Paul Wellstone

Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash eleven days before an election he was expected to win, and the memorial service that followed may have lost his party the Senate. He was a political science professor at Carleton College who had been arrested at picket lines and farm foreclosure protests, and in 1990 he ran for the Senate in Minnesota with a campaign budget a fraction of the incumbent's, a green school bus, and advertisements that made a joke of both. He won by two points and was the only challenger to unseat a sitting senator that year. In office he was the chamber's most reliable vote of conscience and frequently its loneliest: against the Gulf War in 1991, against the 1996 welfare reform his own president signed, against the Defense of Marriage Act, against the bankruptcy bill, and - facing a difficult re-election - against the Iraq war authorisation in October 2002, one of twenty-three senators to vote no. He was polling ahead when the campaign aircraft carrying him, his wife, his daughter and five others crashed near Eveleth on 25 October in icing conditions. The memorial in Minneapolis was broadcast live, ran long, and turned into a political rally with jeering of Republican attendees; the backlash was immediate, and Walter Mondale, standing in at six days' notice at seventy-four, lost the seat. Control of the Senate changed hands with it. He was the son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, was a college wrestler, and had multiple sclerosis, which he disclosed only late. He co-wrote the mental health parity act that was passed in his name six years after his death. His campaign bus is in the Minnesota Historical Society. Two of his three children survived him.

• Lived: 1944 CE – 2002 CE
• Nationality: American
• Roles: politician