published a letter from Carlson lamenting that religion was being used in the Republican Party as a litmus test for the vice presidential selection.

For more than a decade, Arne Carlson has had nothing in common with the Republican Party. Today was no exception.

(Listen to Carlson’s announcement via Polinaut)

Can any of the numerous Class of 1957 folks on EphBlog (or, you know, anyone else who happens to have known him) tell us more about Gov. Carlson?

Most interesting race featuring an Eph this election cycle? Not Chris Murphy’s re-election bid in CT-05; his seat should be safe in a year when Democrats look set to control every single House seat from New England. Instead, I would keep an eye on the race for New York State’s 9th Senate District, where Roy Simon ‘71, a professor at Hofstra University law school, is taking on the current Republican Majority Leader in the State Senate, Dean Skelos. Though state legislative races get hardly any media attention, this one could have important consequences.

Why this race could matter: Currently, in New York, the Republicans hold a single-seat majority in the State Senate. Republicans have controlled the State Senate for 70 years, and it is now their last remaining statewide power base; it is also the only remaining obstacle to New York granting full civil rights to gay couples. Gov. Paterson has already done everything within his power, and the Democrat-controlled Assembly has passed a bill, but the Republican State Senate still stands in the way. In addition to what would be his systematic importance in flipping control of the Senate, Simon appears to be a property-tax-cutting, pro-public transport, pro-environment politician with a record of integrity and impressive professional achievements.

You can read more about Simon or donate to his campaign here.

Lehman Hall on the Williams campus is named after Herbert H. Lehman ‘99, the son of Meyer Lehman, who, along with his brothers Emmanuel and Henry, founded Lehman Brothers. The building bearing the Lehman name was completed in 1928, at the very height of a prolonged stock market boom. The Lehman Community Service Council is also, I think, named after Herb Lehman - along with a college, a couple of high schools, numerous buildings at other colleges, and a library and professorship at Columbia. Herbert Lehman ‘99 was one of those people that get many things named after them.

He worked at Lehman Brothers after graduating from Williams, but spent most of his adult life in public service. He was part of the General Staff Corps in Washington during World War I; after the end of the war, he worked for Al Smith’s gubernatorial and presidential campaigns, and served as Lt. Governor to FDR. After Roosevelt’s election to the Presidency in 1933, he became the Governor of New York, and was a very popular chief executive, with a reputation for nonpartisanship.

As Governor, Herbert Lehman was heavily involved in trying to mitigate the banking crisis of the 1930’s, shutting New York’s banks to try to avert a panic in March 1933. In an eerie premonition of this weekend’s meetings, he also tried, unsuccessfully, to organize a Wall Street rescue of the Bank of the United States in 1930; the failure to reach an agreement caused the largest bank failure in US history up to that point, one of the first large commercial bank failures of the Depression; depositors were not made whole, and the ensuing fear and hysteria led to thousands of other banks collapsing over the next few years (cf: Ron Chernow’s The House of Morgan, pp. 320-360).

During World War II, Herbert Lehman resigned his governorship to head the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), an agency set up to assist citizens of nations that had been occupied by the Axis powers. He became a Senator from New York in 1949; in the Senate, he was a vocal critic of McCarthyism, voting for McCarthy’s censure, and was a strong supporter of Truman’s liberalism.

Towards the end of his life, he continued to work as an activist and reformer within New York’s Democratic party, alongside Eleanor Roosevelt. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, but died the day before the award ceremony, which took place on December 6 - just two weeks after JFK’s assassination. This was the citation that was read for Herbert Lehman in absentia by President Johnson: “Citizen and statesman, he has used wisdom and compassion as the tools of government and has made politics the highest form of public service.”

No one can hope for a better epitaph.

This weekend, the firm that Herbert’s father and uncles founded went out of business. American finance is being shaken to its core, and fear and foreboding have Wall Street in their grip. Lehman Brothers started as a dry-goods store in Montgomery, Alabama, and rose to become a storied investment bank. In partnership with Goldman, Sachs and Kuhn, Loeb (which it absorbed in the 1970s), it helped to finance many nascent industries over its 158-year history. The three Jewish banks did banking work for unglamorous and risky companies in retail, oil, and broadcasting; they promoted up-and-coming stocks, like Macy’s and RCA, that the Anglo half of Wall Street (the Morgans in particular) would not touch. They were risk-takers in the very best sense of the term. On 9/11/2001, Lehman Brothers survived a direct hit to its headquarters at the World Trade Center. Exactly seven years later, it was destroyed by the natural processes of the market and by its own derivatives and leverage. There is a crude analogy to be drawn here, but I won’t go there.

It is a near certainty now that Lehman’s 26,000 employees (including a significant number of Ephs) will lose their jobs. The impact on the financial system will be extremely serious (though you wouldn’t know it from watching the evening news, which has spent more time covering political nonsense). Many employees will lose both their jobs and their savings, because they were compensated in stock. This is the toughest, most challenging situation the financial system has seen in a very long time - if we are to believe Alan Greenspan, it is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

We’ll reckon the wider economic fallout from this in due time; now, however, I’d just like to wish good luck to all Lehman employees, and goodbye to the Lehman name. One might be tempted to say, sic transit gloria mundi, were it not for the buildings and schools named after Herbert. Those will continue to stand, at least for the time being.

Congratulations to Chap, who went through a grueling campaign, but in the end managed to win quite handily. For anyone who is interested, here is a link to a video of Chap’s victory speech. As mentioned in one of the comments to Jeff’s post, this was a very ugly race, with well over $3 million being spent by the two candidates, much of it on very negative mailers and TV ads. (You can get the fundraising totals by looking here - current through Oct. 24 - and here and here - the large contributions from Oct. 25 through election day.)

Running for office is very expensive. The Virginia Politics Blog on washingtonpost.com reports on some of the information on candidate fundraising and expenditures in the upcoming Virginia elections. The raw numbers can be found on this very helpful website. The numbers in Chap’s race are incredible. From October 1 through October 24, Chap raised almost $324,000 (much of it coming from the Democratic Party of Virginia and Governor Kaine’s PAC, Moving Virginia Forward.) Chap also spent almost $300,000 during that 3 week period. Chap’s numbers, however, are dwarfed by Devolites Davis. She raised almost $400,000 from October 1-24, including almost $300,000 from her husband, Congressman Tom Davis. During that period, she spent almost $800,000! For one state senate seat! Philosophically, I’m opposed to spending limits in politics, but this is certainly an eye opener.