Five years ago today, a plane crashed in northern Minnesota. Paul Wellstone, his wife Sheila, and their daughter Marcia tragically lost their lives.
It’s a day of special poignancy for our family. My daughter Sara was in Minnesota working for the Wellstone campaign.
I didn’t always always agree with Paul Wellstone (heck, I’m not sure PAUL even agreed with all his own votes.) But I learned some powerful lessons from him:
1. You can’t separate your life from your politics. “Never separate the life you live from the words you speak,” he said.
2. Sometimes you have to make the tough votes. Paul was locked in a difficult re-election campaign when he cast a vote against the war in Iraq. People said it would destroy his political viability. Just the opposite was true.
3. He never forgot who elected him. As Garrison Keillor said, “Paul Wellstone identified passionately with people at the bottom, people in trouble, people in the rough. He was an old-fashioned Democrat who felt more at home with the rank and file than with the rich and famous.”
4. You can build bridges with people who don’t agree with you. As part of his work on what has become known as the Paul Wellstone Mental Health Act, Paul learned that Sen. Pete Domenici also had a family member who had struggled with mental illness. The two of them, who agreed on very little else, teamed up to press for expanded coverage for mental health. (Note to those in Congress: Now would be a good time to pass that bill.)
UPDATE: The New York Times tells the story of a time when Wellstone called Domenici’s office. An aide asked what the call was about. Wellstone answered, “Mental health! What the hell else do we agree on?”
5. You can’t work for any change if you can’t get elected. Paul Wellstone was a master of the nuts-and-bolts of politics. Sen. Amy Klobuchar says he even taught her which bus routes in Minneapolis had the most riders. From the famous Paul Wellstone green bus to his intensive focus on Get Out the Vote efforts, Paul knew that winning elections is hard work.
He was filled with boundless optimism, good humor, and a sense that politics could really be about things that matter. We need more of that.