10/16/2003
Wellstone Remembrance
By Rep. Al Juhnke
Senator Paul Wellstone loved Southwest Minnesota. He enjoyed visiting our area and talking to it’s residents. Probably his best memories of Willmar were of the meetings and events that brought him to the Town Talk Café. He always said, “The Town Talk Café was the best name ever for a restaurant in America.” He would reference the Town Talk Café in speeches made from Minnesota to Washington, DC. Here is an excerpt from a speech he made in Philadelphia during the summer of 2000. He was talking to a group about the disenchantment that people in this country were feeling about politics and the big money involved in the current process. As a StarTribune reporter put it in her article the next day:
His (Wellstone’s) barometer for people's growing apathy was Minnesota's own Town Talk Café in Willmar.
"That's my focus group," he said. "And they tell me that both political parties are too controlled by the same investors, the well-connected, the players who get listened to."
The Town Talk patrons, he said, don't attend $500,000 barbecues. "They do their barbecues in their own back yards," he said. "They believe their concerns are of little concern. They feel locked out and left behind. Politics is a game they can no longer play."
Whether he was chatting with a group of folks while eating breakfast at the Town Talk Café or giving a passionate stump speech to a group gathered at an area farm, people just seemed to enjoy listening to Paul Wellstone.
There were many who perhaps did not agree with him on every issue (and that included me at times). While there may have been disagreement, most people would ultimately say, “But most of the time, we think he is on our side.” That pretty much sums up what people of all political persuasions felt. Paul Wellstone was indeed on their side and would do all he could to help them. This unending loyalty to the people he represented showed us the good side of politics. The lessons learned from this man will not soon be forgotten by me or by the people whose lives he touched.
