Missing Paul for Five Years
Special thanks to Sara for the link to the tribute to the late, great Paul Wellstone who died many years before his time five years ago this weekend. Back on October 25, 2002, I was bursting with excitement about the coming midterm elections only 10 days away. I had become overjoyed that Paul Wellstone was defying conventional wisdom by pulling ahead of challenger Norm Coleman in recent polls, even after voting against the Iraq war resolution, a vote that the Coleman camp expected to ruin him politically. In the week before his death, Wellstone enjoyed leads between six and nine points in major polls after months of deadlocked poll numbers between him and Coleman.
The day that will forever live in infamy was cold and gloomy, but there was no aura of doom in the air as I took off for lunch break that Friday at noon. I talked on the phone with a friend in my apartment right until the lunch hour approached its end. The story had already unfolded, but I was missing it as a result of talking on the phone. It was when I got back into my car and turned the radio on when I heard the devastating news that my political hero had perished, hitting me like a hammer when the radio announcer concluded the report with "Senator Paul Wellstone, dead at 58". I returned to a subdued newspaper office where everybody else had also heard the news. Ironically, I was scheduled to spend the following day riding around in a single-engine plane flown by a local pilot, but obviously opted out of covering that given the state of affairs. I headed back to the hometown early that day, and attended a vigil at the local union hall that evening.
We all know what happened in the next 10 days, with the election night results in Minnesota and nationwide serving as salt on the open wounds of Wellstone fans. Paul Wellstone was a great Senator and a great man taken from us long before he should have. My only solace is that his worldview on both the war in Iraq and the course of domestic policy is slowly being vindicated five years later.
The day that will forever live in infamy was cold and gloomy, but there was no aura of doom in the air as I took off for lunch break that Friday at noon. I talked on the phone with a friend in my apartment right until the lunch hour approached its end. The story had already unfolded, but I was missing it as a result of talking on the phone. It was when I got back into my car and turned the radio on when I heard the devastating news that my political hero had perished, hitting me like a hammer when the radio announcer concluded the report with "Senator Paul Wellstone, dead at 58". I returned to a subdued newspaper office where everybody else had also heard the news. Ironically, I was scheduled to spend the following day riding around in a single-engine plane flown by a local pilot, but obviously opted out of covering that given the state of affairs. I headed back to the hometown early that day, and attended a vigil at the local union hall that evening.
We all know what happened in the next 10 days, with the election night results in Minnesota and nationwide serving as salt on the open wounds of Wellstone fans. Paul Wellstone was a great Senator and a great man taken from us long before he should have. My only solace is that his worldview on both the war in Iraq and the course of domestic policy is slowly being vindicated five years later.
posted by Mark at 7:19 PM
2 Comments:
That was such an awful thing that happened in so many ways. First and foremost, Paul Wellstone was one of the few politicians who refused to sell out his principles in order to stay in office, and that is what got him elected and reelected in the first place. Second is that without that horrible memorial that was spun brilliantly by the right wing spin machine, likely turned what seemed like would be an OK year for Democrats into a pretty awful one.
Fortunately, many of the Democratic House freshmen that were elected in 2006 are very much like Wellstone. Just take a look at folks like John Yarmuth(KY-03), John Hall(NY-19), Carol Shea-Porter(NH-01), Paul Hodes(NH-02), and Jerry McNerney(CA-11). These are all representitives who refuse to sell out their principles even if it means that they will pay a political price for it. The ironic thing is is that if there is a Republican avalanche in 2008, these guys will probably be the ones that survive and your Baron Hill's, Nick Lampson's, and Jim Marshall's will be the ones that are defeated.
I really liked Wellstone too and miss him a lot.
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