In February of 1995, I was a high school junior in Washington for a weeklong field trip. We set up a meeting with Sen. Paul Wellstone, then nearing the end of his first term. Unfortunately, he only had a few minutes to talk with us between meetings.
I got to shake his hand.
A year-and-a-half later, I was a college freshman away from home. I had the pleasure of voting in my very first election by absentee ballot for the various races in my home state of Minnesota. For most offices, I voted for the lesser of two evils, but I was proud to be able to cast my vote to re-elect Wellstone.
Many people wrote Wellstone off as an extreme liberal. In America’s mainstream political spectrum, he was left of most people. But he was the most vocal spokesman for the people most politicians try to ignore–the millions without health care, those for whom the economy didn’t provide, the working poor, all those left behind in the “Roaring ’90s.”
Regardless of one’s political persuasion, all Americans should mourn the loss of a man who, refreshingly, remembered that he was elected to serve people, not businesses.
