Now, here’s a great idea: Send the kids to camp.

This weekend’s camp, with 110 attendees paying $35 each to cover meals, is the first of nine planned in several states through year’s end; starting in 2004, the organizers expect to run as many as 20 Camp Wellstones each year.

…Camp Wellstone is the newest in a recent genre of intensive political workshops run by both political parties, as well as groups like Emily’s List and 21st Century Democrats. A foundation based in San Francisco recently started Emerge, a nine-month training program for women who ponder running for president. The nonpartisan Center for Campaign Leadership offers two-day seminars to young people interested in public service in hopes of making campaigns more ethical and thus raising voter confidence.

Though officially nonpartisan, Camp Wellstone is unabashedly liberal, or, in its preferred parlance, “progressive.” The “other” candidate in curriculum materials is always a Republican. Photos of Nixon bring snickers; of Mandela, cheers.

Mr. Wellstone is not just an inspiration, but a constant presence. After quoting extensively from his speeches and writings in the opening session, Mr. Blodgett cued up a video to let the man himself explain.

At the end of a session on how to write a campaign plan, Heather Booth, a political consultant, offered her energetic but admittedly imprecise impression, waving her arms wildly, à ¬a Wellstone, and shouting, “Keep on organizing, keep on fighting, keep on organizing, keep on fighting ? until we win!”

In addition to attending lectures from political professionals, campers confronted a series of exercises: creating, in 20 minutes, a two-minute campaign commercial for a city council slate in Charleston, W.Va.; planning a crisis press conference to respond to allegations that a candidate is a slumlord or lied about his military experience; knocking door to door to door.

Camp, which cost $20,000 to run, was divided into three tracks. The would-be candidates had 25 minutes to draft a one-minute stump speech, while future hacks drew up a $145,000 budget for a congressional campaign and those who aspired to community activism lobbied faux legislators.