{"id":5118,"date":"2008-10-25T12:39:46","date_gmt":"2008-10-25T19:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5118"},"modified":"2008-10-25T12:39:46","modified_gmt":"2008-10-25T19:59:34","slug":"six-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5118","title":{"rendered":"Six Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six years ago today, Sen. Paul Wellstone, DFL-Minn., died, along with his wife, daughter, three campaign staffers, and two pilots, when his airplane crashed en route to Eveleth, Minn., for the funeral of Martin Rukavina, father of State Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Eveleth.<\/p>\n

Wellstone was in the middle of a difficult re-election campaign against a formidable opponent, former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman. Wellstone had made himself vulnerable earlier in the month by choosing to vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Iraq. His statement against the war was his last statement on the floor of the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

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Wellstone was never afraid to be a liberal. He was truly willing to sacrifice his seat in the Senate to do what was right — indeed, on the eve of the vote, he told his friend, Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., that he thought his vote would<\/i> cost him the election. But he was unwilling to send American troops to die to save his seat, and in his speech, he expressed more concern for his staff than he did himself.<\/p>\n

I wish that I was voting to re-elect Paul Wellstone in ten days; our country would be the better for it. And I think Paul would be proud to see his once-lonely vigil vindicated. In the darkest hours for progressives, when everyone — myself included — was writing off liberalism, Paul Wellstone stood proudly for those themes liberals are supposed to. He fought for those who needed help, fought for equality, for human decency, fought for peace and justice. He was among the finest public servants ever to represent my state, and he is sorely missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Six years ago today, Sen. Paul Wellstone, DFL-Minn., died, along with his wife, daughter, three campaign staffers, and two pilots, when his airplane crashed en route to Eveleth, Minn., for the funeral of Martin Rukavina, father of State Rep. Tom … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}