page_title: Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Stage of the 2006 Democratic Farm Labor party state convention in Rochester, Minnesota
context_page_description: The Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party is a political party in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is affiliated with the U.S. Democratic Party. Formed by a merger of the Minnesota Democratic Party and the Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party in 1944, the DFL is one of only two state Democratic Party affiliates of a different name.
context_section_description: The DFL was created on April 15, 1944, with the merger of the Minnesota Democratic Party and the larger Farmer–Labor Party. Leading the merger effort were Elmer Kelm, the head of the Minnesota Democratic Party and the founding chairman of the DFL; Elmer Benson, effectively the head of the Farmer–Labor Party by virtue of his leadership of its dominant left-wing faction; and rising star Hubert H. Humphrey, who chaired the Fusion Committee that accomplished the union and then went on to chair its first state convention.
  By the party's second convention in 1946, tensions had re-emerged between members of the two former parties. While the majority of delegates supported left-wing policies, Humphrey managed to install a more conservative ally, Orville Freeman, as party secretary. Some Farmer–Labor leaders such as Benson moved to the Progressive Party.
  Freeman was elected the state's first DFL governor in 1954. Important members of the party have included Humphrey and Walter Mondale, who each went on to be United States senators, vice presidents of the United States, and unsuccessful Democratic nominees for president; Eugene McCarthy, a U.S. senator who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 as an anti-Vietnam War candidate; and Paul Wellstone, a U.S. senator from 1991 to 2002 who became an icon of populist progressivism.
caption: DFL logo used on a lectern at the 2006 DFL state convention.
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