Elizabeth Warren

At his side through the struggle was an initially little-known Harvard Law professor, Elizabeth Warren, who had developed an expertise on bankruptcy issues as an adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. As legal scholar Kristin Brandser Kalsem notes, Warren was “engaged in a pathbreaking campaign to call attention to the fact that those concerned about women and women’s issues should be paying attention to bankruptcy reform and other economic legal issues.”

Wellstone introduced me to Warren in those days, and constantly referenced her academic studies and her activism. He cherished her as an ally in a lonely struggle. Indeed, when he cast those lonely votes, he would joke about his political isolation, saying he could use ten more progressive senators—or, at the least, one Elizabeth Warren.

That was how Paul thought. He could imagine college professors becoming senators. After all, he had made the leap.

Now, a decade after Wellstone’s death, his old partner in the fight for justice for working families, laid-off workers and struggling homeowners is running for the Senate from Massachusetts. It is hard to imagine any political development that would have delighted Paul more. Wellstone loved to campaign, not just for himself but for others. He’d surely be campaigning this fall for old friends Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Bernie Sanders in Vermont this year, as he would be for his frequent ally Tammy Baldwin, who is seeking a Wisconsin Senate seat. And you can bet that the happy warrior of modern American progressivism would be working Massachusetts, from Pittsfield to Provincetown, for Elizabeth Warren. After all, he recognized, long before the rest of us did, that she was needed in the Senate.