Editing Mike Hatch (section)

== Early life and career ==
Hatch is a 1966 graduate of [[East High School (Minnesota)|East High School in Duluth]]. In the 1960s, he attended the [[University of Minnesota Duluth|University of Minnesota, Duluth]] before dropping out and serving 18 months in the [[United States Merchant Marine|Merchant Marine]]. There he earned $1.91 an hour shoveling coal into the engines of ore boats crossing the Great Lakes, and made stops in the ports of Rust Belt cities along the shores of the Great Lakes.<ref name=Bakst>"Profile: Mike Hatch," Brian Bakst, Associated Press, Oct. 26, 2006.</ref> He was in port in South Chicago during the riots after [[Martin Luther King Jr.|Martin Luther King, Jr.]] was assassinated in 1968 and witnessed the clashes between Vietnam War protesters and police during the 1968 Democratic convention.<ref name="auto5">"Don't Mess With Mike," Law and Politics, April–May, 2001.</ref> He got mugged at a port in Milwaukee.<ref>"A Search for Direction, Followed by Relentless Drive," Star Tribune, Oct. 15, 2006.</ref> Hatch later said of this time in his life, "I wasn't political at the time, but I was awakening to this stuff."<ref name="auto5"/> He got into a scuffle with a ship's officer who made a derogatory comment about [[Robert F. Kennedy]]'s defense of African Americans. "And that is when I became a Democrat," Hatch said.<ref>"A Search for Direction, Followed by Relentless Drive," Star "Tribune, Oct. 15, 2006.</ref> He hitchhiked to Cleveland, called his father for money to return to Minnesota, and returned to the University of Minnesota Duluth to finish his degree with honors.<ref name=Bakst/> Of the problems in the Rust Belt cities he saw while working the boats, Hatch has said, "There was despair. I took an interest. I thought, 'you know what, I'm going to do something about it.'"<ref name=Bakst/>

Hatch earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1973. He was a trial lawyer in private practice in the 1970s and became chair of the state DFL Party in 1980. In 1983, Governor Rudy Perpich appointed Hatch commissioner of the state Department of Commerce, a position he served in until 1989. In 1998, he was elected state attorney general, a position to which he was reelected in 2002, receiving more votes than any previous candidate for any statewide office.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.sos.state.mn.us/elections-voting/election-results/|title=Minnesota Secretary Of State − Election Results|website=www.sos.state.mn.us|accessdate=July 14, 2023}}</ref>