I dont represent the big oil companies. I dont represent the big pharmaceutical companies. I dont represent the Enrons of this world. But you know what? They already have great representation in Washington. Its the rest of the people that need it the text of what would have been Paul Wellstones final election advertisement.
Paul Wellstone never lost his rumple. He served as a Senator in Washington for twelve years, but he never succumbed to the Senatorial makeover: the $1000 suit, the $100 tie, the manicured haircut. Even when Sheila got him to put on a new suit, it would be disheveled ten minutes later.
The rumple tie loosened, sleeves rolled up, hair unkempt was the expression of this special man. Paul was forever in motion, an inexhaustible source of energy, ideas, optimism, drive. He grabbed you with both hands, clapped you on the back, hugged you, reached for you, argued about what you wrote, talked about what he was thinking. Shirts wouldnt stay tucked, suits wouldnt stay pressed amid all the commotion.
Paul was an organizer, a mentor, a mobilizer. When he taught at Carlton, he was more activist than academic, taking his students to picket lines and sit-ins, exposing them to real-life struggles. As a Senator, he was more tribune than legislator. He gave voice, as Senator Barbara Boxer put it, to those who had no voice. He loved to join rallies and demonstrations, to add his energy or just his presence to people at the heart of campaigning.
Against money, mobilization
I first met Paul in late 1987 when he was organizing Minnesota for the Jesse Jackson 1988 presidential campaign. Paul took Jackson on a sweep across the Iron Range, to speak at churches, union halls and small state colleges. It was gray and very cold, but Paul dashed about without a hat, shaking hands without gloves on, bringing shy people up to meet the Reverend, excited about the prospects, exhilarated by Jacksons message and oratory. At the end of a long day, he took me back to stay overnight at his house. We talked into the night, until I could no longer keep my eyes open. Reluctantly, he let me go to sleep, putting me on a couch in what was supposed to be a weatherized porch where I froze through the night.
Pauls rumple reflected his connection to the people he fought for. He cared deeply about poor and working people, about the struggles of everyday life for poor mothers, family farmers, the afflicted, the elderly. He became their tribune in Washington, and was always accessible to them. He didnt come from money and didnt care much about it, an oddity in the millionaires club that is the US Senate. He and Sheila lived very modestly in a little warren on Capitol Hill. His partnership with Sheila was the real thing, again a rare quality in Washington. He cared about his family, and agonized over the life challenges they faced. Perhaps that helped make him far more approachable and human than most in Washington politics. Its fitting that hes becoming famous for the fact that he knew and cared about the people who served the Senators the guards, the restaurant workers, the cleaning people.
He and Sheila stood up for working and poor people even when they knew it would hurt him politically. In 1996, up for re-election, Bill Clinton faced the Newt Gingrich assault on poor women, children and immigrants known as welfare reform. Clinton knew the bill was unconscionable and said as much later. But his pollster warned him that a veto could cost him votes, so he caved and signed the bill.
Paul was up for re-election that year also, and knew he would be assailed for coddling welfare queens. But he couldnt stomach the damage the bill would do to the most vulnerable poor mothers and their children. The son of an immigrant, he couldnt abide the assault on new immigrants. And he wouldnt go along with the big lie that the problem was welfare rather than poverty. He voted no, believing that in the end voters would respect his principles, even if they disagreed with his position. And sure enough, he went up, not down, in the polls after that vote.
Pauls rumple also reflected the political promise that he uniquely represented. He loved talking to people, but hated asking for money. He believed that mobilization could match money. In the Jackson campaign, he helped bring remarkably talented young organizers into electoral politics. They then decided to run Paul for Senate in 1990, not exactly a promising route to high office. No one gave him or them a chance. But combining wit and whimsy, hustle and energy, he and his crew upset the incumbent, while being outspent seven to one.
That belief that mobilization could overcome money enabled Paul to remain independent. Paul will be remembered for the entrenched interests he was willing to take on: big pharmaceutical companies, agribusiness, big oil, HMOs, toxic polluters, the pirate CEOs. Over the past year, for example, the credit card companies and banks lined up majorities of both parties for a bankruptcy bill that would enable them to collect against people even after they were forced into bankruptcy. Most of these are families whose lives have been shattered by illness, divorce or loss of a job.
Paul could not fathom why wealthy CEOs, such as Kenneth Lay, could shield their mansions from the people that they looted, while divorced mothers would have to compete with credit card companies to get child support payments. He filibustered against the bill, despite pressure from Tom Daschle, his partys leader in the Senate (MBNA and other credit card companies are big employers in South Dakota). And in part because of his efforts, it has not yet passed an otherwise accommodating Senate.
A practical idealist
Paul Wellstone invited us to dream, but he was not a dreamer. He urged people particularly young people to get involved. He fought ceaselessly about the direction of his party and the country. When Paul considered running for president in 2000, he traveled to Iowa, announcing that he was the candidate of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. He was in open revolt against the money wing, warning that the party could not thrive compromised by the same entrenched interests that fund Republicans. He was a small d democrat, a warrior for democracy. He pushed to get big money out of politics, to limit the ability of lobbyists to curry favor with gifts and trips.
His passion was to build a grassroots politics that would engage those who had lost hope or grown cynical. He worked hard to build a progressive infrastructure that could bring energy into politics. He crossed over to the House and became the only Senator to join the Progressive Caucus. He headed up the Americans for Democratic Action. He helped found the Progressive Majority to help identify, recruit and support the next generation of Paul Wellstones. He worked with 21st century Democrats to put young people into campaigns across the country. Politics, he said, is what we create by what we do, what we hope for, and what we dare to imagine.
In the tributes to his liberalism, many have suggested that he was a throwback, a holdout against a party that was moving more to the center. But in fact, his politics point the way to the partys future, not its past. He understood long before it became a pollsters trite phrase the importance of the kitchen table issues that his constituents talked with him about over coffee in Minnesota. He championed health care, investing in education, the minimum wage, clean air and water, holding CEOs accountable, empowering workers, social security and pension reform. He married the triumphant values of the movements of the 1960s on civil rights, womens rights, the environment with the lunch pail concerns of working and poor people. His politics anticipated the emerging majority for progressive reform that Democrats must learn to speak to.
Paul went out like he came in; with everyone clear about where he stood. Virtually every Democratic Senator and many Republicans expressed reservations about the Presidents rush to war in Iraq. But when the vote came, Paul was the only Senator in a contested race that dared to defy his political consultants and cast a no vote that could hurt him. He simply couldnt go along with a policy that seemed so profoundly wrong-headed on a matter of life and death. And in Minnesota, he rose in the polls after the vote, as if voters once more were rewarding him for standing up what he believed.
For this rumpled warrior, the battle lines were clear. After the Iraq vote, a web-based network developed during the Clinton impeachment battles, sent out an email asking people to help Paul Wellstone and a handful of House candidates in contested races who voted no. In eleven days, they raised over $1 million in small contributions from across the country. People everywhere correctly saw Paul Wellstone as their champion.
That same week, one of the many business fronts operating in this election Americans for Job Security, a group that refuses to announce where its money comes from announced that it would purchase over $1 million in ads to attack Paul Wellstone. The entrenched business interests behind the group understood correctly that he was their nemesis.
I will miss Paul and Sheila their energy, their passion, their commitment, their bedrock decency. I still find it hard to accept that they are gone. Even through my tears, I can see him coming back victorious, charged up to take his passion and his politics across the country. Now well have to do that without him. But with his idealism and his energy, he has shown us just how much is possible.
