by John McCormick
MINNEAPOLIS – In Minnesota, there are few political names as sacred as Paul Wellstone, the U.S. senator who died with his wife, daughter and five others in a plane crash in the state’s northern woods in October 2002.
As he came here to campaign this afternoon in advance of the Minnesota caucuses on Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama invoked the name of the unapologetic liberal whose ideology made him a target for Republicans.
“Some of you know that when I first got to the United States Senate, I opened up the door of the desk where I was assigned,” he said. “And it has the names of some of the greater senators who have served. They carved their names, in their own hand, into the desk drawer. One of those names was somebody who shared with me this belief that change doesn’t happen from the top down. A guy named Paul Wellstone. A guy who helped to build a movement here in Minnesota because he believed in you the way I believe in you. And this is part of that movement for change.”
David Axelrod, the campaign’s top strategist, said Obama met Wellstone and had spoken with him in Chicago.
During a rally at the Target Center in Minneapolis, the home of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Obama also did some bragging about his recent fundraising, which included $32 million in January alone.
“When we started this campaign, nobody gave us much of a chance,” he said. “They said, well, you know, he’ll never be able to raise the money. They didn’t realize there is this thing called the Internet. And we have built a grassroots fundraising network that people have never seen before. We got 170,000 new donors just [in January]…We have a different model. We’ve got precinct captains, we’ve got folks who are energized and invigorated. And we have built the best political organization in this campaign, in this country.”
There were a few hundred empty seats in an arena that seats 18,467, but there were perhaps an addition 1,000 people standing on the floor around a temporary stage where Obama spoke.
The Illinois Democrat also did a riff on the campaign so far and sought to remind voters that their involvement is needed.
“After Iowa, I think there were a lot of people who were just giddy…We had won a great victory, and all these nice write-ups. You know, I was on the cover of Newsweek – pretty picture – and everybody was just excited. And then we lost in New Hampshire, and suddenly people were like, oh, I guess this isn’t as easy as we thought. See, people thought that you just win one election and suddenly, the status quo gives in and, you know, elect Barack, and, you know, immediately we’ll have racial reconciliation and poverty will be over and, you know, nobody will argue any more, and your teenage children will listen to you. And so, it was useful for us to recognize that this isn’t easy.”