Sen. Paul Wellstone was
'The Real Thing'

(Courtesy of the University Gazette)

James Stimson got to know Paul Wellstone at Carolina back in the 1960s when they were both graduate students in political science.

Both were for the Civil Rights Movement and against the war in Vietnam.

Stimson, now the Raymond Dawson professor of political science, can't say for sure how they met. What he remembers is that they were friends from the start and that Wellstone would turn out to be "the best friend of my life."

Wellstone had been an undergraduate at Carolina and was in his second year of grad school when Stimson arrived in 1966. Stimson had done his undergraduate work, coincidentally, at the University of Minnesota.

Even though their politics were the same, their personalities were not, Stimson said.

"I am really an academic and Paul wasn't," Stimson said. "He was kind of impatient with academics. He wanted to change the world."

Stimson felt most at home in the ivory tower; Wellstone was more the activist with a penchant and passion for taking his causes to the streets.

Eventually, that passion would propel Wellstone from a teaching position at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., to the U.S. Senate in 1990.

Officially, he represented the state of Minnesota, but friends and colleagues say what Wellstone really represented were the big causes for the little guys that nobody else would.

Wellstone was pursuing a third term in the Senate when he and his wife and daughter and members of his campaign staff were killed in a plane crash on Oct. 25.

Stimson said his ties with Wellstone were strengthened by the friendship between their wives.

Wellstone's wife, Sheila, worked as a clerk in the University library. Stimson's wife Dianne worked as a nurse in what was then the student infirmary.

The couples were in the lower classes of the graduate school culture, Stimson said, because their wives had to work to help support their husbands in graduate school at a time when most graduate students came from upper middle class backgrounds and had parents paying their way, Stimson said.

Stimson said Wellstone and Sheila were even poorer than he and his wife. The Wellstones lived in a tiny, rundown student-housing complex not far from where the Carrboro Farmer's Market is today. In contrast, Stimson and Dianne fell into a nice place on Ridge Street in Chapel Hill that, as it turned out, happened to be two doors down from the home of Frank Porter Graham.

He was an old man by then, well into his 80s, who spent his morning hours walking the neighborhood and talking with children too little to be in school. Children and adults alike in the neighborhood referred to him only as "Dr. Frank."

On one of his morning strolls, in the emotionally charged weeks leading up to the November election of 1968, Graham came upon Wellstone and Stimson talking over the possibility of sitting out an election in which the only choices were Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon.

Stimson had been a passionate supporter of Eugene McCarthy, at the time a senator from Minnesota who gained notoriety and support in the early days of the Democratic primaries by being the first and, for a time, the only anti-war candidate.

Wellstone became a passionate supporter of Robert Kennedy from the time he got into the race until he was assassinated in Los Angeles that July.

When the two of them told Graham what they were considering, "He looked at us like we were a couple of badly behaved children," Stimson said.

"Graham looked us in the eye, and he said, `I knew Hubert Humphrey and sat next to him in the Senate. He is a good and decent man and he deserves your support." Graham also said he knew Nixon, and suffice it to say he used adjectives of a different sort to describe him, Stimson said.

"We walked away from that conversation shaking our heads saying, `Yep, he's right.'"

During a stint as a professor at the University of Minnesota, Stimson invited Wellstone to speak before one of his classes during his second run for the Senate in 1996. Afterward, his Republican opponent, Rudy Boschwitz, asked Stimson for equal time in front of his class.

Stimson obliged and Boschwitz ended up telling him how his biggest strategic mistake in running against Wellstone in 1990 was to try painting him as insincere in all the causes he professed to believe.

He found no such evidence, Boschwitz told Stimson, because Wellstone did not ever say anything that he did not believe. "Boschwitz told me what he learned from losing the campaign was that Paul was the real thing," Stimson said.

Retired political science professor Joel Schwartz taught Wellstone several courses while Wellstone was in graduate school, but it was not just as a student that Schwartz got to know him.

Both found themselves in demonstrations in support of cafeteria workers who went on strike at Lenoir Hall. Both found themselves part of a massive demonstration in Raleigh to protest Gov. Bob Scott and the letter of support that Scott had sent to President Nixon over the bombing of Cambodia at the height of the Vietnam War.

In April of 1965, Wellstone's wife had a son whom the couple named David. In June of that same year, Schwartz's wife had a son whom they also named David.

About six years later, after Wellstone graduated from Carolina and after Schwartz had gone to Berkeley as a visiting professor, the two families ended up sharing the same house.

Wellstone wanted to take his family with him when he went to Berkeley to teach summer school, but he could not afford the high rent. Schwartz told Wellstone that his family could stay with his. By then, both couples had another child so there were eight people living under the same roof for eight weeks.

"One of two things can come out of such a situation as a consequence," Schwartz said. "Either you become their friends forever or you never want to see them again. In our case, it was the former."

