Paul Wellstone Quotes
I wasn’t elected to get into back room deals with Jesse Helms. I’ve despised Jesse Helms since I was 18 years old.
At the time Jesse Helms, an arch conservative, was a very powerful senator with a great deal of seniority. As such most senators had to work with him to get many things done. Ironically, despite the fact that he and Helms were on polar opposite political sides, they developed a personal working relationship which was quite cordial.
Paul Wellstone, 1944-2002, U. S. Senator (Democrat, MN), Statement made just after entering the Senate, Quoted on C-SPAN, Book TV, February 4, 2006
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Congress at that time had about a 12 percent public approval rating. Other emergency disaster appropriations had been made in previous years in days or weeks, but the aid for New Jersey, New York and Connecticut had been voted by the Democratic-controlled Senate but not in the Republican controlled House. The Republican House leadership had planned a vote after the Fiscal Cliff vote the previous evening before the end of the Congressional term. Then the speaker cancelled the vote infuriating Christie and many of the members of Congress. His reason was that there was opposition from the Tea Party Conservative wing of his own party who had just been badly beaten on the fiscal cliff legislation, and the Speaker was up for reelection by his own party caucus the following day. If the vote had proceeded, it would have passed with Democratic and some Republican support but with the opposition of the conservative wing some of whom noted that the states seeking the emergency aid had just recently voted for President Obama and they were opposed to more federal spending despite the fact that emergency aid had never before been subjected to such partisan criteria. After much pressure, the Speaker then committed to an up or down vote in the following Congress to the chagrin of some of the Tea Party members. Governor Christie, much admired for his commitment to his state and not politicking was his candid self but he did not even go as far as Republican Congressman Peter King {630995}.
The Evangelicals and other social conservatives had much more influence over the Republican candidate since without the social conservatives voting in large numbers for the Republican Presidential candidate, at the time, it would be hard to win the general election, but Democrats had won without them. However, at the time, the social conservatives had a virtual veto over the Republican candidate selection.
Liberal Republican U.S. Senator, Lowell P. Weiker Jr., was about to be nominated by the Connecticut party convention for a fourth term as U. S. Senator:
Paul David Wellstone was an American academic, author, and politician who represented Minnesota in the United States Senate from 1991 until he was killed in a plane crash in Eveleth, Minnesota, in 2002. A member of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, Wellstone was a leader of the progressive wing of the national Democratic Party.
