Why Paul Wellstone's Legacy Still Holds Up in 2024

How Paul Wellstone's political career still stands the test of time

On October 25th, 2002, Minnesotans woke up anticipating yet another day of a cold, seemingly endless campaign. Ever since the beginning of the year, the state of Minnesota was the site of one of the most hotly contested races of the entire election cycle, that being the U.S. Senate race between incumbent DFL U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone and the former Republican Mayor of St. Paul Norm Coleman. Due to his reputation as a strong, unapologetic liberal in a state that only voted for Democrats by single digits two years prior, there was no chance that the Republicans were ever gonna punt on his race. They pulled out all the stops, from nominating a former Wellstone staffer as their candidate to getting the then-popular president of the United States himself to campaign on behalf of Coleman. The campaign had been hectic, crazy, and intense throughout the entire cycle, and all signs pointed to it staying that way until election day.

However, just a few hours later, tragedy would strike in the small iron-mining city of Eveleth, where at approximately 10:22 am, Paul Wellstone, alongside his wife Sheila, daughter Marcia, and the pilots Richard Conry and Michael Guess, would be killed in a plane crash.

Upon learning of this news, Minnesotans from all across the political spectrum were in utter shock and disbelief. While the passing of any U.S. Senator would be shocking, the death of Wellstone struck a chord with Minnesotans in a way no other politician has done since. Nothing shows this fact better than the image below, which shows Pakou Hang, a Hmong outreach coordinator for the Wellstone campaign, crying in utter disbelief upon learning the news of the plane crash.

Not too long after the plane crash, a new bumper sticker would appear on the back of cars, that being the simple question: What Would Wellstone Do? Because truly, no one in the DFL knew how to move forward. After all, Paul Wellstone was no ordinary U.S. Senator. Throughout his entire career, he was nothing less than a proud champion for a Democratic Party that embraced liberal, progressive goals, describing himself as a “member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party”. This was in stark contrast with most Democratic leaders at the time, most of whom wanted to move the party to the center and concede to the framing of Republican talking points. In the process of moving the party left, he was also able to bring every corner of the state together, using his extraordinary organizing skills to beat back the Republicans twice in a row despite being heavily outspent. While conventional wisdom suggested that he would have blown out before ever getting a breath in, he would defy it every single time, and had he lived past October 25th, would have likely done it a third time. Simply put, there was no other DFL politician who gave the party’s supporters more hope than him. Not only did he know how to fight for progressive goals, he knew how to win with them too, even in tough political environments. It’s why he was beloved while he was alive, and it’s also why Minnesotans were devastated when he passed.

After all of this, it would have been easy to imagine DFL and progressive activists losing any hope in the future and becoming apathetic, plugging out of the process entirely. However, they were determined to uphold Wellstone’s progressive legacy even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and over the last twenty-two years, they have slowly managed to dominate the politics of the state, especially from within the DFL. But what exactly is that legacy? What can we learn from Wellstone’s career? Moreover, what does it say about the current state of politics in 2024?

In this article, I want to answer all of these questions and show how Wellstone’s legacy is just as important today as it was in 1990, 1996, and 2002. Whether it be policy, strategy, or rhetoric, I believe the career of Paul Wellstone serves as an example of how liberals and progressives can succeed, and in the process, shift the overton window back in our favor.

Carleton College

Early on in his Senate career, if there was anything that U.S. Senators in Washington knew about the newly-elected Senator Wellstone, it was that he didn’t follow the traditional rules of decorum. Instead, for the first few months of his tenure, he became infamous among Senators for his strong stances and attitude, particularly when it came to the hot-button issue of the time, that being the 1991 vote on authorization for U.S. involvement in Iraq.

This on its own wasn’t that controversial, at least within the Democratic Party. Most Democrats opposed the resolution, and Wellstone had already been elected on a platform that was opposed to further action in the region. Rather, what set him apart was how he chose to address his concerns, that being in a press conference in front of the Vietnam War Memorial, drawing parallels to the anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s. While this made sense in theory, it ended up outraging many veterans groups, and Wellstone was forced to apologize and, taking advice from Walter Mondale, tone down his aggressive entrance.

