Wellstone Crash, October 25, 2002, Jerad Morey

From MemoryArchive

Who: Jerad Morey
What: Wellstone Crash
When: October 25, 2002
Where: Minneapolis, MN

I was 11, in 5th grade, when Paul Wellstone was first elected to Senate in 1990. I didn't know anything about politics except here was this educated professor guy running against a millionaire. My parents instilled the right values in me, and Wellstone's commercials grabbed a middle schooler's attention, so I had the first politician I ever knew about or really liked.

We would hear about how he was the "1" on a lot of 99-1 votes, but I would be proud that my Senator believed in something. After I left Minnesota I would often go on fits of describing what a great place it was--never did I forget to mention "and people in Minnesota elect politicians like Paul Wellstone!"

I was fortunate enough in 2002 to return to my home state in time to work for the re-election of my boyhood role model as a press assistant. The morning of October 25 we were excited because Sen. Kennedy was going to come in and do some fundraisers with Paul. Just a few days earlier Paul had come out against the Iraq war (the only Senator up for re-election to have done so), which led to a great cash infusion and probably a halving of the unemployment rate in the state for the months of October and November. There was lots of energy and cheer. The latest polls had us winning the race beyond the margin of error for the first time since I could remember and we had more volunteers than we knew what to do with.

When we were called into the conference room for a special meeting my head was too full of quick projects to notice how disheveled some senior staff looked. After it was made certain that remote offices in Rochester, Willmar, Duluth, and elsewhere were listening in through a conference call speakerphone, our campaign manager began: "There's no easy way to say this... This morning on a flight to Duluth Paul's plane crashed near Eveleth. With him on the plane were Sheila [his wife, an advocate for battered women], Marcia [his daughter, whose stump speeches had us speculating about her political future], Tom Lapic [a longtime aide and advocate for firefighters], Mary McEvoy [an early childhood education advocate], and Will McLaughlin [Paul's 23-year-old body man]. We have no reason to believe any of them survived."

As he'd finished, everybody's face was ashen. After a brief pause the room erupted into cries of "NO!", screams, and sobbing, some of it amplified and horribly distorted over the speakerphone. Not only had his wife and daughter also perished, but so had three of our fellow staffers. We were all in shock. The details of that room will be burned into my mind for a long time--I could tell you that the 23-year-old woman across the room from me was wearing blue jeans and a white sweater, had a reddening face, and a long tear streak coming just out of her left eye.

I hugged a couple people and took a couple shots (there was an old storage area behind HQ that an alcohol company used to use--some of their experimental drinks, like chocolate vodka, were still in bottles in a couple boxes), then I got on my knees on that wooden floor and prayed long and hard, though I didn't really know for what.

The campaign going forward was crazy, but helped me realize even more what I had been a part of. And we thought we had lots of volunteers before! Now you could hardly take two steps without stepping over a mother drawing up a lawn sign (we didn't have time to order any for the new candidate, former Vice President Walter Mondale, so volunteers made all of 'em). A radio reporter came in and immediately exclaimed "this is amazing! I've never seen anything like it!"

Many volunteers came in shell-shocked. Some had quit their jobs to work full time on the campaign now, never having realized how important Paul was to them. Lawyers. Communications professionals. Academics. Lots of mothers brought their children and organized a daycare.

For some reason people began bringing bags of groceries to us, feeling like they had to contribute something. Many of those groceries fed the families of teachers striking in nearby Red Wing.

One day in Suite 101, our office-within-an-office, just one or two days before the election, two elderly folks, each clad in all black recognized each other.

"Jaime?"

"Charlie?"

"You look so good."

"It's been so long--since Chicago 7!"

Another 22-year-old staffer made eye contact with me and mouthed "wow."

In the end, VP Mondale did his best for somebody with his energy level. In a very grandfatherly fashion he even called in to HQ to wish us all goodnight over the same speakerphone that had only a week ago conveyed so much horror. "That's why our campaign needs young people," he would say, "because you don't sleep!" It would be 9:00 p.m. Certainly, Mondale's concession speech and press conference was one of the classiest I ever hope to hear.