Wellstone

I was an intern on the Paul Wellstone Campaign in 2002. At the time I was a new mother, working full time and trying to finish my college degree. I was so lucky to work for a Senator like Paul, who didn't always do the popular thing, but always did the right thing. Along with everyone else who worked on that campaign and his constituents, you always knew where he stood. I ...

There is not a s single day that goes by when I do not think of Paul Wellstone. My name is Larry Smith, a public school educator who, like Paul, I battle Multiple Sclerosis. I am the son of 4 generations of coal miners in this nestle of Appalachia in Western Maryland. Although I never met Paul Wellstone in person, like many Americans, I feel as though he knew me. When he ...

When I was 9 I went into the voting booth with my mom, at the time a Republican. I noticed that she had voted for someone who was on the Democrat part of the ballot. I thought she had made a mistake. She told me that while Paul Wellstone was a Democrat he was the person she agreed with because he stood for what he believed in and supported the people in Minnesota. I was 15 ...

I did not meet Paula or Sheila, but remember the green and white bus in my south Minneapolis neighborhood, the north side of Minneapolis, and Maplewood where I worked prior to departing Minnesota in 1989. I was impressed with how Paul appealed to so many people on multiple levels. I moved to NY, and watched Minnesota politics from there for many years. I admired what Paul ...

Paul never lost touch with regular people. He always remembered the names of our children and asked how they were doing. It wasn't a formality. He deeply cared about our families and knew that he had a responsibility to work for bettering regular people's lives. Paul rarely took vacations. One year, a family vacation was planned on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Paul ...

Paul recognized that no politics can serve the needs of justice without great hope. And as a leader, he recognized that we needed strategies for hope; coupled with a vision that extends to the far neighbor as well as the near, and that recognizes much of our work will be realized only in the fullness of time, and perhaps by others.

Ten years after the tragic deaths of ...

In 1994, I came to Washington as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow. After an incredible 10 week orientation, meeting with the luminaries of health policy, and living through the 1994 elections and flip of the Congress to the Republicans, I began my quest to find an office in which to work for the remainder of the year. I interviewed with all of the Democrats on ...

I worked on the '96 reelection campaign as the statewide college campus coordinator, traveling all around the state in to start up Students for Wellstone groups and to register new student voters. That's me in the middle of the attached photo, holding my Wellstone sign high! What a bunch of crazy kids we were back then. I always relished the opportunities I had to travel ...