Joan Anderson Growe was born September 28, 1935 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the daughter of Arthur F. and Lucile M. (Brown) Anderson, and was raised in Buffalo, Minnesota, where her father served as the city's mayor from 1954 to 1963.
Like many women of her era Growe alternated between working as a teacher and working as a homemaker raising her children. She attended St. Cloud State College and earned a teaching degree in 1956. Following college she taught elementary classes in the Bloomington Public Schools for two years before marrying and raising the first of her four children. In 1964, after a divorce from her first husband, she attended courses at the University of Minnesota and earned a special education certification. The following year she taught special education classes for Christ Child School for Exceptional Children in St. Paul and then taught in the St. Anthony Public Schools during the 1965-1966 school year.
Activated by the political unrest over American involvement in Vietnam and the growing feminist movement Growe had become a member in the League of Women Voters during the latter part of the 1960s and attended her first party precinct caucus in 1968. By this time she had married for a second time and was living in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, a political district that had a long tradition of Republican support. In 1972 a legislative seat in that district opened and when Gwen Luhta, president of the Minnetonka League of Women Voters, failed to receive the Republican endorsement friends persuaded Growe to seek the DFL endorsement. In a drive skeptics dubbed the "Housewives' Campaign," Growe not only won the DFL endorsement--she won the vote of all six precincts in her district. At the opening of the 1973 legislative session Growe was one of five new women who joined six-term incumbent Helen McMillan as representatives in the state House.
During her term as a representative Growe served on the Crime Prevention and Corrections Committee, the Education Committee where she chaired a subcommittee on accountability, the Judiciary Committee, and the Metropolitan and Urban Affairs Committee. She also drafted an open meeting bill that became the state's first sunshine legislation.
Motivated by election reforms passed by the Democratically controlled legislature and convinced of the opposition to those reforms by then secretary of state Arlen Erdahl, Growe decided to seek DFL endorsement as a candidate for the office of secretary of state. Again she won both the endorsement and the election. Although Virginia Holm had been appointed to complete her husband's term as secretary of state following his death in 1952 and although Holm had been elected to a subsequent two-year term, no woman had been elected to a statewide office on the basis of her own credentials prior to Growe. Growe subsequently served six terms as Minnesota's secretary of state, being reelected in 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990 and 1994. In 1984 in a highly contested primary campaign, Growe received the DFL endorsement as their U.S. senatorial candidate but was defeated by the Republican incumbent Rudy Boschwitz.
A biographical sketch issued by the Office of the Secretary of State in April 1990 characterized Growe as a "leader in government reform, openness, economic growth, education, and environment." Growe was tireless in her advocacy of voter participation and for the majority of her tenure, Minnesota led the nation in voter turnout. As a member of the state's Board of Investment and in support of the anti-apartheid movement, Growe led a call in 1984 for the divestment of state funds from South African companies. Under her leadership Minnesota was the first state in the nation to computerize both its voter registration and uniform commercial code systems. Growe also encouraged the passage of motor vehicle-voter registration legislation that became national law in 1993.
Throughout her political career Growe remained an ardent supporter of the philosophy that good government depends on the active and effective participation of its citizens. Her commitment to this democratic ideal was first cultivated by her father's civic influence, first enacted by her involvement in the League of Women Voters, further engendered by her role as Secretary of State, and culminated in the 1990s by her participation as an international election observer in Romania, South Africa, and Azerbaijan. Growe retired as secretary of state at the end of her sixth term in 1998 and was succceeded by Mary Kiffmeyer, a Republican from Big Lake.
Biographical information was taken from the collection.
From the guide to the Joan Growe papers., 1936, 1973-1998., (Minnesota Historical Society)
