DATE=10-31-02

TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP

TITLE=MONDALE SUBS FOR WELLSTONE

NUMBER=6-12695

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: U-S voters go to the polls in less than a week to elect a new House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. The Senate race is unusual because one Senator resigned and another was killed near the end of the current campaigns. A memorial service this week for Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone that took on a partisan political tenor, is drawing criticism in the nation's press. Here with a sampling is ___________ and today's U-S Opinion Roundup.

TEXT: Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone died last Friday in a plane crash that killed eight people, including his wife and daughter. He is being replaced by former Vice President Walter Mondale. Just a few weeks ago, Senator Robert Torricelli dropped out of the Senate race in New Jersey amid a corruption scandal and was replaced by retired Senator Frank Lautenberg.

Tuesday's long memorial service for Senator Wellstone turned into a boisterous campaign rally, drawing the ire of several daily papers. In northern Minnesota, however, The Duluth News-Tribune sounds more sad than angry at the event.

VOICE: There's been so much bad news in the past year or so - - the September eleventh terrorist attacks, the economic downturn, the sniper attacks in ... Washington ... suburbs, possible war with Iraq, and, now, the death of Senator Paul Wellstone ... that people are emotionally on edge [Editors: "tense"]. This was apparent at the memorial service Tuesday for [those] ... who died in [the] plane crash...

Beneath the grief and sadness and desire to celebrate was also a lot of pent-up emotion, even anger, that came out in unpredictable ways. Some people booed a couple of political dignitaries, as others tried to stop them. Don't let the expression of emotion by a few mar the memory of an otherwise beautiful tribute to people who touched so many in their too-short lives.

TEXT: However in Pennsylvania, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette laments that "A good senator is honored in a tasteless way," adding:

VOICE: A question now is whether Senator Wellstone's memorial service …crossed the line of good taste. Was it an appropriate tribute to what by all reports was an outstanding American, or an eight-days-before-the-election political rally? Apparently, a bit of both. Vice President Dick Cheney, whom President Bush wished… to represent him, was asked not to come by Senator Wellstone's family on the dubious grounds that the security arrangements ... would have disrupted the funeral.

Funerals have, of course, been political events since at least the time of [Roman Emperor] Julius Caesar. … Only his family might be able to say whether he would have been happy to see the faces of famous figures at the funeral…

TEXT: New York's Wall Street Journal is even more critical.

VOICE: Those who watched the service … know that it had to be seen to be believed. …Governor Jesse Ventura, no friend of Republicans, said … the spectacle reduced his wife to tears. … It used to be that the tragic deaths of American political figures served as a reminder … that there is a drama to life above mere politics … But Tuesday night's spectacle inverted that understanding.

… We find it impossible to believe that, as such a … true conviction politician … Paul Wellstone would think his legacy burnished by a shabby attempt to separate other men from their convictions.

TEXT: In Ohio, Cleveland's Plain Dealer looks over the replacement for Senators Torricelli and Wellstone, a pair of former Senators in their mid-seventies, and speculates what they suggests about the future of the Democratic party.

VOICE: "You can't keep running Walter Mondale for everything," the former senator and vice president told his fellow Minnesota Democrats 13 years ago, when he begged off their request that he carry the party's banner into one more Senate race. "One of the requirements of a healthy party is that it renews itself."

So much for renewal.

TEXT: Following closely on that theme, Pennsylvania's Allentown Morning Call explains to readers exactly why the Wellstone race is so important.

VOICE: The death of Senator Paul Wellstone … portended a political disaster for the precarious control Democrats hold in the Senate. Before he, his wife and daughter and aides died in a plane crash … the Democratic majority was 50-49 in the Senate. (There is one independent, Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont, who sides [Editors: "votes"] with the Democrats.)

It underscored why next Tuesday is a vitally important mid-term election for Democrats in Congress … especially in the Senate. Senator Wellstone was in a tight race with [former Saint Paul] Mayor [Norm] Coleman. It was one of the handful of races the Democrats could lose - - and if they lose even one of the 34 contested seats next week, they could lose control of the Senate.

TEXT: With that explanation of the high stakes in this Senate race, we conclude this editorial sampling of comment on the ramifications of Senator Wellstone's death.

NEB/ANG/MAR