In today's morning serving of Hot Dish: The Vang pardon lands in the attorney general's race, Gov. Tim Walz revisits his vice presidential debate and the latest early voting numbers are in. First, a beloved Minnesota political figure is looming large over the U.S. Senate race.
As the Democratic primary enters its final stretch, both Peggy Flanagan and Angie Craig are staking competing claims to the legacy of the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, who represented Minnesota until his death in 2002.
Both have surprisingly credible arguments.
During his 12 years in the Senate, Wellstone became known for marrying unabashedly progressive politics with an intensely personal style of organizing that built support well beyond the party's liberal base. Nearly 25 years after his death, Democrats across the party are still trying to emulate him.
For Flanagan, the connection is personal. She worked on Wellstone's final Senate campaign as a University of Minnesota student and later trained candidates through Camp Wellstone for nearly a decade. She regularly borrows his best lines on the campaign trail. His grassroots organizing and progressive policy portfolio helped shape her own political identity.
But Craig has a powerful Wellstone validator of her own: Dave Wellstone. Paul Wellstone's son has endorsed Craig, appeared in campaign ads on her behalf and argues his father cared as much about building majorities and delivering tangible results as he did about staking out the leftmost position in every debate. Dave Wellstone sees that in Craig, a moderate Democrat who has won re-election in a tough congressional district.
“My dad was able to go into the cafes, he was able to go meet folks on the Iron Range, was able to go to southern Minnesota farmers … the inner cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul,” he says in a short social media video on behalf of Craig’s campaign. “Being able to cast that big net.”
That endorsement has taken on an even bigger profile after state Sen. John Hoffman said Dave Wellstone asked him to back Craig while Hoffman was still recovering in intensive care from the assassination attempt that nearly killed him, an allegation Dave Wellstone disputes. Some have criticized Craig and Dave Wellstone for calling Hoffman's account into question, while others have lamented that the public feud has dragged the Wellstone name into one of the campaign's ugliest fights.
The controversy is just the latest chapter in an increasingly bitter contest between the party’s competing factions. Paul Wellstone himself belonged to a Democratic Party predating today's familiar progressive-versus-moderate taxonomy hardened. He championed single-payer health care and reveled in being dismissed as too liberal. But he was also a prairie populist whose politics were built around persuasion. He created an unusual coalition that repeatedly won statewide in Minnesota.
That's the version of Wellstone Flanagan says she remembers.
"Everybody felt like: that's our guy, Paul's our guy, he's our senator. The Native community, the Somali community, folks up on the Iron Range – everybody claimed him," Flanagan says in a campaign video posted to Facebook. "It was because he spent time with people all over the state and really listened to them and met them and cared for them. When we talk about politics the Wellstone way, that's what it's about."
That may be why the fight over Wellstone's legacy remains so unresolved. His politics don't fit neatly into today's Democratic divide, leaving both Flanagan and Craig with a plausible claim to carrying them forward.
