-
R E P O R T
F R O M ' T H E
F R O N T :S A N D E R S T A K IN G H E A V Y S H E L L IN G
Anti-War Vote Makes Him Vulnerable
Since many Vermonters in
By
Kevin
J,
Kelle the cent~r and on the right of
Staff R
rt
Y
round-the-president declara- the
political
spectrum seem to
epo er
tion. The
10
blacks and one support Bush's Gulf policy, it
B
arely two weeks after Latino who refused to support
is
not unreaso'.'able to assume being sworn into of- the resolution generally acted that a certam segment of fice, U.S. Rep. Bernie with little political risk. Most Sa'.'ders voters may beSanders cast a vote of them represent districts sen.ously displeased with thethat could prove to be with large minority popula- position he took Jan.
18.
the most fateful of his con- tions, and polls show consid- Sanders, speaking at agressional career. erable opposition to the war press conference Monday,OnJan. among African- and Hispanic. refused
to
discuss the political
18,
San- Americans.
r
amificat.ions of his Gulf
dera
was The situation appears to
be
votes. "There are other thingsoneof six different in Vermont, which on
my
mind now than sitting
H
au s e _. has fewer non-white residents around worrying about reornembers than almost any other state. election," he stated. "Of Opposing In fact, Sanders' aides in both course there are people whoa resolu- Washington and Burlington are upset with me:'tion sup. Bernard Sanders report an initially mixed or But the fact that the fresh- po
r
t
i
n g negative reaction to the con- man congressman had spentPre.sident George Bush's gressman's Jan.
18
vote. This m?st of the weekend meetingdeCISIOnto go to war The response on such an emotion- WIth veterans and other rneasure, which als~ ex. ally charged issue points to potential disaffected con- pressed support for U S the possibility of a rupture in stituents shows it to be a con-~roopsin the Gulf gained the the coalition that elected cern. That concern must havesacking of
399
iawrriakers Sanders in November. been heightened the weekend
IX
other repreaen tat.ives The independent Socialist before, when Sanders wasabstained. scored a landslide victory by booed at several appearances.gr:ermont's socialist con- adding to his progressive base
Study
In
Contrastsssman was the a I hit large numbers of moderate-rnember.of th n y w let
ti
D
To some degree, Sanders'
"no"
0
c c
e House to vote o-conserva ive emocrats as problem
is
one of
timingr present" on the rally. well as 'some Republicans. .
Continued on Page 12
... S a n d e r s
Continued From Page 1
Doug Boucher, the congress-
man's top assistant on Capitol
Hill, noted constituent senti-ment after the Jan. 18 vote wasmarkedly different than that fol-lowing another
antiwar vote cast
by Sanders before fightingstarted. Phone calls and lettersto the Washington office were
"overwhelmingly favorable,"Boucher said, in regard toSanders' stance on Jan. 12against authorizing Bush to use
military force. A majority of Democrats in the House - aswell as Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy - also opposed the presi-dent in that pre-war debate.But following the second vote,
when Sanders was in a tinyminority, the initial reaction of
Vermonters was much less
sym-
pathetic, Boucher said. He char-acterized the 3,000
to
4,000 callsand letters to the Washingtonoffice since Jan. 18 as roughlyevenly divided at first. In recentdays, Boucher added, the re-
sponse "has swung back toward
being more favorable to Bernie'sposition."
Anthony Pollina, a Burling-
ton-based Sanders staffer, calcu-
lated the immediate reaction
here to the Jan. 18 vote as 2-1negative. Many callers believed,Pollina noted, that Sanders wasnot supporting U.S. troops in the
Gulf. "But once we explained to
people that Bernie does supportthe forces there but is opposed tothe war itself, a lot of them be-
came more understanding
of his
vote," Pollina said.
Making Political Hay
Perhaps not surprisingly, the
director of the Vermont Repub-lican Party believes Sanders will be badly hurt by his Jan. 18 vote.
One real danger forSanders,
ac-cording to state GOP chief BrianCosgrove, is that he will now beseen by many Vermon ters as thesort of politician who can't be
trusted to maintain a consistentposition. ."At
first,"
Cosgrove
sa.ld,
"Bernie was in favor of
sendingtroops there, but then he gotquite a bit of heat from his coreconstituency, and so he changed
his
position."
But that turnaround is
"notcompletely illogical," said stateSen. John McClaughry, a lead-
ing conservative in the Vermont
Republican Party. Circumstan-
ces themselves changed,
Me-
Claughry observed, with Bushacting in November to shift U.S.forces in the Gulf from a defen-
sive to an offensive footing.
Sanders should not be faulted,he argued, for taking a dilTerentstand after so profound a changein U.S. strategy.
At the same time, however,
McClaughry contended that
"many thousands of moderateswho voted for Bernie will nowsay,
'He'a
not representing
out
views on this
issue."
Up
to
one-third of Sanders' supporters in November could be alTected inthis way, McClaughry estimated.
AShort Honeymoon
Vermonters strongly opposed to gun control may be the section
of Sanders'
coali
tion most es-
tranged by his Jan. 18 vote. Anunknown but probably signifi-cant number ofgun owners backed
Sanders in November
out ofrage
over what they viewed as a
betrayal on this issue by former Congressman Peter Smith.
"Naturally,
we're disgusted
with [Sanders'] votes on the
Gulf',"
declared Westford farmerHarry Montague, a member of
the National Rille Association.Montague said he cast a ballot
for Sanders in November solely
as a means of getting rid of
Smith.
"Bernie
Sanders was
sent down there forjust one pur- pose _ to replace Smith. And nOWthat he's served that purpose,we'll have no further use for him,regardless of what he does or
doesn't do in Congress," Mon-
tague added. -
pockets OfSupport
Members of Vermont veter-
ans' organizations might
a~so
b.eexpected toresent Sanders pOSI-
tion on the troop-support resolu-tion. But few members ofat leastone Veterans of Foreign War post feel vehemen tly o,? this
matter, according to WIlham
Verrinder of the MiddleburyVFW.
III
didn't like Bernie's vote atall
011
the Gulf,"said
Verrind~r)
who served two tours of duty
In
Vietnam. "But I still feel OK
about him being our con-gressman. He's a lotbetter in my
book than Peter Smith."Another VFW activist at aBurlington-area post had a
similar assessment. lilt might besurprising to you," said hisKorean war veteran,
"that
evenin an organization like this thereare a certain percentage of peo-ple who were against it evenbefore the war started." The vet-eran, who requested anonymity,
said he had voted for Sanders in
November and does not nowregret having done so.
"It's mind- boggling to some of us that hewouldn't support the troops, but
we knew what he was about
before he got down there."University of Vermont politi-
cal scientist Garrison Nelson
believes the Republicans will"clearly
try to run against Ber-nie on this." Nelson doubts, how-ever, that such a tack will provesuccessful.
"People
hardly ever'vote for Congress on a foreign-policy basis," he says.
"And
theyalso don't follow reprisal votingpatterns. They seldom use a vote
as
away ofgetting even
with
some-one who's displeased them." _