We Need a Wellstone!

Um, make that Wellstones, and lots of ’em.

Quote from a best left unnamed “DFL strategist” in MPR News today: “The DFL formula today is you dominate inside the (Twin Cities) beltway, and then you do extremely well, in what I call what college towns” Paul Wellstone blew off that “strategy” and pretty much tore up the whole current Democratic Party playbook when he won a U.S. Senate seat in 1990 from a republican incumbent who outspent him five to one. Then to prove it was no fluke he won re-election in 1996 and was on his way to another win in 2002 when he was taken from us all too soon.

Paul Wellstone’s activism went far beyond the “beltway” and “college towns”- Before he served us in the Senate he fought rural poverty in Rice County, Minnesota. He was arrested while trying to stop a farm foreclosure at a Paynesville, Minnesota bank. Then big business outsiders took over rural electric co-ops and plotted to build a high power line to bring electricity from dirty North Dakota coal mines far beyond the rural co-ops to the big cities of Minneapolis and St.Paul. Paul Wellstone joined farmers, many of them founding members of those rural electric co-ops, in fighting a power line that offered them nothing but ugly obstacles to farm around and potential bankruptcy for the rural electric co-ops they created.

Then Paul Wellstone got elected Senator ’cause the Democratic Party thought the race was hopeless. Listen up, newbie “progressives”- Paul won and won again because he didn’t throw whole groups of individuals “under the bus” like cops for the crimes of a few. Some veterans were reluctant to support Vietnam War protester Paul Wellstone, but he won them over with great constituent service because he didn’t blame the war on the reluctant warriors. In the Senate he continued his advocacy for farmers and rural folks, and unlike too many Democratic candidates today he won by larger margins in rural Minnesota in his second race.

Our democratic FARMER-LABOR party’s roots are as much in rural Minnesota as the metro, if not more. Ignore the 40% of Minnesota that is rural and you will create a republican voting block that will make Democrats a permanent minority party.

And newbie progressives, be like Paul…