- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With
control of the U.S. Senate at stake, former Vice President Walter Mondale
is expected to answer Democratic pleas and run to replace Sen. Paul Wellstone
of Minnesota, killed in a small plane crash last week, party sources said
on Sunday.
-
- Mondale, the top choice of the Wellstone family to succeed
the fallen 58-year-old lawmaker, has told party leaders he will announce
a decision after a memorial service on Tuesday in Minneapolis for the two-term
senator, the party sources.
-
- "I think there would be overwhelming support in
Minnesota for his candidacy," Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle,
a South Dakota Democrat, told CBS's "Face the Nation."
-
- Democratic aides said Daschle was among those who have
urged Mondale to run in the Nov. 5 midterm congressional contest. Others
included fellow party leaders, labor leaders and Wellstone's family. Wellstone,
his wife and daughter were killed in the crash; his two sons, Paul Jr.,
37, and Mark, 30, were not.
-
- Mike Erlandson, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor
Party, told "Fox News Sunday" that Mondale "seems clearly
to be the preferred choice of the Wellstone family, which I think is very
important."
-
- Democratic sources said the feeling was that Mondale,
if he was not going to run, would have advised Democratic leaders by now
so they could move to find someone else.
-
- "The sense is that he is going to do it -- and that
he is the one who could win," one source told Reuters.
-
- With Democrats now holding a one-seat margin in the Senate,
any one of a half dozen razor-close races could decide who controls the
chamber when a new Congress convenes in January.
-
- Control of the U.S. House of Representatives will also
be up for grabs on Nov. 5. Republicans now hold a six-seat majority in
the 435-member chamber.
-
- Wellstone, one of the Senate's leading liberals, was
locked in a neck-and-neck race for re-election against Republican Norm
Coleman, a former mayor of St. Paul, when the small plane went down in
bad weather on Friday in northeast Minnesota.
-
- Also killed in the crash was three campaign aides and
two pilots. The accident is being investigated by the National Transportation
Safety Board.
-
- Bill Walsh, deputy executive director of the Minnesota
Republican Party, was quoted on Sunday as saying Mondale should expect
a battle if he becomes the Democratic nominee.
-
- Many voters might see a race between Mondale and Coleman
as a choice between an "elder statesman and a place-holder or an up-and-coming
candidate who actually wants the job and is working for it," Walsh
told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
-
- While a number of other names have been mentioned as
possible replacements for Wellstone on the ballot, Mondale, who will turn
75 in January, has been widely viewed as the front-runner since shortly
after the crash.
-
- Mondale served in the Senate from Minnesota before he
became President Jimmy Carter's vice president in 1977. In 1984, Mondale
was the Democratic presidential nominee in a failed bid to stop Republican
Ronald Reagan from winning a second term. He later served as Democratic
President Bill Clinton's U.S. Ambassador to Japan.
-
- Erlandson said his party wanted to proceed carefully.
"We want to make sure we make the right choice, certainly most importantly
because that's what Paul Wellstone would want us to do," he said.
-
- Erlandson said the decision would be made by the state
party's central committee. It faces a Thursday deadline set by the state.
-
- On "Fox News Sunday," Sen. Joseph Lieberman
of Connecticut, a possible 2004 White House contender, said he would welcome
a Mondale Senate candidacy.
-
- "It would be greatest tribute to Paul Wellstone's
memory if somebody of the stature and purpose and statesmanship and honor
of Walter Mondale would pick up the torch," Lieberman said.
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