Paul Wellstone, the passionate liberal Democratic Senator from Minnesota, died when the small plane in which he was traveling crashed in bad weather Oct. 25. Also killed were his wife, daughter, three staff members, and the pilots. Wellstone had broken off campaigning for reelection to fly to the funeral of a supporter.
The former college professor, 58, had never held elective office when he upset incumbent Republican Rudy Boschwitz in 1990, despite being outspent 7 to 1. In February he announced that he had multiple sclerosis.
He never flagged in his support of liberal issues and was considered by some to be the most liberal member of the Senate. Over the years he learned to separate the personal from the political in the Senate. He came to appreciate the heartfelt convictions of conservative Senators such as Jesse Helms and was able to build cordial and often personal relationships across ideological chasms.
Wellstone was a solid supporter of gay issues, garnering near consistent 100 percent supportive ratings from the Human Rights Campaign ( HRC ) over the last several sessions of Congress, though he did vote to allow states to ban gays from marrying.
In Senate debate in 1996, Wellstone called the Employment Nondiscrimination Act ( ENDA ) "a matter of simple justice ... . It is not right that a man or a woman, because of sexual orientation, should be in a situation where he or she cold lose a job or not be able to obtain employment because of their sexual orientation. This is a basic civil right."
"America has lost a powerful eloquent and passionate voice for fairness," said HRC Executive Director Elizabeth Birch.
"Paul Wellstone was both a friend and a champion of the gay community," said Chad Johnson, executive director of National Stonewall Democrats, expressing appreciation for the Senator's "strong support for human rights."
Wellstone was locked in a tight reelection race but appeared to have pulled ahead in the last few weeks. Minnesota law allows the state Democratic Party to name a successor to the ballot in this instance. It is expected that former Senator and Vice President Walter Mondale will accept the Party's request to run.
Still, the law does not allow for those who have already received absentee ballots to vote for the newly named candidate unless they show up to vote in person. That is likely to reduce the normal Democratic vote total by several thousand, perhaps tens of thousands of votes in that race. The provision may face legal challenge.
Whoever is elected is likely to be sworn in immediately to fill the vacancy. That could effect the Democrats' one-vote control of the Senate, not simply for the next two years but also during the lame-duck session that begins in mid-November.
The close Senate race in Missouri holds similar uncertainty. Democratic candidate Gov. Mel Carnahan and his son died in a small plane crash in the closing weeks of the 2000 campaign, but his name remained on the ballot and he eked out a posthumous victory. His widow Jean was appointed to the seat and is running this year to fill out the remainder of the term. Should the Republican win, he will immediately be sworn into office.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois joined his colleagues in mourning Wellstone's loss, saying that all of the people who could not afford expensive lobbyists in D.C. have lost a voice.
"I first met Sen. Wellstone back in 1993 or 1994 when he came to Chicago to speak at the annual dinner for IMPACT, a gay political group based in Chicago," said Chicagoan Michael Bauer. "His speech at that event is one I will always remember--here, I thought, is an old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone elected official who clearly and naturally understood the gay community and our fight for equal rights.
"The only disagreement he and I ever had was in the midst of his 1996 reelection campaign when I co-hosted a fundraising breakfast for him in Chicago. This was shortly before the Senate was scheduled to vote of the Defense of Marriage Act ... . I pleaded with him to vote his conscience and oppose the bill--as he explained at breakfast that morning, he saw his choices as either voting for the bill and being reelected to the Senate where he could continue to be a strong voice for gay rights or vote against the bill and most likely be defeated for reelection. He ended up voting for DOMA and years later sent me an excerpt from a book of his in which he stated that it was a vote he regretted. He followed up with a telephone call in which he told me that, when he cast his vote on DOMA, he had failed to vote his conscience and he was forever sorry.
"As a result, when he had a tough vote to cast this year on the Iraq resolution, I was not surprised at all when he voted his conscience to oppose the resolution. So many of us were so enamored with him because of his conscience and his strong desire to do what was right rather what was politically expedient. He will be deeply missed by all who were ever fortunate enough to interact with him," Bauer said.