While this bombastic start confused many of the entrenched Senators in Washington, it made sense when considering Wellstone’s background. In fact, it was very similar to a past incident he had at his previous line of work, that being as a Carleton College professor. First joining the university in 1969, Wellstone quickly grew a reputation for his political activism, whether it be on local issues like supporting the rural poor in Rice County and criticizing the college’s ties to corporate interests, or national issues like opposition to the Vietnam War and support for civil rights. This activism made him very popular and desired by students, something Wellstone himself would take advantage of, bringing students along for protests he participated in. He seemed much more down to earth than other professors at the institution, something that was reflected in his student-like attire and refusal to publish in academic journals.

Paul Wellstone as a professor

This frightened the administration at Carleton. Much like how Senators would view him decades later, the leadership at Carleton viewed the young professor as a toxic force, a disruptor who simply could not be reasoned with. They knew that not only did he threaten their interests through his work, but he also could turn their students against them. As a result, tension between Wellstone and the higher-ups continued to grow, until it finally came to a head three years later when Wellstone was finally fired from his post for his activism. Initially, it looked like the administration had finally eliminated one of its biggest threats.

However, it soon became very clear that Wellstone and his students would not go down without a fight. Immediately, successors to Wellstone’s job protested on his behalf, students held a sit-in to get him back, and Wellstone himself soon joined the protests. Eventually, these protests became too large for the administration to ignore, and they were soon forced to reinstate Wellstone, giving him back everything he had previously held at his job.

In my view, this is the best example of Wellstone using a lesson he held throughout his entire life, that being the power of activism and organizing. To Wellstone, activism was inseparable from politics, and work within it could not be solely restricted to traditional means. This is because in traditional structures, what’s considered possible and up for debate is often not where it should be, and to change that, outside actors must enact pressure to shift the debate back in favor of what is right and just. The firing of Wellstone initially wasn’t up for debate, but thanks to public pressure, it came back into the discussion, ultimately saving his job and in the process, his future political career. This would also extend to his advocacy for other important issues like universal healthcare and campaign finance reform. As the left seeks to grow its power within the DFL and Democratic Party broadly, I think it’s important we use this story as an example of how to push for those goals.

The Definition of Politics

As I said previously, Wellstone’s first year as a U.S. Senator was somewhat tumultuous. His activist mindset, which he had held for over thirty years at that point, just wasn’t working in this new job environment. While it made him a lot more appealing as a professor and worked wonders in his 1990 campaign, people were now expecting a legislative worker, someone who was willing to cross the aisle to get things done. His initial introduction made doing that job considerably more difficult, with one fellow Democratic Senator Fritz Hollings describing this issue best in a conversation he had with Wellstone, where he told the freshman Senator “You remind me of Hubert Humphrey. You talk too much.”

However, as he began to settle into his new role, and thanks to some advice from Walter Mondale, Wellstone would adapt to his new position. While he would never shed his passion for “happy-warrior” activism or his liberal politics, he understood the need to keep things in perspective when it came to working on the inside. The Senate was not the kind of place where everything was possible, nor was the political environment particularly forgiving to liberals. After enduring three national losses in a row to right-wing conservative Republicans, national Democrats were desperate to break the streak and were willing to compromise much of their agenda in order to make it happen. That desperation culminated in the nomination, and eventual election, of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, a charismatic southern baby boomer who ran on a centrist platform of “ending welfare as we know it”, embraced Republican rhetoric on crime, and strayed away from discussing issues regarding race.

For a staunch liberal like Wellstone, navigating through the presidency of Bill Clinton was a difficult balancing act. Given that they shared parties and both had to deal with the conservative political environment of the 1990s, Wellstone couldn’t completely break from the president, especially if he was looking to use his political influence from within the party. However, he also couldn’t completely align with the president either, as it would risk alienating his progressive base and killing off the momentum he had in 1990, which was the main reason why he was able to win as a staunch liberal in the first place. It was never gonna be easy, and had it gone poorly, it could have either doomed him to an easy defeat in 1996, or leave behind a legacy of being a total sellout to centrist forces.

