WASHINGTON, D.C. (REUTERS) — With control of the U.S. Senate at stake, former U.S. 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 Sunday.
Mondale, the Wellstone family’s top choice to succeed the fallen 58-year-old lawmaker, has told party leaders he will announce a decision after a memorial service Tuesday in Minneapolis for the two-term senator, the party sources said.
“I think there would be overwhelming support in Minnesota for his candidacy,” Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Democratic aides said Daschle was among those who urged Mondale to run in the Nov. 5 congressional election. 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 on the plane.
Mike Erlandson, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said the party’s central committee would meet Wednesday to decide on a new candidate to replace Wellstone. The state has set a Thursday deadline.
Earlier, Erlandson 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 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 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 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 Friday in northeast Minnesota.
Also killed in the crash were three campaign aides and two pilots. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident.
Bill Walsh, deputy executive director of the Minnesota Republican Party, was quoted 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.
A number of other names have been mentioned as possible replacements for Wellstone on the ballot, but 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.
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 the greatest tribute to Paul Wellstone’s memory if somebody of the stature, purpose, statesmanship and honor of Walter Mondale would pick up the torch,” Lieberman said.