Ten years ago today, we lost one of the most prin­ci­pled and coura­geous pro­gres­sive lead­ers who ever served our coun­try in Con­gress: Paul Well­stone of Min­neso­ta.

Sen­a­tor Well­stone, his wife Sheila, daugh­ter Mar­cia, and three cam­paign aides were killed when the plane they had char­tered to fly to Eveleth for a funer­al crashed short­ly after take­off, leav­ing no sur­vivors. The tragedy end­ed Sen­a­tor Well­stone’s life and his reelec­tion cam­paign, but not his spir­it or good works.

Today, we pause to remem­ber the Well­stones and cel­e­brate their legacy.

Paul Well­stone was thought of by many pro­gres­sives as the con­science of the Sen­ate for a rea­son. He was not an oppor­tunist or a tool of the Belt­way estab­lish­ment, like so many oth­er politi­cians. He was pro­gres­sive pop­ulist who believed that peo­ple and plan­et should come first. “My def­i­n­i­tion of com­mu­ni­ty is we all do bet­ter when we all do bet­ter,” Well­stone once said in a speech to stu­dents grad­u­at­ing from Chisholm High School.

Well­stone was an authen­tic prag­ma­tist: he rec­og­nized and appre­ci­at­ed the true mean­ing of pol­i­tics. He was nev­er con­fused about why he was involved. As he put it: “Pol­i­tics is not about pow­er. Pol­i­tics is not about mon­ey. Pol­i­tics is not about win­ning for the sake of win­ning. Pol­i­tics is about the improve­ment of people’s lives.”

Dur­ing his time in the U.S. Sen­ate, Well­stone took many tough, coura­geous votes. He vot­ed against the repeal of the Glass-Stea­gall Act in 1999 (he was only one of eight sen­a­tors to do so) and against the res­o­lu­tion autho­riz­ing George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2002. In 1996, while run­ning for reelec­tion, he vot­ed against Bill Clin­ton’s scheme to over­haul wel­fare. He was a sen­a­tor who lis­tened to his con­stituents and allowed his moral com­pass to guide his deci­sion making.

Sen­a­tor Well­stone won his first cam­paign in 1990. Using his grass­roots orga­niz­ing skills, he built a strong and effec­tive cam­paign orga­ni­za­tion that gal­va­nized peo­ple all over Min­neso­ta. He was the only Demo­c­rat that year to unseat a Repub­li­can incum­bent (Rudy Boschwitz). In 1996, Boschwitz chal­lenged him to a rematch, but Well­stone won again, thanks to his peo­ple-pow­ered campaign.

Sen­a­tor Well­stone is no longer with us, but his sons Mark and David, along with for­mer cam­paign staff, have kept his lega­cy alive through Well­stone Action, a non­prof­it that trains pro­gres­sives to work on issues, run for office, and suc­cess­ful­ly man­age cam­paigns. Tens of thou­sands of pro­gres­sive activists have been trained by Well­stone Action over the last few years, includ­ing yours tru­ly (a proud grad­u­ate of Camp Well­stone Seat­tle 2005) and most of NPI’s oth­er staff and board mem­bers. Well­stone Action teach­es what Paul taught: suc­cess­ful polit­i­cal action requires good pub­lic pol­i­cy, grass­roots orga­niz­ing, and effec­tive elec­toral politics.

As Sen­a­tor Well­stone said:

Pol­i­cy pro­vides direc­tion and agen­da for action; grass­roots orga­niz­ing builds a con­stituen­cy to fight for change, and elec­toral pol­i­tics is the main way we con­test for pow­er and hold deci­sion mak­ers accountable.

Elec­toral pol­i­tics with­out grass­roots orga­niz­ing is a pol­i­tics with­out a base. Grass­roots orga­niz­ing with­out elec­toral pol­i­tics can be a mar­gin­al pol­i­tics. Elec­toral pol­i­tics and grass­roots orga­niz­ing with­out pol­i­cy is a move­ment with­out a direc­tion and with­out a head.

Many pro­gres­sives are shar­ing their remem­brances of Sen­a­tor Well­stone today.

Sen­a­tor Al Franken, who now holds Well­stone’s Sen­ate seat, wrote a guest col­umn for the Duluth News Tri­bune reflect­ing on some of the things he learned from Well­stone, and shar­ing mem­o­ries of Well­stone’s cam­paigns. (The paper, mean­while, has pub­lished a very nice col­lec­tion of pho­tos of Well­stone on the cam­paign trail). Here’s Sen­a­tor Franken:

He had this way of clos­ing out his speech­es with an incred­i­ble ges­tic­u­lat­ing crescen­do — three min­utes of pas­sion and enthu­si­asm that just kept ris­ing until you thought he was going to explode. And it would always make the crowd hap­py. Not just excit­ed, but hap­py to see him hav­ing so much fun talk­ing about the things that moti­vat­ed him.

What I liked most was that if Paul had to deliv­er a 10-minute speech, the crescen­do would always start sev­en min­utes in. If it was a 20-minute speech, it would start 17 min­utes in. If it was a four-minute speech, he’d start peak­ing a minute into the thing. It was always great to watch.

Our own Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, who served with Well­stone in the Sen­ate, released a state­ment hon­or­ing his memory.

“I will always miss my friend Paul,” Mur­ray said. “And while today is a reminder of that painful day a decade ago, it is much more about cel­e­brat­ing the lega­cy of a man whose pas­sion and mis­sion endure. Paul ded­i­cat­ed his life to chang­ing the lives of those who had no one else to speak for them. And today, his efforts con­tin­ue with his foun­da­tion, the work of his friends and col­leagues, and the belief that the lit­tle guy can have a big voice when orga­nized and empow­ered. Paul, his fam­i­ly, and all those lost ten years ago will remain in my thoughts and prayers. I con­tin­ue to be inspired by the life and work of Paul Well­stone every sin­gle day.”

Min­nPost has a rather excel­lent inter­view with Wal­ter Mon­dale in which the for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee dis­cuss­es the tumul­tuous after­math of Well­stone’s death and his strug­gle to rein­tro­duce him­self to vot­ers. (Mon­dale was draft­ed by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-Farmer-Labor Par­ty of Min­neso­ta to replace Well­stone on the bal­lot, at the request of Well­stone’s sur­viv­ing sons).

And Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Radio has a nice sto­ry about what has hap­pened to Sen­a­tor Well­stone’s for­mer staff in the years since his death. (Many are doing great work in our nation’s cap­i­tal for pro­gres­sives like Kei­th Elli­son and Tim Walz).

Besides Well­stone Action, there are many oth­er build­ings and pro­grams that bear Well­stone’s name, notably Paul and Sheila Well­stone Ele­men­tary in St. Paul. These hon­ors help ensure that the Well­stones are nev­er forgotten.

We extend our pro­found thanks to Mark and David Well­stone and the team at Well­stone Action for car­ry­ing Paul and Sheila’s lega­cy forward.