But at the end of the day, I believe he handled this period admirably, albeit with one visible stain I’d like to mention, that being his vote in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which banned recognition of gay marriage on the federal level. This vote was very controversial among progressive and LGBTQ+ circles, which forced Wellstone to re-evaluate his position, eventually concluding that he was in the wrong and apologizing to the LGBTQ+ community. For many in the LGBTQ+ community, it’s difficult to look at Wellstone favorably because of this vote, which is entirely understandable and reasonable. On a personal level, it is disappointing to know that someone like Wellstone voted for a bill that would have made my life harder as a bisexual man. But this kind of open, personal evolution was rarely seen in politics, much less over an issue as unpopular as gay marriage, so I think there’s much more to it than meets the eye.

Outside of that blunder, Wellstone would do a great job at keeping the liberal message alive in the halls of the U.S. Senate where it mattered. This could be seen in two major bills, those being the 1994 Crime Bill and the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. In the first case, Wellstone would approach the issue the same way then-Representative Bernie Sanders did, that is using the political moment to get his priorities signed into law. In particular, he and his wife Sheila held an interest in dealing with domestic violence against women, which culminated in the passing of the Violence Against Women Act, a bill that Wellstone co-sponsored and got passed thanks to Sheila organizing women to support it. In the second case, well aware that the new Republican congress wouldn’t give him an inch of influence over the bill, Wellstone would express staunch opposition to welfare reform, making a clear-cut case in favor of welfare in a time when almost no Democrat wanted to come across as protecting “freeloaders”. In both instances, Wellstone knew when and how to make the liberal case, and in the process, keep his wing of the party alive and make progress when possible.

Beyond that, however, Wellstone also worked across the aisle on important issues whenever it was possible. In 1996, Wellstone would work with Republican Senator Pete Domenici to address the issue of mental health, something that Wellstone’s brother had struggled with. At the time, mental health was usually ignored and pooh-poohed. If insurance companies even bothered to cover it at all, the financial limits of spending they would pay for it were much smaller than other kinds of medical care, meaning that access to mental healthcare was difficult to come by. This problem would be eliminated in the bill that Wellstone and Domenici passed, a significant piece of progress in the fight for mental healthcare. In 2000, Wellstone would work with his fellow Minnesotan and Republican colleague Rod Grams to address the growing influx of Hmong legal refugees into the state. At the time, most Hmong refugees had difficulty becoming U.S. citizens, as most of them were still dealing with war trauma and didn’t know how to speak English. As a result, most Hmong people in Minnesota, most of whom were lower-income, couldn’t take advantage of the social services that helped others in the state get out of the cycle of poverty. The bill that the two would get passed, that being the Hmong Veterans’ Naturalization Act, would get rid of most of the requirements typically given to refugees, allowing thousands of Hmong people to become citizens and remain in Minnesota. Finally, in 2002, he would work with Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Russ Feingold on their bipartisan campaign finance reform bill, something he had been an advocate for since his first Senate campaign. In particular, he wanted to close what he saw as a major loophole in the bill, that is the protection of “advocacy” groups that would serve as a roundabout way for special interests to run ads close to election day. This loophole was closed via the Wellstone Amendment, which made it so they could only use money raised under strict “hard money” limits. While many argued that this would serve as a poison pill and kill off the project entirely, it would end up staying in and the bill was signed, Wellstone amendment and all.

Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici, 1996

What all of this shows is that he may have been a passionate liberal, but he was also willing to settle down and do the hard work when it was necessary. He understood the importance of activism, and would even sometimes engage with it as a U.S. Senator. But he also understood the importance of politics and working within the system too, as he believed that it was the vehicle to make what was considered possible, well, possible. It was a very important tool, one that could be used to make a big difference. As he would define it:

“Politics is not about big money or power games; it's about the improvement of people's lives” - Paul Wellstone

Where is Rudy Boschwitz?

