Ten races to watch.

• Author: Nichols, John
• Position: Hot races in 1996 election - Column

Walt Whitman saw this nation's electoral campaigns as nothing less than "the triumphant result of faith in humankind."

Faced with a choice between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, Whitman might well have surrendered his optimism. But beyond the dismal non-event of the 1996 Presidential race, there are still candidates at the state and local level whose politics brim with idealism.

"When I look at America in 1996, I see bold, progressive people running for the Senate and the Congress, for state houses and school boards," says the Reverend Jesse Jackson. "What we need to do is go out and find these candidates who are holding up the banner of racial and economic justice, embrace their candidacies, work for them, campaign for them, vote for them. That's how we win."

This fall, Jackson is crisscrossing the nation, campaigning on behalf of progressive candidates. He is finding plenty of opportunity

Faced with tough reelection campaigns, members of Congress who are running on their progressive records include Georgia's Cynthia McKinney, Mississippi's Bennie Thompson, Illinois's Lane Evans, Oregon's Elizabeth Furse, and New York's Maurice Hinchey. House Republican incumbents face progressive challengers like California's Walter Capps, New Hampshire's Deborah Arnesen, Alaska's Georgianna Lincoln, New Mexico's Shirley Baca, and South Dakota's Rick Weiland. Illinois activist Steve De La Rosa is challenging Republican platform writer and anti-abortion point man Henry Hyde with a message that owes more to Eugene Debs than Bill Clinton. And Harvey Gantt is again offering a clear and refreshing alternative to North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms.

In state and local races, there are progressive candidates at every level: from Washington state gubernatorial candidate Gary Locke, who will be the first Asian-American governor on the mainland if elected; to farm activist Mark Kastel, a national leader in the fight against rBGH, who is seeking a Wisconsin state assembly seat; to union activist Jayne Cia, who is running as a proud member of the New Party for the justice of the peace slot in Pulaski County, Arkansas.

It is easy to be cynical about politics, and to suggest that there is no room for idealism. But on the campaign trail in 1996, it's not all lesser-of-two-evils. Here are ten progressives who are fighting the good fight.

How many Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate this year are running television ads that declare, "I voted against a welfare-reform bill because it would put one million more children into poverty"?

There's only one: Paul Wellstone. Wellstone was the sole Senator seeking reelection this year to oppose the welfare-reform bill that ended a sixty-year commitment on the part of the federal government to provide basic benefits for America's children. And Wellstone has taken it in the teeth for standing on the liberal principles that, in the days of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, defined a Democrat. The Republicans erected a billboard across the street from his headquarters with the slogan SENATOR WELFARE and dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into television attack ads that portray Wellstone as "embarrassingly liberal." The ads declare: "Wellstone continues to press for more welfare--a liberal position even the President of ] his own party rejects."

In the face of this assault, Wellstone has responded with an ad campaign of his own, in which he bluntly declares his opposition to the welfare-reform bill.

"That vote may have hurt my chances for reelection," he says, "but my parents taught me to stand up for what I believe, regardless of the consequences. And I will always do just that."

The result of the nation's most blistering face-off on the welfare-reform issue: The polls show Wellstone gaining his widest lead yet over millionaire Republican Rudy Boschwitz.

Wellstone has always argued that the best hope for the Democratic Party lies in embracing progressive principles, and he is running a reelection campaign that seeks to prove that point. One of the Senate's leading proponents of a single-payer health-care plan, education funding, and campaign-finance reform, Wellstone is stressing all those issues in his campaign, and he is attacking corporate welfare, defending family farmers, and risking his own political base in northern Minnesota to defend environmental protections for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

The National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee launched ads attacking Wellstone--their number-one target this year--that were so sleazy even Minnesota Republican Senator Rod Grams requested their withdrawal.

The Republican attack ads might scare someone less accustomed to battle, but Wellstone is used to it. (For his opposition to the Persian...