Schwartz agreed with Stimson in his assessment of Wellstone's true vocation.

"He was an academic who believed the role of the political scientist should be to use whatever knowledge and expertise you have to better people's lives," Schwartz said. "He wasn't interested in grand political theory. He wanted to have an impact on public policy in a way that affected people's daily lives."

Gene Nichol, the dean of the University's law school, met Wellstone and his wife when the couple campaigned for Nichol when he ran in Colorado for the U.S. Senate.

Wellstone was especially kind to his daughters, Nichol said. "He had a democratic quality to him in that he could be equally engaged in a conversation with my daughter about her soccer game as he was when he was in a testy argument with the president of the United States. He had quite a range."

Since his death, both friends and foes alike have described Wellstone as a politician with an authenticity that was both real -- and rare. Or as Nichol put it, "It is not unfair to say that Paul had an unfair advantage over other politicians in that he actually believed what he said.

"He was a liberal populist in a world in which the conventional wisdom is that people-based politics is dead. Paul Wellstone won races by winning people's hearts."

Nichol believes it was this same quality that, by Nichol's guess, had some 30,000 people standing outside a 20,000-seat arena nearly three hours before Wellstone's memorial service was to start.

"Paul Wellstone did not say, `If you elect me, I will bestow upon you some benefit,'" Nichol said. "Paul Wellstone said, `Elect me and we will work together and we will challenge ourselves by trying to build a better society.'"

Nichol believes Washington dignitaries, even those who hold higher rank and wield more power than Wellstone, have to be thinking they would not be mourned -- or missed -- nearly as much if the memorial had been for them. "That's because every person in that auditorium knew that Wellstone stood for us as a society trying to meet our best aspirations. Wellstone taught us all that we can expect something from ourselves and from our country. We've lost a great man."

Friends also talked about the strange relationship Wellstone ended up developing with Jesse Helms.

Stimson remembers how Wellstone publicly stated after joining the Senate in 1990 how much he despised Helms and what he stood for. Shortly afterward, Helms' wife, Dot, arranged a private tea with Sheila Wellstone. Sheila later described the encounter with the Stimsons, including her astonishment that she ended up liking Mrs. Helms.

"Sheila told Dianne and me later that she regarded Mrs. Helms as one of the most gracious people she had ever met in her entire life," Stimson said. "She was utterly won over."

Schwartz told the story of how Wellstone, years later, would be the only senator to go to the hospital to visit a close aide of Helms who was dying of cancer.

In the retirement tribute the Senate held for Helms this fall, Wellstone stood up to applaud Helms for the way he treated support staff in the Senate from pages to elevator operators. "I don't think there is anybody in the Senate who treats them with more grace and is kinder and more appreciative," Wellstone said of Helms.

Helms, in an official statement, said he and Dot were deeply saddened by Wellstone's tragic death. "Despite the marked contrast between Paul's and my views on matters of government and politics, he was my friend and I was his. He unfailingly represented his views eloquently and emphatically. Paul Wellstone was a courageous defender of his beliefs."

Nichol said Wellstone had spoken to him about his high personal regard for Helms.

"They liked each other, and the one thing they have in common is the way they dealt with other people," Nichol said. "One thing Paul used to tell me was that he was kind of embarrassed about the way the vaunted liberals treat with disdain the people who are below their station in life while Jesse Helms treats them like princes. That's the one thing they had in common, probably the only thing."

Schwartz said that Helms became like a lot of other people who came to respect Wellstone as a person with impeccable honesty, decency and integrity who never compromised on his principles no matter the consequence.

"People admired him because of his authenticity," Schwartz said. "If Paul said something, he meant it and that is a rather rare commodity these days in the highest levels of power -- in politics or business."

The late Sen. Paul Wellstone earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1965 and his doctorate in 1969, both in political science, from Carolina. He also was a champion wrestler here.

Below are some facts about Wellstone's Carolina connections and years on campus, contributed by various University departments:
• Wellstone was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's highest honor society for college students.
• As a graduate student, Wellstone taught political science from 1968 to 1969. He also was an intramural sports official at Carolina.
• A champion Atlantic Coast Conference wrestler at Carolina, Wellstone was named to the all-ACC wrestling team. In June 2000, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame's Hall of Outstanding Americans. That wing of the hall recognizes wrestlers who have achieved prominence in other fields, including government.
• Wellstone compiled an undefeated record in the 126-pound weight class during his two years as a varsity wrestler, and he won an individual championship at the 1964 Atlantic Coast Conference championships. The senator told Carolina's Sports Information Office that wrestling gave him a foundation of discipline and self-confidence that helped in politics.

The following departments have posted pages about Wellstone on their web sites:

• Athletics Department
TarHeelBlue.ocsn.com/sports/m-wrestl/spec-rel/103002aab.html

• General Alumni Association
alumni.unc.edu/car/weekly/story.asp?sid=295

Back to News