Even the assignments in Mr. Wellstone’s classes were courses of study in the practice of organizing. In my freshman year, Mr. Wellstone assigned us to research the welfare system in rural Rice County, Minn. He took us to organizational meetings of welfare mothers, fighting to replace a food commodity program with food stamps. In the early 1970s, movement organizing was the only variety of organizing on display on college campuses. Most students were exposed to organizing through mass protest demonstrations. Mr. Wellstone introduced us to old-fashioned community and labor organizing tactics.

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Mr. Wellstone was also an accomplished campaigner. Though he had never held elected office, he pulled off a major upset in 1990 when, running on a shoestring budget, he defeated the incumbent Republican senator, Rudy Boschwitz. Watch this 1990 ad in which Wellstone goes looking for his opponent, Boschwitz. Beautiful.



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Few thought he had a chance when he announced that he would run for the Senate against Mr. Boschwitz. Russell D. Feingold, now a like-minded liberal Democratic senator from Wisconsin, today had this recollection of dropping by to meet Mr. Wellstone in 1989: “He opened the door, and there he was with his socks off, 15 books open that he was reading, and he was on the phone arguing with somebody about Cuba. He gave me coffee, and we laughed uproariously at the idea that either of us would ever be elected. But he pulled it off in 1990 and gave me the heart to do it in Wisconsin.”

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Often, Mr. Wellstone was the only senator voting against a measure, or one of only a few. He was, for instance, one of three senators in 1999 to support compromise missile defense legislation. He was the only one that year to vote against an education bill involving standardized tests, and the only Democrat who opposed his party’s version of lowering the estate tax.