Denunciations of Minnesota's Green Party have appeared all over the national alternative press this election season, as pundits who normally aim their rhetorical firepower at right-wingers and corporate criminals are up in arms that the state's growing band of Greens is fielding a candidate against progressive champion Paul Wellstone in an extremely tight Senate race. Pointing to the role Ralph Nader's Green candidacy played in sending George W. Bush to the White House, magazines from the leftist Nation to the liberal American Prospect worry that this latest experiment in political purity could tip the U.S. Senate to the Republicans.

Despite a moving appeal from Nader's two-time running mate Winona LaDuke to not challenge Wellstone, delegates at the party's May convention nominated Native American activist Ed 'Eagle Man' McGaa for the Senate seat. For many Greens, Wellstone's support of a bill authorizing President Bush's war on terrorism was a major issue-although a largely symbolic one, since the measure passed with only one dissenting vote. But as The Alternet News Service (June 3, 2002) and The Progressive (July 2002) point out, McGaa does not even share the Greens' views about the war. 'As a Korean War vet,' reports The Progressive's political editor Ruth Conniff, 'he says he believes constructive military intervention is sometimes warranted.'

McGaa is not considered a particularly strong or sophisticated candidate, a view reinforced by his suggestion that Wellstone might not survive the election due to his health. Wellstone announced earlier this year that he has a mild form of multiple sclerosis, but on the campaign trail this year he displays the same fire that fueled his stunning 1990 upset of two-term Republican Rudy Boschwitz. But this time Wellstone is the two-termer fighting to win back some people's trust after overriding a 1990 campaign promise to serve no more than two terms.

This is the biggest obstacle he faces in the race against Republican nominee Norm Coleman, a newly minted right-winger who defected from Minnesota's Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party while serving as mayor of St. Paul. Coleman is a formidable campaigner, and polls this summer showed him and Wellstone in a statistical dead heat with McGaa pulling a significant 3 percent of the vote.

Wellstone's reelection is important to hopes of turning back George Bush's conservative onslaught-and not just because of his near-perfect progressive voting record and pivotal position in a deadlocked Senate. Through 12 years in the Senate and many more as an activist, Wellstone has pioneered a style of politics with lessons for any progressive who wishes to someday be part of a political majority in America. He brings a spirit of populism to electoral politics, emphasizing economic and environmental issues in a way that appeals beyond the usual liberal circles: to veterans' groups, to voters in farm country, blue-collar suburbs, and mining and lumber and factory towns.