As of now, we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the various ways in which Wellstone made a big impact on the U.S. Senate and the progressive movement broadly. In a time when his party wanted to shift right whenever possible, his voice was indispensable and incredibly valuable. Had he not been there, the DFL and Democratic Party would likely have been much worse off for it, so I think it’s important to mention one fact about his Senate career: None of this was ever supposed to happen.

When he first announced his 1990 Senate campaign, absolutely no one in the press or political world was taking it seriously. Not only was he a staunch liberal during an era of conservative dominance, not only was he running in a political environment that (mostly) wanted to keep the status quo, not only did he already lose a campaign for State Auditor in 1982, but he was also going up against incumbent Republican Senator Rudy Boschwitz, a popular, well-funded incumbent who no one else in the DFL was ever seriously considering challenging. Wellstone had everything going against him in this election, and early polls showed him down by as much as 30 points and severely underfunded. At this point, most candidates would have just given up the race entirely, dooming themselves to be nothing more than a sacrificial lamb remembered by no one other than election nerds.

Wellstone, however, was not like most other candidates. He was determined to win, and he knew that Boschwitz, while very strong, was by no means invincible. While he was popular, Boschwitz had also become harder to get in contact with by his constituents, and while he won his first election in 1978 as a moderate, he had voted and acted as a loyal Republican. If there was any way that Wellstone was going to beat Boschwitz, he would have to hammer home the point that Boschwitz, thanks to his bucketloads of cash and complacency, had lost touch with Minnesotans.

And in his most popular ad of the cycle, that’s exactly what he did.

The mini-documentary, simply titled “Looking for Rudy”, features Wellstone walking into Boschwitz’s many offices, each time trying to get ahold of the Senator to set up a debate between them. This goal was never achieved, representing how Boschwitz was unwilling to take the concerns of Minnesotans seriously because he just didn’t care anymore. Since Wellstone didn’t have much money and a 2-minute ad was very difficult to keep on the air, the ad would only appear once. As it turned out, this was more than enough, scoring tons of attention for Wellstone and even earning comparisons to the famous “Daisy” ad from the 1964 election. It was funny, understood the moment, and made Wellstone look like an underdog fighter for the people.

As the campaign progressed, attacks like these would continue, and by extension, Boschwitz’s massive lead would slowly begin to crumble. Wellstone’s green campaign bus, once ignored for its malfunctions, became a famous symbol throughout the entire state, with those driving by even sometimes offering to help assist Wellstone in fixing the bus when it did break down. The Republicans, after ignoring the race for months, were suddenly being forced to pump millions of dollars into the race, doing whatever they could to stop Wellstone’s momentum. Ultimately, they would doom themselves days before the election, where in an infamous letter, Boschwitz’s campaign would get some of its supporters to insinuate that Wellstone was a fake Jew. This, alongside the ongoing nominating crisis for the Governor’s race on the same ballot, would ultimately doom Boschwitz’s last-minute campaign, and on election day, Wellstone would defeat Boschwitz by a 3% margin, making it the only Senate seat to change hands in the entire cycle.

Granted, much of Wellstone’s win can be attributed to the fact that the Republicans simply did not take the race seriously, and even when they did, ran a bafflingly bad campaign that played into everything that voters had begun to hate about them. But it also cannot be understated just how much ground Wellstone had made up. After all, there’s a reason why the Republicans had to start trying and act like he wasn’t a real Jew. Over the course of just a few months, he turned a race where he was down by landslide margins into a horserace contest where he was setting the narrative on his own terms. The fact that he was able to do all of this as little more than a progressive college professor with some organizing experience is spectacularly impressive. No one, perhaps not even himself at some points, thought he could do it. Following conventional wisdom, there is no reason he should have been able to do it. But he did it anyway because he actually knew what the race was about and tried to make a real play for it.

