1974 Minnesota gubernatorial election
election for the governorship of the U.S. state of Minnesota
The 1974 Minnesota gubernatorial election took place on November 5, 1974. This was the first election in which the governor and lieutenant governor ran on the same ticket. Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party candidate Wendell Anderson defeated Republican Party of Minnesota challenger John W. Johnson.
Anderson won every county in the state, becoming the first person to do so in a gubernatorial election since Joseph Burnquist in 1916, and is to date the last gubernatorial candidate to do so, although Attorney General Skip Humphrey won every county in 1994.
This was the first gubernatorial election with eight candidates on the ballot, as well as the first election to feature a Libertarian Party ticket on a Minnesota ballot.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1974 Minnesota gubernatorial election” is election for the governorship of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Minnesota, gubernatorial and election, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “election for the governorship of the U.S. state of Minnesota” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6868709. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1974, 1916 and 1994.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “1974 Minnesota gubernatorial election”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 1974 Minnesota gubernatorial election primary sources, 1974 Minnesota gubernatorial election archive and Minnesota research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1974 Minnesota gubernatorial election”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “1974 Minnesota gubernatorial election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.