It was one of the most anticipated moments in a US Senate race that had become more contentious in the waning days of the campaign.
Norm Coleman, the Republican candidate and former St. Paul mayor, was in a debate one day before the election.
His opponent was former vice president Walter Mondale, thrust into the race when incumbent Democrat Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash.
“I remember walking into the debate, the day before the election,” said Coleman on the WCCO Morning News on Tuesday. “He’s already seated there. It was a strange feeling, I really felt that I was in the presence of greatness.”
Coleman said that feeling of awe may have changed the tone of the debate.
“I called him Mr. Vice President, and I’m thinking his advisors got him to be a lot more aggressive. That’s not the Fritz Mondale I know and everybody knows. And I think it may have had an impact. That’s just one person’s observation.”
Mondale died Monday at the age of 93, many years after he made a positive impression on the man who beat him in that election.
“I had the greatest respect for Walter Mondale,” said Coleman. “I thought he was a magnificent public servant. (While) we disagreed on policy, he was the liberal icon, the progressive champion, we agreed on objectives. But we simply disagreed on the path to get there.”
Coleman called Mondale a wonderful human being, and that anybody who met him couldn’t help but like him.
He had first-hand knowledge following that campaign for senate.
“I would run into him and Joan at the airport, he was always kind to me,” Coleman said. “Maybe it’s small-town Minnesota, even after the race he could still joke about it. That was kind of part of his humanity.”
Which is something Coleman misses in today’s partisan climate.
“I wish in many ways we can go back to the days of a Walter Mondale in terms of personal relationships,” he said. “Respecting what people believed, disagreeing with them but not having that (negative) view of them as a person. With Fritz, we were political opponents, but we weren’t enemies.”