Paul David Wellstone (July 21, 1944 – October 25, 2002) was an American academic, author, and politician. He represented Minnesota in the United States Senate from 1991 until he was killed in a plane crash near Eveleth, Minnesota, in 2002, sixteen days before that year's election for the seat. A member of the Democratic Party (DFL), Wellstone was a leader of the populist and progressive wings of the party.
Born in Washington, D.C., Wellstone grew up in Northern Virginia. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning a Bachelor's of Arts and a doctorate in political science. In 1969, Wellstone was hired as a professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He taught there until his election to the Senate in 1990. In addition, he also worked as a local activist and community organizer in rural Rice County. In 1982, he made his first bid for political office in the Minnesota State Auditor race, losing to Republican incumbent Arne Carlson.
Wellstone challenged two-term Republican incumbent Rudy Boschwitz in the 1990 United States Senate election. Wellstone was widely seen as an underdog and was significantly outspent by Boschwitz. Using his progressive populism and grassroots campaigning tactics, such as his iconic green school bus, Wellstone won in an upset victory that gained him national attention. He was the only challenger in the country that year to defeat an incumbent senator. In his 1996 reelection campaign, he defeated Boschwitz in a rematch. He won the elections with 50.4% and 50.3% of the vote, respectively.
While in the U.S. Senate, Wellstone was a supporter of environmental protection, labor groups, and health care reform. He notably authored the "Wellstone Amendment" for the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. However, his efforts toward campaign finance reform were overturned in 2010 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Wellstone was a candidate for reelection to the Senate in 2002 and faced former Saint Paul mayor Norm Coleman in a competitive race. Ten days before the election, Wellstone died in a plane crash near Eveleth, Minnesota. His wife, Sheila, and daughter, Marcia, also died on board. After his death, Wellstone was replaced as the DFL nominee by former Vice President Walter Mondale, who lost to Coleman.
Wellstone's sons, David and Mark, were not on the flight. In their parents' honor, they founded and until 2018 co-chaired Wellstone Action, a nonprofit organization that trains progressive organizers.
Wellstone was born in Washington, D.C., the second son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants Leon and Minnie Wellstone. They met and married in the United States. Their first son, Stephen, was born in 1936. Leon changed the family surname from Wexelstein after encountering severe antisemitism while living and working in Boston during the 1930s. The parents no longer practiced formal Judaism but raised Paul to understand the search for justice as the heart of their faith. Raised in Arlington, Virginia, Wellstone attended public schools. A gifted student, he had difficulty as a teenager in years after his brother suffered a breakdown and had to be hospitalized for a period. Wellstone found new focus and success when he became involved in wrestling. He attended Wakefield High School and Yorktown High School, graduating in 1962.
Wellstone attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) on a wrestling scholarship. In college he was an undefeated Atlantic Coast Conference wrestling champion. He graduated a year early with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1965, and was elected Phi Beta Kappa. In May 1969, Wellstone earned a PhD in political science from UNC. His doctoral dissertation on the roots of black militancy was titled Black Militants in the Ghetto: Why They Believe in Violence.
In 1963, after his freshman year, Wellstone married Sheila Ison. They had dated since high school but went to different colleges. She left the University of Kentucky and worked at UNC to support them while he pursued an accelerated schedule.
They had three children together: David, Mark, and Marcia.
In August 1969, Wellstone accepted a tenure-track position at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He taught political science until his election to the United States Senate in 1990.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Wellstone began community organizing with the working poor and other politically disenfranchised communities. He founded the Organization for a Better Rice County, a group consisting mainly of single parents on welfare. The organization advocated for public housing, affordable health care, improved public education, free school lunches, and a publicly funded daycare center. In 1978, Wellstone published his first book, How the Rural Poor Got Power: Narrative of a Grassroots Organizer, chronicling his work with the organization.
Wellstone was arrested twice during this period for civil disobedience. The Federal Bureau of Investigation began a case file on him after his May 1970 arrest for protesting the Vietnam War at the Federal Office Building in Minneapolis. In 1984 Wellstone was arrested again, for trespassing during a foreclosure protest at a bank.
Wellstone extended his activism to the Minnesota labor movement. In the summer of 1985, he walked the picket line with striking P-9ers during a labor dispute at the Hormel Meat Packing plant in Austin, Minnesota. The Minnesota National Guard was called in during the strike to ensure that Hormel could hire permanent replacement workers.
Carleton College's trustees briefly fired Wellstone in the mid-1970s for his activism and lack of academic publications. He received widespread support from students, and some held a sit-in. Wellstone formally challenged the trustees' failure to follow process of review. He gained an assessment by outside professors, who highly praised his teaching, organizing, and work. The trustees then rehired him and gave him tenure a year ahead of the standard schedule. Wellstone remains the youngest tenured faculty member in Carleton's history.
Wellstone first sought public office in 1982. He received the Democratic nomination for Minnesota State Auditor after an impassioned speech at the state convention. In the general election he received 45% of the vote, losing to Republican incumbent, and future Minnesota governor, Arne Carlson. Wellstone remained active in Democratic politics in the mid-1980s. He served as an elected committeeman for the Democratic National Committee in 1984, and in 1986 began a second campaign for State Auditor before dropping out to tend his mother's failing health. In 1988, Wellstone chaired Jesse Jackson's campaign for the presidency in Minnesota. After the primary, he co-chaired Michael Dukakis's campaign in the state.
U.S. Senate campaigns (1990–2002)
In 1990, Wellstone ran for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Rudy Boschwitz, beginning the race as a serious underdog. He narrowly won the election despite being outspent 7 to 1. Wellstone played off his underdog image with quirky, humorous ads created by political consultant Bill Hillsman, including "Fast Paul" and "Looking for Rudy", a pastiche of the 1989 Michael Moore documentary Roger & Me. Boschwitz was hurt by a letter his supporters wrote, on campaign stationery, to members of the Minnesota Jewish community days before the election, accusing Wellstone of being a "bad Jew" for marrying a Gentile and not raising his children in the Jewish faith. (Boschwitz, like Wellstone, is Jewish.) Wellstone's reply, widely broadcast on Minnesota television, was "He has a problem with Christians, then." Boschwitz was the only incumbent U.S. senator not to be reelected that year.