Senator Rudy Boschwitz – A Conservative Champion, Going Strong At 91-Years-Old

AMAC Exclusive – By Barry Casselman

From the German Weimar Republic to the U.S. Senate, Rudy Boschwitz has lived a remarkable life. For his first half-century, he lived the American Dream in his private life. Only just before age 50 did he then begin a remarkable American public life—which at age 91, he continues to this day.

It’s quite a story. (In full disclosure, Rudy has been a close friend of mine during his public life years, but, my personal feelings aside, I think the facts of his story, in both eras, speak for themselves.)

Born in Berlin in the German Weimar Republic in 1930, Rudy emigrated to the United States with his family in 1933 only months after Adolf Hitler came to power. Rudy’s father, a judge-arbiter, was one of the few who took Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism seriously immediately, and made arrangements quickly for the family to take a “vacation” to Switzerland, from where they emigrated to New Rochelle, New York.

Rudy attended private high school and then Johns Hopkins University and New York University, receiving a B.A. and law degree from NYU. He married Ellen Loewenstein, herself a child refugee from German Nazism, whom he met just after graduating from law school. (They have now been married for 65 years.)

From 1953 to 1954, Rudy served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

Rudy and Ellen had four sons and moved to the Midwest so that Rudy could work in his brother’s plywood manufacturing business in Wisconsin. Rudy soon moved to Minnesota, where he started a chain of retail lumber stores called Plywood Minnesota. The chain eventually expanded to sell home furnishings, carpets, and appliances, and was renamed Home Valu Interiors.

Wearing a trademark plaid shirt, Rudy personally promoted his stores on radio and TV with a folksy manner, often including his wife and young sons. It didn’t take long for Rudy to become a widely known personality, and for Home Valu to grow to more than 70 stores in several nearby states.

Always a religious and philanthropically generous man, as his business prospered and his family was growing up, Rudy increasingly was showing interest in public life. A conservative and a Republican, he began to get involved in party politics, and in the early 1970s, was chosen as the Minnesota GOP national committeeman.

In 1978, he decided to run for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Walter Mondale, who had resigned in 1977 to become vice president of the United States. The popular sitting Democratic governor had then taken the politically risky step of having himself appointed to the vacant senate seat, thinking he would have no trouble winning when the seat would be up for election the next year.

He didn’t take Rudy Boschwitz seriously, nor did the state’s largest newspaper, which routinely published polls showing Rudy losing by a landslide. But Rudy campaigned hard throughout the state in his folksy manner, and discovering that his self-appointed opponent was spending most of his time in Minnesota (and missing votes in the Senate), ran a devastating ad: “He appointed himself to the job, but didn’t show up for work!”

The day before the election, the state’s largest newspaper published a poll showing Rudy losing by a large margin. The next day, he won by a big margin. It was one of the greatest polling disasters up to that time.

Although he was a city boy, Minnesota is a farm state — so Rudy got on the Senate Agriculture Committee and soon made himself an expert on farm issues, becoming the champion of the state’s dairy farmers. He opened a popular dairy booth in the state’s hugely attended annual state fair. (Ironically, Rudy is allergic to milk.)

His lifelong interest in foreign affairs, and being himself a refugee, led Rudy to also be named to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he soon became a champion of human rights and the State of Israel.

His office also became outstanding for its non-partisan constituent services, a model for other Senate offices. One of the very few successful businessmen then in the Senate, Rudy brought a pragmatic fiscal expertise to the job, often being sought for advice by his colleagues. As someone who relished being in the private sector and promoting his own business, Rudy actually enjoyed political fundraising, and was so good at it, many of his GOP colleagues came to him seeking fundraising ideas.

Rudy was easily re-elected in 1984. He became chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on the Middle East, a player on agriculture issues, and the Senate sponsor of Jack Kemp’s enterprise zone legislation, which is still in use today.

He was narrowly defeated for re-election in 1990, and lost a comeback attempt in 1996. 

President George H.W. Bush appointed Rudy to be his special representative to Ethiopia in 1991. Using his expertise in the region, Rudy negotiated the second and largest emigration of the Falashas (black Jews) from Ethiopia to Israel — known as Operation Solomon – which airlifted 14,500 individuals who traced their Jewish origins back to biblical times.

For his efforts, the President awarded Rudy the Citizen’s Medal at a White House ceremony in 1991.

In 2005, President George W. Bush appointed Rudy to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. In the frequently hostile UN attitude to genuine human rights emanating from totalitarian UN member states, Rudy provided a constant and eloquent rebuttal during his term in Geneva.

At this point, most people would retire from public life, but Rudy was only getting started.

He now became not only “Mr. Republican” in Minnesota, encouraging and mentoring conservative men and women to be candidates for local, state and national offices, but also the prime one-man fundraiser for national GOP Senate candidates.

In each two-year cycle, Rudy identifies those GOP Senate incumbents and challenger nominees in close races and holds significant fundraisers in Minnesota for them. In one recent cycle, all nine of Rudy’s candidates won. One senator who Rudy helped win said that Rudy’s event for him was the largest single fundraiser of his entire campaign.

In his religion’s Talmudic tradition, his philanthropy is heavy, but almost always publicly anonymous.

He frequently gives his “Magnificent America” speech to groups, an eloquent rebuttal to the current wave of anti-American ranting — citing his own story and the inspiring opportunities offered to all Americans.

At 91-years-old, he climbs 500 steps every weekday, either indoors or outdoors; presides with Ellen, herself an active octogenarian yoga master, over the Boschwitz clan of many families, children and grandchildren; and maintains regular contact with friends and former staff members all over the globe.

It’s quite a story. Quite a public life. And he remains one of America’s foremost senior citizens.