Lori Sturdevant: A cerebral candidate, a gut-level connection
Posted in Uncategorized on October 26th, 2008
From Lori Sturdevant’s column in the Star Tribune today:
Paul Wellstone died six years ago yesterday. But he’s been present in Minnesota memory time and again as the race for his U.S. Senate seat, now occupied by Republican Norm Coleman, has unfolded.
“I’m running for the mother in Fergus Falls who has to share her insulin with her 23-year-old son because they both have diabetes, and he doesn’t have health insurance. We need universal health insurance, and we need it now!”
That’s DFLer Al Franken’s line. But imagine the voice a little higher and the fervor a notch stronger, and Wellstone’s back.
Franken invokes the name — not constantly, but enough to suggest that the friend he knew well for 12 years is often on his mind.
“Paul Wellstone said, ‘The future belongs to those who are passionate and work hard,’” Franken says to rally his supporters. “Let’s do it!”
…
Every Franken story is tied to an issue. Press him on his reasons for running, the why of his candidacy, and the guy who responds is more the Harvard math major than the comedy writer. Issues — Social Security, health care, the war and underfunded troops, the middle-class squeeze — gradually drew him into this race, he says.
More than Wellstone ever would have, Franken seemed to relish explaining to this newspaper’s Editorial Board the six-point test by which he measured the recent financial bailout package and found it wanting. More than Wellstone did in 2002, Franken faults Coleman for not thinking deeply enough about the nation’s problems.
Yet Wellstone is never far away. When I pressed Franken one more time for the “why” of the career change that brought him to the ballot, I got this: “It’s like Paul said: ‘This isn’t about power. It’s about how you make people’s lives better.’”
