Wellstone's Legacy Nears Fruition

"I started seeing the folks he saw, started realizing the problem. And I saw it's the right thing to do," he said.

Put Me In, Coach

The Senate Democrats' star player is back in the game.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) held a big fundraiser at her Embassy Row home Tuesday night to raise money for Senate Democrats, who are hoping to gain four to seven seats on Election Day. The event, hosted by the Women's Senate Network of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was Clinton's first fundraiser for the DSCC since she ended her presidential campaign. And it was a biggie.

The suggested donation to attend the "Checklist for Change" cocktail buffet dinner at the Clinton home, known as Whitehaven, ranged from $1,000 to a whopping $28,500. The DSCC would not reveal how much money was raised at the event, but a source familiar with it said the total was in the "hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Several die-hard supporters of Clinton's presidential campaign showed up at the senator's home wearing buttons that said "Hillary Sent Me." They apparently plan to wear them as they fan out across the country trying to help Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and down-ballot Democratic candidates.

DSCC Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told On the Hill, "Hillary has been a key and instrumental part of our successful fundraising since completing the presidential campaign, doing everything we have asked."

Clinton, according to those who attended the fundraiser, gave a rousing and "gracious" speech that focused heavily on attaining a filibuster-proof majority of 60 Democrats in the Senate.

Of Paintings . . .

He hasn't won the election, but Barack Obama already is the subject of a portrait titled "President Obama."

"The painting is on hold and ready for when he walks into the Oval Office," says Chaz Guest, the artist who painted it. Guest said the painting will be on loan to Obama from the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago "until it is official."

Guest decided to paint the portrait because the senator from Illinois was so appreciative of Guest's portrait of the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. That portrait, which Guest lent to Obama, has hung in Obama's Senate office for three years.

Obama sent Guest a thank-you note for that painting on Oct. 11, 2005, saying: "One of the people whose shoulders I stand on is Thurgood Marshall. . . . Looking at the painting each day provides me great inspiration and comfort."

The painter, who lives in Los Angeles, says the two first met at a fundraiser during Obama's first run for Senate four years ago. He seems confident his portrait will hang in the Oval Office next year.