Paul Wellstone

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Template:Infobox Senator Paul David Wellstone (July 21, 1944 – October 25, 2002) was an American politician and two-term U.S. Senator from Minnesota. He was a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and was a professor of political science at Carleton College before being elected to the Senate in 1990. Wellstone was a leading spokesman for the progressive wing of the national Democratic Party. He served in the Senate from 1991 until his death in a plane crash on 25 October 2002. His wife, Sheila, and daughter, Marcia, also died in the crash. They had two other grown children, David and Mark, who now co-chair the Wellstone Action nonprofit group.

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Early life

Wellstone was born in Washington D.C. to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants, Leon and Minnie Wellstone, and raised in Arlington, Virginia. He attended Yorktown High School in Arlington. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a wrestling scholarship, graduating with a degree in political science in three years. He was an Atlantic Coast Conference champion.

In 1965 he earned his B.A., and four years later was awarded a Ph.D. in Political Science. Wellstone's 1969 doctoral dissertation at UNC was "Black Militants in the Ghetto: Why They Believe in Violence."

During the 1970s, he became involved in community organizing, working with the working poor and other politically disenfranchised communities. The first organization he founded was the Organization for a Better Rice County, a group consisting mainly of single parents on welfare, which he organized to advocate for public housing, affordable health care, improved public education, free school lunches, and a publicly-funded day care center. During this same period, he also began organizing with union members, farmers, and liberal activists. Later, he would use these connections in his bid for the Senate.

He went on to become a professor of political science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he taught for 21 years until 1990. In 1982, he ran for state auditor, but lost to Arne Carlson. In 1988, he was the Minnesota campaign manager for Jesse Jackson's Presidential campaign.

In 1990, Wellstone ran for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Rudy Boschwitz, beginning the race as a serious underdog. He won the election, after being outspent by a 7-to-1 margin. Some credit the upset defeat to a letter Boschwitz supporters wrote, on campaign stationery, to members of the Minnesota Jewish community days before the election, accusing Wellstone of being a "bad Jew" for marrying a Gentile and not raising his children in the Jewish faith. Wellstone's reply, widely broadcast on Minnesota television, was, "He has a problem with Christians, then." Boschwitz, like Wellstone, is Jewish.

He defeated Boschwitz again for re-election in 1996. During that campaign, Boschwitz ran ads accusing Wellstone of being "embarrassingly liberal" and calling him "Senator Welfare". Boschwitz accused Wellstone of flag burning, a move which some believe backfired. Up until that point, the race had been dead even, but Wellstone went to beat Boschwitz by a nine-point margin.

Wellstone's upset victory in 1990 and subsequent re-election in 1996 was also credited to a massive grass-roots campaign, which inspired college students, poor people and people of color to get involved in politics for the very first time. In 1990, the number of young people involved in the campaign was so notable that shortly after the election, Walter Mondale told Wellstone that "the kids won it for you." Wellstone also spent a large portion of his Senate career working with the Hmong community in Minnesota, an immigrant community that had not traditionally been involved in American politics. Wellstone also spent a great deal of his Senate career cultivating the veterans community.

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Career

Although he had promised to step down after two terms, in 2002 Wellstone campaigned for re-election to a third term against Republican Norm Coleman. Earlier that year he announced he had a mild form of multiple sclerosis, causing the limp he had believed was an old wrestling injury.

Senator Wellstone was known for his work for peace, the environment, labor, and health care; he also joined his wife Sheila to support the rights of victims of domestic violence. He opposed the first Gulf War in 1991 and the second in 2002. He was strongly supported by groups such as Americans for Democratic Action, the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, the ACLU, and People for the American Way.

After voting against the congressional authorization for the war in Iraq on October 11 2002, in the midst of a tight election, Wellstone is said to have told his wife, "I just cost myself the election." He was the only Senator running for reelection to have voted against authorizing the war. However, polls conducted the days following his vote against the resolution showed him leading Coleman by 6 - 9%, previous polls showed him trailing or leading by only 2 - 3%.

