TIMOTHY J. PENNY:

Timothy J. Penny was born November 19, 1951, the third of seven children born to Jay and Donna Penny. His father's family were of Scotch-Irish descent and had come to Minnesota from Delaware in the mid-1800s. His mother's family, the Haukooses, emigrated from Norway in the 1870s. Penny grew up on a farm in Mansfield Township, located in Freeborn County, Minnesota, where the family raised soybeans, corn, dairy cows, hogs, chickens, and sheep until his grandfather sold the bulk of the acreage in the late 1960s. As the Pennys were one of the few Democratic-Farmer-Labor families in a town of Republicans, Tim was politically aware from an early age. His mother was active in local DFL politics and encouraged his political awareness.

After graduating from Kiester High School in 1969, Penny attended Winona State College as a political science major. It was during his college years that Penny held his first office, that of student body president. Penny's formal entry into politics was not long delayed. At age twenty-four he successfully ran for the state Senate, becoming the first Democrat to represent his district in fifty years. After serving six years in the state government, Penny went on to represent Minnesota's first congressional district. In winning the seat in Congress, Penny became the first Democrat to represent Minnesota's conservative southeastern district in ninety years.

Penny, a self-described "raging moderate," soon showed that he was not afraid to go against the party grain. He gained a reputation as somewhat of a troublemaker in the party, often voting with Republicans on spending and other budget issues. Committee assignments included Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, and the Select Committee on Hunger. He served as chair of the Subcommittee on Foreign Agriculture and Hunger (1993-1994). His frequent run-ins with the Democratic House leadership over appropriations bills are said to have cost him a much coveted seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

In addition to agriculture, rural development, and trade, Penny's major area of interest and influence was fiscal policy, particularly the fight against deficit spending and "pork-barrel" politics. As a newcomer in Congress Penny persuaded his fellow freshmen to form a task force on the budget, which later evolved into the Democratic Budget Group. The group gained significant influence, frequently attracting top executive branch policymakers to its Wednesday morning meetings. Despite his disappointment with President Clinton's failure to follow through with the painful cuts Penny believed necessary to significantly reduce the federal deficit, he was instrumental in getting the president's 1993 budget passed. Not long afterwards, worn out by what he described as the hypocrisy, excessive partisanship, and manipulation rife in Washington politics, Penny announced his decision not to run for re-election in 1994. Penny also cited his and his wife Barbara's desire that his four children--Jamison, Joseph, Molly, and Marcus-- live and go to school Minnesota.

After giving up his congressional seat Penny returned to southeastern Minnesota with his family. He took positions teaching at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the University of St. Thomas, in addition to consulting for Himle Horner, Inc., a public relations firm. Penny also joined the board of the Concord Coalition, the organization founded by former senators Paul Tsongas and Warren Rudman and dedicated to achieving a balanced federal budget. He became chair of the Minnesota Democratic Leadership Council and is a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserves. In 1995 Penny, with the help of Washington Times reporter Major Garrett, wrote Common Cents: A Retiring Six-Term Congressman Reveals How Congress Really Works--And What We Must Do to Fix it. Subsequent book publications included Payment Due: A Nation in Debt, A Generation in Trouble (1996) co-written with Steve Schier and The 15 Biggest Lies in Politics (1998), another collaboration between Tim Penny and Major Garrett.

In 1998, Reform Party (later joined the Independence Party) candidate Jesse Ventura was elected Minnesota governor, and Tim Penny served as an advisor and part of Ventura's transition team from 1998 to 1999. Tim Penny joined the Independence Party following Ventura's decision to not seek re-election, and he subsequently ran an unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in 2002.

In 2001, Tim Penny joined the bipartisan President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security aimed at modernizing and reforming Social Security.

Following Penny's gubernatorial race, he remained active by serving on numerous boards and leadership roles, including chair of the Southern Minnesota Leadership Circle, chairman of ACDI/VOCA, trustee of the Wells Fargo Advantage Funds and the Good Samaritan Society, co-chair for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, co-chair of the Economic Club of Minnesota, and board member of the Parent Aware for School Readiness. Penny also continued to work as a senior fellow with the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute, served as an adjunct faculty at various colleges and universities, spoke regularly as a public speaker and radio commentator, and published numerous editorials.

In 2007, Tim Penny was appointed President and CEO of the economic development non-profit Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation. He served in this role for eighteen years until his retirement in 2025.

Biographical information in this sketch came from newspaper and magazine articles on Penny, the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs' world wide web site, and from the collection.

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The Timothy J. Penny congressional and legislative papers include correspondence, memoranda, notes, press releases, speeches, bill drafts, questionnaires, legislative profiles, and other related material documenting the congressional career of Penny and, to a lesser extent, his service in the Minnesota State Senate during the 1980s and early 1990s.

