California Senator Kuehl Receives Paul and Sheila Wellstone Leadership Award

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Judy Pope

On October 18, 2007 a standing room-only crowd of 220 people rose to its feet and applauded as the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club honored Sheila Kuehl with the club’s first annual Paul and Sheila Wellstone Leadership Award. The award, presented by the Wellstone’s son David (photo by Ces Rosales), celebrated Senator Kuehl’s championship of single payer health care.

The event was held at the Silver Dragon Restaurant in Oakland. It sold out completely and raised over $10,000 in donations that the club will dedicate to funding its voter registration and Get Out the Vote work in the upcoming elections.

The event’s honorary co-hosts included Congresswoman Barbara Lee, State Senator Ellen Corbett, Assembly members Sandre Swanson and Loni Hancock, former Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and Supervisor Keith Carson. All the co-hosts but Congresswoman Lee and Mayor Dellums were present, as were many Easy Bay elected officials.

Sheila Kuehl was the natural choice for this award. Many of our club’s members have advocated for single payer since the 1990s. Our club has done intense work on SB 840, including calling Democratic Clubs all around the state to urge them lobby their representatives on the bill. We were delighted to honor the legislator whose leadership has done so much to move single payer from a fringe idea to the gold standard against which other health care proposals are now measured.

We also picked Sheila Kuehl because her political career embodies the progressive values of Paul and Sheila Wellstone that inspired the creation of the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club in 2004. The Wellstones’ legacy of unremitting concern for the needs of ordinary people, their willingness to stand against conventional wisdom and the powers that be to meet those needs, and their belief in government as a tool for the common good continue to guide our work.

To this end, our club has played a key role in organizing a new Progressive Caucus within the California Democratic Party. In the 2004 election we raised $280,000 to support swing state efforts and were named the "Best Democratic Club" in Alameda County by the Democratic Party Central Committee. Basing our work on the Wellstone model of grassroots political mobilization, we have registered over 10,000 new voters, organized hundreds of electoral activists, and played a pivotal role in electing local progressive candidates.