The Burlington Free Press from Burlington, Vermont • Page 6

6A Th SuHiwgicn tVt.l Ftm fmn, Sunday, August 12. 1990 Vermont's 1990 congressional race Congressional contender Sanders is relegated to 'spoiler' status no longer I Jf 1 vb. A' in i. IWi ri. tween the campaign trail and City HalL This time, it's campaigning every day.

The result, Jane Sanders said, is a more focused candidate. "He's less harried," she said. Sundays are declared "days off" when the candidate tries to spend time with his family. The couple have four children: Levi Sanders, 21; Heather DriscolL 19; Carina DriscolL 16; and David DriscolL 14. Inevitably, though, Sanders spends time at home writing, planning and talking with people about the campaign, Jane Sanders said.

Sanders' campaign schedule on some days looks like a list of train stops with many of those days spent in Southern Vermont the area that cost Sanders the 1988 election. Sanders won in only 13 of the 90 towns along and south of U.S. 4. Both Sanders and bis campaign manager, Rachel Levin, are looking to their grassroots organization in the south to turn that around. With hundreds of volunteers already on board, the idea is to have campaign people in each town, Levin said.

"Our goal is to knock on every door in the state," Sanders said. Meanwhile, Shailor warns of a similar effort in the Smith camp. "Well have people in every town," she said, hundreds and hundreds of volunteers." But Smith has not been in Vermont on the campaign trail yet. Shailor is very aware of this, too. While Sanders likes to point to the advantages of Smith's incumbency, Shailor sees it differently.

"We look at it right now as a disadvantage," she said. Smith today begins his second week home on a congressional recess that lasts through the first days of September. Just before he arrived in Vermont, his campaign began radio ads to boost his "visibility." An ongoing fight Seated in the plastic chair in his campaign office basement, Sanders has his feet up on a crude, unfinished wood table. Toying with the idea of a win in November, he acknowledges that success at the polls would only mean starting over with a new audience. "I see one of the important roles that I would like to play as a congressman is forcing debate to the degree that one person can do it on MARK SASAHARA, Frsa Press Gembert Castle while campaigning in St.

Albans. The candidacy of Dolores Sandoval is also a key reason for the Democratic support for Sanders. The last-place finisher of a four-way party primary in the 1988 congressional race is making another bid for the party nomination. Virtually unknown across the state, Sandoval weighed in with single digits in the Free Press' Voice of Vermont poll. Democrats see this University of Vermont education professor and political novice as a weak candidate and many have chosen to support either Sanders or Smith.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Welch is in the Sanders camp while Paul Poirier, the party's 1988 congressional candidate, is stumping for Smith. win here it will be a signal to the White it will be a signal to the Congress that the least one state are totally disgusted with politics and they want real change. Bernie Sanders Bernie Sanders shakes hands with Davis said. Question of timing But Sanders' momentum grows as events such as the savings and loan crisis unfold on the national scene, and the Bush administration changes its position on taxes. Sanders has found real-life events fitting nicely with his familiar rhetoric.

"There was a feeling two years ago that people were upset with Washington," Sanders said. "I would say that people today are even more upset." When President Bush said, "Read my lips: No new taxes," Sanders said he thinks many Americans believed he would change his mind. "The American people no longer believe in our political system. They don't vote. They don't participate," he said.

"If there's one thing I keep hearing on the campaign trail people keep saying to me, 'Bernie, given 'em Davis agreed. "If anyone is in a good position to capitalize on the anti-incumbency mood, it's Bernie Sanders," he said. Sanders' themes in this campaign are familiar: a call for redistributing the wealth, higher taxes for the rich, more voter participation, cuts in defense spending, universal health care. Jane Sanders said her husband's beliefs stem from his family experiences. "He just remembers vividly (that) the only thing they ever argued about was money," she said.

Born Sept. 8, 1941, the younger of two sons of a paint salesman, Sanders grew up in a three-room apartment. He graduated in 1964 from the University of Chicago with a political science degree and came to Vermont in 1968. He wrote and produced filmstrips on political issues, and during the early 1970s he helped begin the Liberty Union party. On the ballot nearly every election year since 1972, he ran "educational" campaigns at first efforts to bring new ideas to the political discussion.

And, as he is apt to remind people, he has continued to amass more votes each time. His first four bids for statewide office were on the Liberty Union ticket: two runs for the U.S. Senate and two for governor.He went from winning 1 percent of the vote in the 1972 governor's race to 6 percent for the same office in 1976; he won 2 percent in a special 1972 U.S. Senate election but took 4 percent for that office in 1974. George Thabault thinks that, as time goes by, views that once won only hand-fuls of votes are becoming more accepta ble.

