Whither Wellstone's Legacy?

I lived in the Twin Cities when Minnesota Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone's plane crashed in 2002, and it was a heartbreaking moment, I was convinced Wellstone was going to go far in life as a true progressive champion, and all that ended in an instant.  But Wellstone's legacy lived on and his sons helped to put together a grassroots movement to train the next generation of 21st century liberal leaders after his death.

But now that legacy is in trouble as the eternal, unavoidable question of Democrats in the Trump era raises its head in Minnesota: which matters more in rural America, winning back white Trump voters, or keeping black, Latinx and Asian voters who stuck with the Dems through Hillary?

Founded after Wellstone’s death in a plane crash in 2002, Wellstone Action has trained thousands of progressive candidates, campaign operatives and community organizers throughout the country, with alumni serving in local and state offices and in the U.S. House. In 2016, the last year for which tax filings were available, the group reported providing training to 2,135 data and digital strategists, 723 nonprofit leaders and community organizers, and 854 aspiring political leaders. 

David Wellstone and other Democrats close to his father began objecting last year to what he described as Wellstone Action’s abandonment of disaffected Democrats in the rural Midwest — the rural poor were an early focus of the late senator — with an increasingly narrow focus on gender politics and people of color. 

“I said, ‘After Trump, we’ve got to figure out how we are going to go back after those Democrats that we lost,” David Wellstone said. “We can do all the stuff we do. We do great stuff on communities of color, we’re doing great stuff on gender identity politics. But we need to do some of these other trainings. … Nobody wanted to have a discussion about that.” 

In a prepared statement, Connie Lewis, chairwoman of the Wellstone Action board, said the group’s “mission has not changed.” But the group’s staff and board of directors appeared to suggest a shift in the progressive movement since Paul Wellstone’s death, asserting in a statement on its website that “a lot has changed over the last fifteen years” and that “the progressive movement also looks different today than it did when we first started.” 

In an early sign of tension at Wellstone Action, then-board member Rick Kahn, Paul Wellstone’s longtime friend and campaign treasurer, raised concerns in an email to a staffer last year about a draft tax filing in which staff proposed changing the group’s stated mission from a “advancing progressive social change and economic justice” to “advancing progressive social change and economic, racial, and gender justice.” 

“I am not remotely questioning the work we do in the realm of racial and gender justice,” Kahn said in the email, one of several documents he provided to POLITICO. “I support it, and applaud it, all of it. That has always been true, and will always remain true. What I am calling into question, and vigorously objecting to, is the strategic thinking in expressly choosing to highlight our work for just those two groups, and no others, in a document posted online, that we share with the entire world.” 

Kahn and other Wellstone allies said the board moved against them only after they began raising questions about the group’s finances. But the exchange reflected a broader undercurrent of discord. Noting Wellstone Action’s other priority constituencies included young people and working-class people, among others, Kahn wrote, “And since the language in question relates expressly to the legacy of Paul and Sheila [Wellstone], if we are willfully choosing to include some groups here, and not others, what about justice for people with mental illness, and victims of domestic violence?” 

Edith Sargon, then-executive director of the group, agreed in an email to use the group’s original mission statement in its tax filing. But she also challenged him in an email, saying, “We added race and gender because they are also part of the bigger goal of working towards social justice. Wouldn’t you all agree?” 

David Wellstone took the language on the group’s website — that “a lot has changed over the last fifteen years” — as an affront to his father’s legacy. 

“How I read it is Paul Wellstone is no longer relevant. It is the most untrue, un-thought-through and most offensive remark,” David Wellstone said. “When you’ve got people who are hurting and they’re turning to Donald Trump, we’ve got to give them something. … We should be the fighters for all folks who aren’t on top. That’s what my dad always said.”

It's a depressing situation in Minnesota even as the national Democratic platform shaping up for 2018 and 2020 is the most liberal in generations.  If even one of the most progressive organizations in the country is running away from even recognizing the voters that got them there in favor of the "political reality" of 90%+ white states in the Midwest, then who stands for people like me, black and living in Kentucky, or Kansas, or South Dakota, or Minnesota?

It's a question the Democrats better figure out and fast, because time is almost up.  We have less than six months before the 2018 midterms.