After loss, Hahn heeds call of change

Rob Hahn and I were back at his favorite St. Paul coffee shop a few days ago, at my request. The former Independence Party gubernatorial candidate was dressed in shorts and a light pink shirt, looking casual and relaxed for a man who'd been through the election ringer.

We sat here many months ago, when Hahn first started talking about family-law reform, an issue I strongly support. That was before he launched, then lost, his Independence Party primary campaign against Tom Horner. Before he stunned many of us by making front-page news in the worst possible way.

It's hard to imagine a bigger argument against fathers' rights than a guy leading the charge who has a restraining order against him, stemming from a violent outburst against his wife during the couple's divorce proceedings in 2009.

But I hope we don't go there because I still strongly support family-law reform.

Hahn sought anger-management counseling and fortunately no longer calls the incident, in which he grabbed his former wife by the throat and smashed two cell phones, a mere "row."

"It was a horrible mistake that I want to help others going through similar situations avoid making," he said. "Ironically, I'm in a good position to do so because of my own experiences."

A domestic-violence expert I checked in with said she was glad to see Hahn "publicly talking about how this is never OK."

Change is Hahn's mantra now. His political career is likely over, and not just due to the press around his personal story. While he enjoyed meeting people throughout the state, and engaging his two pre-teen sons and 17-year-old niece in the thrills and spills of the political process, he needs to get back to his publishing business ("Midwest Wine Connection" and "Minnesota Prep Sports"), which suffered in his absence.

But he's more bullish than ever about changing the way parents, mostly fathers, are treated in divorce cases. "That's my calling now," said Hahn, noting that although he is a noncustodial father to his two sons, he has no plans to contest his own arrangement.

"I've got a great relationship with them," he said of his boys, whom he walks to school every morning during the school year. But going through a divorce, and talking to people around the state, opened his eyes to a system that is broken.

He plans to continue working toward goals he set in his political campaign, including making judges accountable, tightening up lag times between initial court hearings and pretrial hearings, and requiring couples to attend divorce classes prior to or within one month after filing for divorce. That last point is something he believes would have greatly benefitted him personally.

Hahn's biggest goal is to get Minnesota lawmakers to make shared parental custody the legal presumption in most divorce cases. I emphasize most because we all need to resist the tendency to debate an issue this important and emotional at the margins, making every player a saint or a sinner.

"My friends and I are aware that there are bad husbands and fathers out there," writes one dad, Mike. "But, too often, the good husbands and fathers are marginalized or ignored in the media and the bad are portrayed as the 'standard,' a notion which, in my experience at least, I have found to be anything but accurate."

"If the 50/50 law had been passed five years ago," writes Ruth, "my son would not be in jail, he would not be bankrupt and his children would not be suffering." A mother tells me how she ended up in a homeless shelter when she couldn't keep up with child-support payments.

Hahn knows that some people will always question whether he's the right guy for this fight. So be it, he said.

"I could have sat out and [the restraining order, which is in place until March] never would have been front-page news," he said. "But to run from it is not who I am. The campaign is over. I'm free. This is my cause."