It is somehow fitting that the anniversary of Paul Wellstone's death will always fall near election day. When his plane went down he was twelve days from winning a very difficult race for a third term in the U.S. Senate. What a victory it was to have been. Wellstone was bucking all the trends in 2002. He was an outspoken progressive, running against the hand-picked candidate of Karl Rove and the Bush White House. He was winning in a year when Democrats were pounded across the country. He boldly stood up for what he believed in a year when Democrats struggled to find their voice. He mobilized hundreds of thousands of people through his campaign organization in a year when Republicans did better than Democrats on the ground in many states.
Winning tough, statewide elections is part of Paul Wellstone's legacy. He succeeded in politics because he drew heavily from his days as a community organizer, combining ongoing organizing with large-scale grassroots electoral work. All the while, he was pushing a bold progressive agenda in the United States Senate. Wellstone's is a model for progressives who are serious about winning in the future.
It won't just be once a year that the Wellstone approach is remembered. It now lives on through the Camp Wellstone political training program coming to a city near you in 2004. More about the Camps in a moment.
How did he win elections, even in the toughest of political environments? There are at least three factors that contributed including:
Harnessing the power of a highly energized base. Wellstone invested seriously in his field organization, and his highly proficient grassroots campaigns turned him into a progressive who could win. His campaigns were run and won on the notion that you first energize a large base and connect deep down in communities, then turn that support into a working organization as you go out and move enough undecided voters to win an election. Wellstone figured out the ways to engage huge numbers of people to propel his campaigns (17,000 active volunteers in 2002). This army of volunteers moved undecided voters in Paul's direction with multiple direct contacts at the doorstep and on the phone. In addition to the worker, environmental and other liberal constituencies, his base went very deep with more disenfranchised groups like youth, immigrant communities and communities of color. Many give lip service to this way of campaigning, but few do it right.
Close Connection to Communities. At his core, Paul Wellstone was a community organizer, having spent decades working on civil rights and poor people's movements. His background in organizing gave him an appreciation of the mutual power that is built when leaders stay engaged and grounded in people, communities and their organizations. As senator, he spent as much time helping organizing efforts as he did legislating, and understood the direct linkages between the two. Wellstone believed that part of his job was to draw attention to the good work of his allies. He lent his time and energy to union organizing drives, ran strategy sessions with mental health advocacy groups, helped families connected through afflictions like Parkinsons and MS to organize themselves into a force. He helped nurture long-term organizing and activism that did not come and go with election cycles but in the end helped him win elections and be an effective U.S. Senator.
Winning votes with the courage of conviction. Paul Wellstone pushed a bold progressive agenda as Senator, all the while maintaining majority support in his state. A big reason: Minnesotans awarded him for his authenticity. He was clear about where he stood and for what he believed, and then he let the chips fall as they would. It turned out that some voters prefer elected officials who speak their minds than ones they agree with on every issue. And for his base, Wellstone's conviction politics elicited the passion and excitement that fueled his campaign organization. The best illustration of this was Wellstone's vote against Bush's Iraq war, one month before the 2002 election. But there are other examples such as his vote against Clinton's welfare reform bill late in the 1996 reelection campaign, or his being only one of three in the U.S. Senate to vote against aid to Colombia. Progressives will do better when our candidates and leaders understand that communicating and acting on what you believe can often be more important than the position itself.
These three elements-grassroots campaigns, supporting community organizing, and progressive leaders operating with conviction is the Wellstone way. It's also a model that can be applied by others.
This is where the Camp Wellstone political training program comes in. The idea is to blend together the concepts of community organizing, large-scale grassroots campaigns and progressive leadership, along with intensive training in the nuts and bolts of effective political work. The weekend long session, put on by Wellstone Action, the non-profit, non-partisan group set up by sons Mark and David Wellstone, runs in three tracks: working on a campaign, organizing and activism, and being a candidate. This track strategy reflects the Wellstone belief that people working on electoral campaigns and community organizers can learn much from each other. In addition you need candidates and office-holders that practice a style of leadership and campaigning that enhances community-building and broadens the base for larger change.
Camp Wellstone travels to cities where this kind of organizing can make a difference. Wellstone Action will team up with like-minded organizations to put on several camps a month in key states in 2004 and beyond. The camps will help thousands of people around the country hone their political skills, run good campaigns in their communities, build stronger organizations and run confidently for office.
Paul Wellstone wrote in his book Conscience of a Liberal about the critical ingredients for effective political activism: "...good ideas and public policy, so that your activism has direction; grassroots organizing, so that there is a constituency to fight for the change; and electoral politics, since it is one of the ways people feel most comfortable deciding about power in our country." Wellstone practiced what he preached, and ended up making a difference in the lives of many by building progressive power. Above all, Paul Wellstone would want others to keep learning how to help make the progressive movement more capable, strategic and successful. The best tributes to Wellstone will not come at the end of October every year, but every time progressives embrace his legacy of organizing, advocacy, and winning elections.
Jeff Blodgett is Executive Director of Wellstone Action and ran his 1990, 1996, and 2002 campaigns for U.S. Senate. Find out more about Wellstone Action at www.wellstone.org.