The second Scandinavian governor was a Swede born in Smaaland, who landed in the United States in 1868 at the age of fourteen--John Lind. Passing up through such political gradations as county superintendent of schools, receiver of the United States Land Office, and Republican representative in Congress, he allied himself with the free-silver movement of 1896 and became the Fusion candidate for governor of Minnesota. Opposed by the leading Swedes who remained loyal to the Republican party, he was defeated by a small majority, tho supported by many of the Norwegians. The Spanish War, in which he served as quartermaster of volunteers, gave him a new claim to popular favor, and when he again ran for governor in 1898 he was elected by a combination of Democrats and Populists, turning his former deficiency of 3,496 into a plurality of 20,399.[378] This victory was due more to a revolt against the Republican candidate than to clannish support of a Swede by Swedes, for the two strongholds of the Swedes, Chisago and Goodhue Counties, went Republican as usual, while the German and Irish wards of St. Paul and Minneapolis gave majorities for Lind. [378] _Svenska Amerikanska Posten_, Nov. 22, 1898; _World Almanac_, 1899; Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 432. The third of Minnesota's Scandinavian governors came into office under circumstances of distinctly dramatic character. John A. Johnson was born of Swedish parents in the State over which he was to be made ruler; at the age of fourteen he became the support of his mother and of the family, save the inebriate father who was sent to an almshouse where he died. When nominated by the Democrats in 1904, Johnson had been for eighteen years editor of a country newspaper printed in English. The Republicans, especially their candidate for governor, a coarse-grained, distrusted, machine politician, endeavored to make political capital out of the fact that Johnson's father died in the poorhouse. The Democratic leaders persuaded Johnson with some difficulty to let the plain truth be told, and told on the stump--and Johnson, the son of a Swedish immigrant, a man from a small, interior city, a Democrat in a State strongly Republican as a rule, won by a plurality of 6,352 votes in a Presidential year, when Theodore Roosevelt carried the State by 161,464.[379] Two years of vigorous but quiet administration brought the reward of a renomination and re-election in 1906 by a plurality of 76,000.[380] Again in 1908, another presidential year, Governor Johnson was re-elected by 20,000 plurality, though Taft received a plurality of 85,000.[381] [379] _Minnesota Legislative Manual_, 1905, 506, 520. In this election of 1904, P. E. Hanson, a Swedish immigrant of 1857, was elected on the Republican ticket as Secretary of State by a plurality of more than 96,000. [380] _World Almanac_, 1907, 487. [381] _Ibid._, 1909, 639.