Remember that time Dave Thune dropped a bag full of dead rats on the desk of Mayor Larry Cohen?
Retirement.
Thune, a rabble-rouser neighborhood activist in the 1970s, was trying to make a point about the lack of sewers in a neighborhood that appeared on the verge of being bulldozed into oblivion. He fought hard to get the sewers installed and save it from the wrecking ball. And the dead rat trick worked.
Rat-gate gave way to an unsuccessful city council race in 1982 against James Scheibel, who went on to become mayor. Thune tried again for the city council in 1989, as the council was moving toward a ward system. He succeeded, and represented Ward 2 -- the downtown, West End, West Seventh Street neighborhoods -- from 1990 through 1998, even serving for years as council president.
After six years off the council, Thune won re-election in 2003. Another 12 years in office followed. And it all ends Monday.
Well, not all of it. Thune, who decided not to run in the upcoming Nov. 3 election, will continue to hold the Ward 2 seat through the end of 2015. But his retirement party at Mancini's Char House on West Seventh Street unfolds from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday night, and that's as good a moment as any to toast the sometimes inelegant career of one of St. Paul's political mavericks.
Among the invitees are Thune's predecessor on the council, former City Council Member (and now mayor) Chris Coleman, as well as the mayor that Thune ever-so-briefly ran against, former Mayor (and former U.S. Senator) Norm Coleman.
Thune's ill-fated mayoral campaign lasted all of three months before he "gracefully withdrew," Thune recalled on Wednesday. "It was just not the way I wanted to spend my life."
This man is also seeking election this Nov., but to what office, no one knows...
Before campaign filings were even underway, Thune walked over to Mayor (Norm) Coleman's office and shared a masculine moment. "The first thing I did was walk over to Norm's office and told him I'm not going to file," Thune said. "We sort of exchanged manly hugs."
Thune's 25 years on and off the city council have been peppered by conflicts and controversies sublime and mundane and laugh-out-loud funny. A decade ago, Thune, a constant smoker, authored the city's bar/restaurant smoking ban, which preceded the state smoking ban and even the smoking ban across the river in Minneapolis. The decision earned him death threats.
He was well accustomed to them. In 1990, he fought for the city's Human Rights ordinance, which prohibits discrimination -- including housing evictions or service refusal at restaurants -- based on gender or sexual orientation.
Death threats followed, as did "a voodoo curse -- a tuft of feathers and furs attached to a brass ring was placed on my doorstep."
Thune, a past president of the Fort Road Federation, won the gay rights battle and the smoking ban battle over objections that businesses would implode and the world would end, but not all of his calls have been as prescient. He was a skeptic about the design for CHS Field, the popular new 7,200-seat home of the St. Paul Saints in Lowertown.
"I acknowledge that I was wrong," said Thune, who has enjoyed watching crowds swarm a baseball field where a vacant shampoo factory once stood. The sunken ballpark design was a hard sell on him. "I didn't think it fit in," he said. "As it turns out, it's worn well."
Were there other times when he's eaten his words? Oh, just a few. "I publicly castigated Norm Coleman for stealing Lawson Software from Minneapolis. Lo and behold, nobody cared. Everybody thought it was just fine to steal anything from Minneapolis, even my wife."
Over the years, he's served as both a go-to source for reporters and a quick target for criticism, sometimes fending off four political challengers at a time. He recites a list of past campaign opponents, some of whom are no longer among the living.
His politics have sometimes been hard to pin down.
Thune, the father of the St. Paul smoking ban, built his career picketing adult movie theaters but worked hard to complete construction of the market-rate Penfield apartments with public money and get a public loan to expand Cossetta Alimentari on Seventh Street, over the strong objection of some neighborhood advocates.
Thune, who once wore a hooded sweatshirt in honor of Trayvon Martin, has lauded the St. Paul Police for their service to the city. The ballpark critic is also a ballpark fan. He was for Cupcake's proposed move to Grand Avenue before he was against it -- but if you read the fine print, he was always for it.
Nowadays, downtown St. Paul is looking livelier than it has in decades, with a new ballpark where the Gillette/Diamond Products factory once stood empty, a light rail line, a renovated Union Depot transit hub, a Lunds grocery and any number of market-rate apartment buildings coming online. West Seventh Street, where Thune runs an art gallery, has enjoyed some new life, as well, with projects like the Schmidt Brewery art lofts.
He's 65 and "happy. What I'm going to do is book my band more, ride my Harley more, make more art, and probably do a little traveling with my Airstream. And have more regular shows at my art gallery. I'm happy to retire. This was a good time for me, because a lot of things have come together in the last two years."
We'll toast to that.
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