"Handwritten correspondence" comprises the bulk of the correspondence series and consists of short notes handwritten on official stationery, mostly to other legislators and members of government. While a great deal of this material is of a superficial nature, their informal style is sometimes more revealing than formal correspondence. While the collection contains very little constituent correspondence, reports (1986-1994), along with a study prepared by an intern in 1994, provide an outline and analysis of Penny's incoming correspondence from constituents and its effect on decision-making in his office.

Other correspondence in the collection includes mass mailings (1989-1993) on various topics sent to individuals and organizations on various mailing lists maintained by Penny's office, and eleven folders of undated standard texts composed for response to often asked questions. In addition there is a large group of letters from businesses, organizations, members of Congress, presidents, and other individuals thanking Penny for meetings, support of certain legislation, receptions, and other matters. Also included in the correspondence series are delegation letters co-signed by Penny on a variety of issues. These letters are arranged by Congress and then alphabetically by topic (agriculture - veterans affairs).

Legislation/Issue files make up another major portion of the collection. These files, arranged alphabetically by topic, include draft bills, correspondence, conference and other reports, hearings, memoranda, notes, and other related papers on a variety of subjects from 1986 to 1994 (bulk 1989-1994). Major topics are agriculture and budget-related issues, including rescissions and amendments to appropriations bills (particularly the Penny-Kasich Amendment of 1993), "porkbusting," and the Democratic Budget Study Group, which Penny founded and chaired. Also of interest are files extensively documenting the closing of the University of Minnesota at Waseca and the subsequent proposal to turn the facility into a prison. A number of files entitled "democracy legislation" concern election issues and document Penny's efforts to improve ballot access for minor political parties and voter registration procedures.

A highlight of the collection is the series of voting records and ratings, including official records of Penny's legislative activity for most of his years in Congress, as well as a large collection of questionnaires, ratings, and scorecards compiled by various lobbying and special-interest groups. These materials provide a helpful picture of Penny's position on a variety of issues, both objectively and through the eyes of various partisan groups.

Publicity-related materials, such as press releases, newspaper clippings, and speech scripts, make up another section of the collection. Newspaper clippings, some of which are photocopied and some of which are originals still in envelopes sent by clipping services, are organized chronologically by month. The period just following Penny's August, 1993 decision not to run again for Congress is particularly well documented. The collection also includes a nearly complete set of Penny's schedules, files from his tenure as chair of the Foreign Agriculture and Hunger Subcommittee, and small groups of his election campaign materials and briefing books.

Materials documenting Penny's service in the Minnesota State Senate consist only of voting records surveys from 1977-1979 and 1981-1982.

Post-Congress and personal papers include: teaching files from various Minnesota colleges and universities (1995-2015); administrative records, correspondence, and minutes from numerous organizations he served on as a board member or in leadership roles (2006-2025); conference and event presentations, interviews, and materials (2000s-2019); and personal papers consisting of political and family photographs, correspondence, genealogical data and family histories, Penny's college papers, writings, scrapbooks, notes, church music and hymns performed by the Penny family, and a video of his retirement from the U.S. Congress in 1994 (1958-2010s).

The collection also includes clippings, ephemera, political cartoons, press releases, results, flyers, digital files and video, and other campaign materials for Penny's Minnesota Senate campaigns, U.S. House of Representative campaigns, and Penny's 2002 Minnesota Governor's race (1977-2002). A separate set of related campaign files maintained by Donny Penny (Tim Penny's mother) during Tim's Minnesota Senate and Congressional races are also included.

A section of the collection also includes op-eds, speeches, columns, and articles that span Penny's political career and his post-political office years (1970s-2025).

The sound and visual section of the collection consists of: election radio spots, debates, and interviews (undated, 1980, 1984, 1990); media appearances regarding his book publication and his commentary on gubernatorial elections (1995, 1999); radio commentary on his own show and other local outlets that cover political policy, current events, and elections (2005-2009); audio and video recordings from various conferences, public forums, and television programs focused on issues of Social Security, debt, community, and economic development (2004-2009); and media appearances on local broadcast program The Belau Report regarding the work of Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation and current events and topics in southern Minnesota (2019).

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These records are divided into the following two sections:

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Access Restrictions:

Select video recordings, audio recordings, and zip file directories in copyright in this collection are not available online, but can be accessed upon request for use in the Gale Family Library reading room. Please consult reference staff for more information.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Timothy J. Penny. Congressional, Legislative, and Personal Papers. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Accession Information:

Accession number: 15,194; 17,882; 17,902; 17,999

Processing Information:

Processed by: Lara D. Friedman, January, 1997; Leif Kopietz, May 2025

Catalog ID number: 990017334540104294

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