In 1954 Coya (Cornelia) Knutson became the first and, until 2000, the only woman from
Minnesota to serve in the U.S.
Congress. The story of how this plainspoken woman gained election without her
DFL party support is interesting, and her tenure in office is not without note.
But the most fascinating facet of her political career was how the
infamous "
Coya Come Home" letters foiled her reelection bid.
In 1958 she earned the ire of the
Minnesota DFL leaders largely because she dissed
Hubert H. Humphrey.
H.H.H. was Minnesota's "favorite son" and one of the biggest figures in Minnesota politics at the time. He was also favored to get the
vice-presidential nod for the 1958 DFL ticket. However, Coya supported
Estes Kefauver, and her support eventually got him on the (losing) team with
Adlai Stevenson. The
politicians in
Minnesota were not
happy.
Party leaders approached her
estranged, unemployed, abusive, and
alcoholic husband, Andy Knutson, and influenced him to write (or copy) several public letters to Coya that were
released to the press. In these open letters, Andy Knutson stated that he asked his wife not to run for
reelection, asked the Democratic convention to select another
candidate to run on the ticket, and
bemoaned the fact that she was never home and their
marital happiness was shattered by her political ambitions.
"Coya come home" became newspaper headline, and the
manufactured scandal strongly influenced
public opinion. Although she won her own
primary, she lost the election. She was the only Democratic
incumbent to lose that year. She ran for office two more times but lost.
In 1982, Coya remarked,
"I've found that
women have to work twice as hard as
men to accomplish the same job. They're coming up from behind and they have to catch up."
Her story was the basis for a best-selling book, "
Coya Come Home,"
and for an
NBC-TV movie starring
Glenn Close by the same name.
Coya Knutson died of kidney failure in
Minneapolis, October 10, 1996