Michael Alan Hatch (born November 12, 1948) is an American politician and lawyer. He was the Attorney General of Minnesota from 1999 to 2007, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Commerce from 1983 to 1989, and chair of the Minnesota DFL Party from 1980 to 1983. Early life and career Hatch is a 1966 graduate of East High School in Duluth. In the 1960s, he attended the University of Minnesota, Duluth before dropping out and serving 18 months in the 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. He was in port in South Chicago during the riots after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 and witnessed the clashes between Vietnam War protesters and police during the 1968 Democratic convention. He got mugged at a port in Milwaukee. Hatch later said of this time in his life, "I wasn’t political at the time, but I was awakening to this stuff." 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. 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. 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.'" 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. State Democratic chairman (1980-1983) In 1976, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) was Minnesota's dominant political party. It held two U.S. Senate seats, the governor's office, four of eight Congressional seats, 104 of 134 seats in the Minnesota House of Representatives and