Wellstone, Paul (1944–2002)

Paul Wellstone was a professor, progressive activist, and two-term U.S. senator from Minnesota. Prior to being elected to the Senate in 1990, Wellstone was a professor of political science at Carleton College and a liberal activist. As a senator, Wellstone was often referred to as the “conscience of the Senate” or a leading spokesperson for the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” He served in the Senate from 1991 until his death in a plane crash on October 25, 2002. His wife Sheila, daughter Marcia, three campaign aides—Tom Lapic, Will McLaughlin, and Mary McEvoy—and two pilots were also killed. There were no survivors of the crash. Paul and Sheila Wellstone are survived by their sons, Mark and David.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Wellstone became involved in community organizing, working mainly with the poor. In the process, he gained a reputation as an effective organizer and a powerful speaker. In 1990, Wellstone ran for the U.S. Senate against wealthy incumbent Rudy Boschwitz. He was an underdog, outspent by a 7-to-1 margin. Despite the odds, Wellstone ran a grassroots campaign that energized voters, crisscrossing the state in a green, old, rickety bus. He was significantly helped by a risky advertising strategy that injected into the campaign what would be one of his greatest assets: humor. Finally, Wellstone's surprising victory is also often credited to the “Boschwitz letter,” which accused Wellstone of being a “bad Jew” for marrying a gentile and not raising his children in the Jewish faith. In 1996 Boschwitz ran against Wellstone again; Wellstone beat him by a nine-point margin. Wellstone contemplated a run for president of the United States between 1997 and 1999. After relatively extensive travel and planning, Wellstone called a press conference to declare that he would not be a candidate due to an old wrestling injury (which was later diagnosed as multiple sclerosis). Wellstone ran for a third term in the Senate against Republican Norm Coleman in 2002, but the campaign ended abruptly with his untimely death in a plane crash. The replacement candidate was former Vice President Walter Mondale, who lost the election.

Wellstone was a successful legislator, authoring legislation to ban gifts from lobbyists and limit the influence of special interests. He won victories in the areas of economic security, health care, environmental protection, and children's issues. He gained a national reputation for efforts on veteran, mental health, and domestic violence issues. According to former presidential candidate Bill Bradley, however, Wellstone will be best remembered for taking principled but sometimes unpopular positions. He opposed the first Gulf War in 1991. He voted against President Clinton's welfare reform legislation in 1996, and in 2002, he voted against congressional authorization for the war in Iraq. In the end, Wellstone claimed his success as a legislator was due, in part, to abide by a set of four principles: personalize the issue, be relentless, look for unlikely allies, and advocate for those who do not have advocates.