Paul Wellstone’s Legacy
10 years after the Minnesota senator’s death, he still sets the bar for a politics of conviction.
PETER DREIER
In These Times, OCTOBER 12, 2012
Shortly before he died in a plane crash on October 25, 2002, Paul Wellstone explained why he was in the Senate: “I don’t represent the big oil companies, the big pharmaceuticals, or the big insurance industry. They already have great representation in Washington. It’s the rest of the people that need representation.”
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In 1990, Wellstone ran a grassroots campaign against U.S. Senator Rudy Boschwitz, a well-financed two-term Republican who outspent Wellstone nearly 7 to 1. He made his lack of financing an issue by running a humorous low-budget television commercial, “Fast Paul,” in which he rapidly introduced himself to voters, explaining he had to talk fast because he could not afford much airtime. Another quirky campaign ad, “Looking for Rudy,” was based on Michael Moore’s 1989 documentary, Roger & Me. Both low-budget commercials became immediate hits, helping Wellstone gain visibility.
A fixture of Wellstone’s campaign was a beat-up old school bus painted green and white with a speaker’s platform rigged onto the rear exit. Despite some last-minute smears by his opponent attacking Wellstone’s patriotism and religious integrity (supporters of the Jewish Boschwitz claimed that Wellstone was not a practicing Jew), Wellstone won 50.4 percent of the vote. He was the only challenger to defeat an incumbent senator that year.
When he met President George H. W. Bush at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, Wellstone, ignoring protocol, spoke out, urging the president to spend more time on issues like education and cautioning him against invading Iraq. Irked, Bush asked an aide, “Who is this chickenshit?”
While serving in the Senate, Wellstone remained an organizer.. He was frequently on picket lines and at rallies sponsored by labor, community, environmental, and other progressive groups. His speeches, often appearing to be delivered completely off-the-cuff, would crescendo wildly into loud, short jeremiads expressing indignation at whatever wrongs the rally was addressing.
During most of Wellstone’s Senate career, the Democrats were the minority party. In his 2002 book The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda, he acknowledged that he spent nearly 85 percent of his time on defense, battling Republican attacks on working families and preventing bad things — like oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — from happening. When the Democrats were in the majority in 1993 – 1994, Wellstone pushed for a Canadian-style single-payer healthcare system, in contrast to President Bill Clinton’s more modest reform proposal.
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https://inthesetimes.com/article/paul-wellstones-legacy
Wellstone said he was from the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party. My kind of Democrat.
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