Senator Wellstone was the author of the 'Wellstone Amendment' added to the McCain-Feingold Bill for Campaign Finance Reform, in what came to be known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The law, including the Wellstone Amendment, was challenged as unconstitutional by groups and individuals including the California State Democratic Party, the National Rifle Association, and Republican Senator Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), the Senate Majority Whip, with critics agreeing on both sides of the political spectrum. [1] On Wednesday, December 10, 2003, the Supreme Court issued a ruling upholding the key provisions of McCain-Feingold, including the Wellstone Amendment; the vote on the court was 5 to 4. The law as it stands prevents special interest groups, such as the National Rifle Association, and the League of Women Voters from talking about any political candidate for 60 days before a general election, in what many critics had assumed would be protected speech on the basis of First Amendment rights. [2] In essence, Wellstone largely achieved posthumously what he had said during the campaign finance reform debate on the floor of the Senate, that he wanted to silence the National Rifle Association. [3]

Wellstone was in a line of left-of-center or progressive Senators of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). The first three, Hubert H. Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, and Walter F. Mondale, were all prominent in the national Democratic Party. Shortly after joining the Senate, South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings approached Wellstone and told him, "You remind me of Hubert Humphrey. You talk too much."

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Presidential aspirations

Shortly after his re-election to the Senate in 1996, Wellstone began contemplating a run for his party's nomination for President of the United States in 2000.

As the first stage in his nascent pseudocampaign, he embarked upon a cross-country speaking and listening tour that he dubbed "the Children's Tour" in May of 1997. This tour, which took him to rural areas of Mississippi and Appalachia and the inner cities of Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Baltimore, was intended to retrace the steps taken by Senator Robert F. Kennedy during a similar tour in 1966, in order to showcase the fact that conditions had not improved, as well as to test his message.

The following year, 1998, Wellstone began to more openly investigate the possibility of running. He formed an exploratory committee which paid for his travels to Iowa and New Hampshire, homes of the two first contests of the nomination process, to speak before organized labor and local Democrats. (His catchphrase from these speeches, "I represent the democratic wing of the Democratic Party," would later be incorporated into the 2004 stump speech of Governor Howard Dean.) He also met privately with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, allegedly to determine which of them would challenge Vice President Al Gore from the left in 2000.

During this time, a college student named Paul Hogarth designed and put up Wellstone2000.com, a website intended to drum up grassroots support for Wellstone's candidacy. By the time it completed its two-year run, the site had led to the recruitment of nearly 700 official members into the Draft Wellstone movement, had sold hundreds of "Wellstone 2000" political buttons, and had led to the formation of "Students for Wellstone" clubs on campuses across the country.

Then, on January 9, 1999, Wellstone called a press conference in the Minnesota capitol building. Rather than announcing his candidacy, as had been expected, he instead declared that he would not be a candidate. His explanation was that his old wrestling injury (in reality, multiple sclerosis) prevented him from mustering the stamina necessary for a national campaign. Later that year, he would endorse the candidacy of former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, the only Democrat to run against Gore.

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Death

At about 10:22am, October 25, 2002, Wellstone was killed at the age of 58 with seven others in a plane crash in northern Minnesota. The other victims were his wife, Sheila, one of his three children, Marcia, the two pilots, and campaign staffers Will McLaughlin, Tom Lapic, and Mary McEvoy. The plane was en route to Eveleth where Wellstone was to attend the funeral of Martin Rukavina, a steelworker whose son Tom Rukavina serves in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Wellstone decided to go to the funeral instead of a rally and fundraiser in Minneapolis attended by Mondale and fellow Senator Ted Kennedy. He was to debate Norm Coleman in Duluth that night.

The Beechcraft King Air A100 plane crashed in dense forest about two miles from the Eveleth airport while operating under instrument flight rules as required for weather conditions of freezing rain and snow. Investigators were dismayed to learn that the charter plane Wellstone was traveling in had no flight data recorders. Both pilots tested negative for drug or alcohol use. Icing was considered and rejected as a significant factor in the crash.

The NTSB later determined that the likely cause of the accident was the failure of both the pilot and copilot to maintain a safe minimum airspeed, leading to a stall from which they could not recover. Fatigue could have affected this, as the day before the crash the pilot had flown an unexpected trip from 3 - 9:30 am and then worked a nursing shift from 6 - 10 pm. Wellstone's flight departed St. Paul at about 9:37 the following morning. However, both pilots would have had to fail in their task of monitoring the airplane's instrumentation and in-flight behavior which would have given ample warning of an impending stall. Therefore, fatigue is likely not the only factor. Many people have disputed the explanation of the crash [4], and suggest tampering or electronic-jamming equipment as more plausible factors.

