The Wellstone-Kerry Campaign Finance Reform

"While Public Campaign was supportive of the McCain-Feingold measure, it also wanted to inject the notion of public financing into the Senate Public Campaign 2001 Annual Report debate and worked accordingly with Sens. Paul Wellstone and John Kerry to do so.

The high point for Public Campaign came early on in the Senate when Sen. Wellstone offered his “States’ rights” amendment, a proposal where states would have had the right to set up a voluntary system of public financing for their candidates for federal office. Over 65 state and national organizations joined in support of the amendment, including AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Gray Panthers, SEIU, Sierra Club and US Action.

While the amendment lost 36-64, the threehour debate re-ignited the dormant support for public financing, resulting in six more hours of debate on public financing. It inspired Sens. Maria Cantwell and Hillary Clinton to join Sens. Wellstone and Kerry on the reintroduction of the Wellstone-Kerry bill in early April.

And it eased Senate passage of Sen. Kerry’s amendment to McCain-Feingold for a General Accounting Office study of the Clean Money, Clean Election systems in Arizona and Maine (effective following the November 2002 elections). It has been nearly ten years since there has been this much attention paid to public financing on the floor of the U.S. Senate."

http://www.publicampaign.org/donate/annualreport/2001pcannualreport.pdf

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Wellstone and Kerry may not have had the same style, but had the same burning passions. While you'd probably never see Kerry in a denim jacket with a megaphone, you could never want for a more tireless advocate of progressive causes than John Kerry. No one will ever, ever take Paul's place, but I feel comfortable knowing that Kerry will carry on more than Wellstone's style, but his real concerns and hopes and dreams of a truly just America.

Sen. Paul Wellstone R.I.P. - You would have made a hell of a President.

Paul: R.I.P.

I still think of him quite often and it makes me so sad ...

:loveya: :thumbsup:

They were working on healthcare issues for the military when Wellstone was killed. Kerry finished the work in February.

If you noticed at Wellstone's memorial there was a great number of veterans who attended. He always worked on their issues never too tired to fight to fulfill the promises made them.

on both of their parts.