“I would rather he had been here and it was still his seat, you know? That’s what I really wish.”

— Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), in answer to a supporter who asked him what Sen. Paul Wellstone would have said after listening to one of Franken’s first speeches as a senator. Wellstone was killed in a plane crash in 2002 during his campaign against Norm Coleman, whom Franken defeated in 2008.