"Karl Rove oversaw the anti-Wellstone effort"
Wellstone’s first television ads criticized Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. When Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize military force against Iraq, Wellstone was the only senator facing a tough reelection challenge to vote no, opposing Bush’s “preemptive, go-it-alone strategy.”
Polls showed that a few weeks before election day, Wellstone had pulled slightly ahead of Coleman. Then, just eleven days before the election, on his way to a funeral and a campaign event in rural Minnesota, Wellstone’s plane crashed near the Eveleth airport, killing the 58-year-old senator, his wife, Sheila, his daughter Marcia, three campaign staffers and two pilots.
A memorial service for the Wellstones and other victims of the crash filled a 20,000-seat arena at the University of Minnesota. The Democrats picked former senator and vice president Walter Mondale to replace Wellstone in the campaign, but it was too late to wage an effective campaign. Minnesota voters elected Coleman.
Most obituaries described Wellstone as a quixotic radical, out of step with the times—a progressive in a conservative era. But Wellstone understood the importance of pushing the debate to the left while also fighting for concrete gains in legislation. He was sometimes a lone dissenter, but at other times he used his position to rescue progressive amendments from oblivion.http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/12-6
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