As the Democratic Party tries to strike the balance between candidates who are both committed to basic party principles and are electable, I think Wellstone’s story is an important one to remember when trying to figure out who fits the bill.

The Legacy of Paul Wellstone

On November 5, 2002, 11 days after Wellstone was killed in the plane crash, the DFL would suffer a significant defeat at the polls. Thanks to backlash from what was perceived as the politicization of Wellstone’s funeral, as well as the Republican-leaning environment present in 2002, the DFL would not only lose the Senate race to Norm Coleman, but they would also fail to flip the governorship, State House, State Auditorship, Secretary of State, and lost seats in the State Senate. When all was said and done, the result was the Minnesota GOP winning its largest victory since the famous “Minnesota Massacre” of 1978, and it left the DFL in utter disarray.

It would have been easy for the party to give up after this. Where do you even go after this? Not only did the party lose its most passionate liberal advocate, but it lost most of its other statewide elected officials too. Besides, the Iraq War was just starting, which caused the approval rating of George W. Bush to spike back up into the 70s. At first glance, it looked like there was nowhere to go but down.

But if Wellstone had taught the DFL anything throughout his long career, it’s that you should never assume anything is set and stone. It was something he proved in 1990, and the DFL’s supporters were ready to follow his lead.

The party immediately got to work repairing its image, making it a goal to make sure that George W. Bush did not carry the state in 2004. On top of this, they ramped up their efforts in the State House, doing everything they could to weaken the newly elected Republican governor Tim Pawlenty. It wasn’t easy and the result wasn’t perfect, but when election day came, it was clear that their work had made a massive impact. Not only did George W. Bush lose the state by a larger margin than in his first election, but the DFL would come extremely close to flipping back the State House, putting them in a prime position ahead of the 2006 election.

From there, the sky was the limit. In 2006, the party would expand its majority in the State Senate, flip the State House, and take over every single statewide office except for Governor. In 2008, Barack Obama would carry the state by double digits and the DFL would defeat Coleman in his re-election bid, officially putting Wellstone’s seat back into DFL hands. In 2010, while they would lose some influence thanks to the national red wave, they would hold onto every single statewide office and flip the governorship, thereby preventing a Republican trifecta and still leaving them alive and well. This pattern would continue on for another twelve years, until liberals would finally win a majority of their own in 2022, flipping the State Senate and holding onto all their previously held power. While the DFL had held many trifectas before, this new trifecta was on track to be the most progressive one in state history, a major achievement for Wellstone’s faction of the party.

I could keep going on, but I think you get the idea. The 2002 loss was massive and a major setback, but it was also not the end of the road. While liberals didn’t have a domineering figure like Wellstone to look up to anymore, they still had his wisdom and lessons to work off of going forward, which helped them recover the party from the lowest depths it had fallen into. Just like Wellstone himself in 1990, they didn’t give up even in the face of seemingly impossible odds, and while progress was slow, it eventually all came to fruition, making the DFL one of the most progressive and effective state parties in the nation.

The accomplishments that this wing of the party has seen, whether it be electoral or political, are not guaranteed to stick around. While the DFL has been extraordinarily successful since 2002, it’s also true that their dominance won’t last forever. Minnesota is not the safest blue state, and as people get tired of the party in charge, the demand for change will naturally come about. When this will actually happen is still up in the air, but thanks to Wellstone’s legacy, I have faith that not only will the DFL recover from any future downfall, but stick by their ideological principles too.

That’s the legacy of Paul Wellstone, a passionate and pragmatic fighter who knew how to navigate politics and activism better than almost anyone else in his time. It didn’t matter how big or small the problem was, Wellstone would do whatever it took to get it done, whether it be through passionate activism or cautious dealmaking. Balancing those two principles is not easy, nor is it always satisfying, but its the approach that gives the most credibility to liberal and progressive ideals.

As the Democratic Party looks to replicate the success that the DFL has seen in the last decade, it would be best for them to start looking closer at the career of Minnesota’s fastest Paul.