Michael L. Guess, the First Officer, was characterized in the NTSB report as being "below average" in proficiency.[5] Significant discrepancies were also found in pilot Richard Conry's flight logs in the course of the post-accident investigation. [6] He also had a well-known tendency to allow copilots to take over all functions of the aircraft as if they were the sole pilot during flights. After the crash three copilots told of occasions in which they had to take control of the aircraft away from Conry, after one of those incidents only three days before the crash the copilot urged Conry to retire [7]. A few months before the crash he told a friend he had difficulty piloting and landing King Airs.Template:Citeneeded The copilot was cited by coworkers as having to be consistently reminded to keep his hand on the throttle and maintain airspeed during approaches [8]. He had been fired from two previous piloting jobs for incompetence.

The final two radar readings detected the airplane traveling at or just below its predicted stall speed given conditions at the time of the accident [9].

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Aftermath

Wellstone's death came just 11 days before his potential re-election in a crucial race to maintain Democratic control of the Senate. Campaigning was halted by all sides. Wellstone's death during a US Senate race was the fourth in recent decades. Governor Mel Carnahan of Missouri was killed in a plane crash in 2000 weeks before an election, and Congressman Jerry Litton, also of Missouri, died in a plane crash in 1976 on the day he was nominated by his party. Richard "Dick" Obenshain of Virginia died in a plane crash in 1978 shortly after receiving the GOP nomination.

Minnesota law required that his name be struck from the ballot, to be replaced by a candidate chosen by the party. The replacement candidate was former Vice President Walter Mondale, who accepted the nomination and later lost the election to Republican Norm Coleman.

The 20,000 capacity memorial service for Wellstone and the other victims of the crash was held in Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota and was broadcast live on national TV. Many high profile politicians attended the memorial, including Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Trent Lott, and Rod Grams. Vice President Dick Cheney offered his attendance but was turned down by organizers. After Rick Kahn began urging that the crowd should win the election for Wellstone and that Republicans should stop their opposition to the Senate seat, Governor Jesse Ventura stormed out of the service in disgust later explaining both parties were politicizing the event. Later in the service, Wellstone's personal eulogy was delivered by Senator Tom Harkin, another notable progressive and Wellstone's close friend in the Senate, who urged those present to "stand up for Paul" in the election.

The event was criticized for its tone. Governor Jesse Ventura, who had the option to pick a replacement senator to serve out the remainder of Wellstone's term through January 2003, went so far as to declare he would solicit resumés for the senatorial position from everyone except Democrats. On the other hand, the pre-election outrage swirling around Wellstone's memorial was condemned by Democrats, like radio personality Al Franken, who was at the memorial and claimed that the outrage was overblown in order to damage the Democratic candidate running as Wellstone's replacement. Some believe that the memorial played a major role in the election of Republican Norm Coleman.

On the other hand, Don Hazen, executive editor of Alternet, wrote of Wellstone's passing, "Progressives across the land are in shock as the person many think of as the conscience of the Senate is gone." [10]

On November 4th, the day before Election Day, Ventura appointed state planning commissioner Dean Barkley of the Independence Party to complete Wellstone's Senate term.

Wellstone is survived by his sons David and Mark and six grandchildren. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations has created the AFL-CIO Senator Paul Wellstone Award for supporters of the rights of labor. Presidential candidate Howard Dean and California state senator John Burton both received the first award in January 2003. In 2004, the University of North Carolina dedicated the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Memorial Garden as a tribute to the couple, both alumni of the university.

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Electoral history

  • 1982 Race for State Auditor
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External links and references

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Further reading

  • Fetzer, Jim and Jacobs, Don Trent, American Assassination: the Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone, Vox Pop, 2004.
  • Lofy, Bill, Paul Wellstone: The Life of a Passionate Progressive, University of Michigan Press, 2005
  • Lofy, Bill, Politics the Wellstone Way: How to Elect Progressive Candidates and Win on Issues, University of Minnesota Press, 2005
  • McGrath, Dennis J. and Smith, Dane, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington: The Inside Story of a Grassroots U.S. Senate Campaign, University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
  • Wellstone, Paul, The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda, University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
  • Wellstone, Paul, How the Rural Poor Got Power: Narrative of a Grass-Roots Organizer, University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
  • Wellstone, Paul, and Barry Casper, Powerline: The First Battle of America's Energy War, University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Template:Start box {{U.S. Senator box | state=Minnesota | class=2 | before=Rudy Boschwitz | after=Dean Barkley | alongside=David Durenberger, Rod Grams, Mark Dayton | years=1991 – 2002}} Template:End box

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