"I think more and more people are recognizing the validity of Bernie's message. His ideas are becoming scary to fewer and fewer people," said Thabault, Sanders' assistant from his City Hall days and loyal campaign adviser and writer. Focusing on the issues Given the closeness of the current race, Sanders acknowledges that every twist of events between now and November can swing votes in either direction. That was evident in his recent reaction to GOP questioning of his campaign employment practice of listing staffers as consultants rather than employees, a practice that allows the campaign to avoid payroll taxes. Smith and the state GOP called for an audit even though Smith's and other campaigns have used the same practice.

Sanders bristled at what he consid- ered a challenge to his credibility but agreed to turn over his records to state employment officials. In a marathon news conference, Sanders warned the media of such "non-issues" and how they will detract from more important discussion, such as the cost of the savings and loan bailout. Sanders said that if the campaign's focus turns away from the "real issues" such as taxes, health care and federal spending, he will lose the race. Democrats on board Another twist in the 1990 campaign was the flurry of early endorsements from leading Democrats. Sanders points out that in 1988, only Rep.

Andy Christiansen, D-East Montpelier, openly backed him from the start. This year, Sanders has had the public support of Democratic state legislators such as Sen. Sally Conrad of Chittenden County, head of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee; Rep. Michael Obuchowski of Rockingham, head of the powerful House Appropriations Committee; and Rep. John Murphy of Ludlow, the longest-serving member of the House.

Local Democratic committee heads and other party leaders such as Ron Squires, the state committee vice chairman and state House candidate, have also backed Sanders. If we House and people of at status quo From page 1A Meanwhile, Sanders is staring at another political fact in Vermont: Losing two statewide races in a row could spell idemise. Middlebury College professor Eric Davis compared Sanders' predicament to lone faced by Richard Snelling, Madeleine Kunin and even Smith during their political careers having lost one statewide race before eventually winning. "Conventional wisdom comes from lour experience with Republicans and Democrats, but generally speaking, if you xun statewide and lose two elections in a you're done," Davis said. "If Bernie loses, hell probably teach 'and write," Davis mused.

"If Bernie wins, Peter Smith will spend the next two years trying to get the seat back. I think Smith will be campaigning from the moment the election ends." Good forecast For Sanders, the forecast this campaign is the best he has seen. The Voice of Vermont poll done for The Burlington Free Press last month showed him virtually tied with Smith, each having a third of the vote with another third undecided. Sanders lowers his voice when he says Ithat the results aren't that different from polls his advisers have done recently. Smith's campaign brushed off the results and questioned the poll's methods.

Sanders also feels good about his ability to raise money. In 1988, Sanders for the first time pulled in a considerable amount of cash $325,000 compared iwith Smith's $424,000. Davis said Sanders' money gave him credibility he never had before. "Anyone who can raise that kind of money has to be taken seriously," he said. 1 Again this year, Smith is ahead, having raised $129,000 in 1989.

But for the period beginning in April running through the end of June, Smith raised $98,353 and Sanders took in $95,679. A national trend? With his campaign off to a good start, Sanders can't help but believe he is about do something that the nation will watch. Attention has already come from reporters from The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune I and Cable News Network. "There will be more national attention focused on this congressional election, I absolutely sure, than on any other congressional election," he said. "Because if we win here it will be a signal to the White House and it will be a signal to the I Congress that the people of at least one state are totally disgusted with status quo politics and they want real change.

"in a certain sense, this is the battle for new poltics in America the White House on down there is great concern that Bernie Sanders can win this election. Because if Sanders wins here in Vermont, next year there will be a hundred Sanders running all over this country. And that's what is very exciting and unique about this election." This, Sanders believes, will force Smith's race up on the agenda of the National Republican Committee, resulting in a significant boost in the forms of money, marketing and strategy. Shailor strongly disagrees. "I don't know what people are saying about Bernie Sanders nationally, nor am I concerned about that," she said.

As for the Republican national organization, Shailor said of Smith, "They want to see him back there, there's no question. But Washington is not going to come in and call the shots. Peter's not like that. That's wrong. We're going to run this campaign." Davis said he agrees with Sanders to a point.

He questions Sanders' emphasis on national attention but believes the RNC may be paying more attention to the race because Sanders poses a formidable challenge. "The Republicans want to do all they can to protect all of their incumbents," SAVE 50 ON EVERY LEATHER JACKET LAYAWAY NOW Save $50 on every men's womens Leather Jacket and layaway until Oct. 15th. Opn '0 Leather Express 1 4 J) it.Aj lit 1 I issues that the Congress would much rather sweep under the rug," Sanders said. And he knows the big changes he cries for won't hap pen soon.

"I have never said to anybody that if Bernie Sanders is elected in a year or two we would have national health care; we'll have a fair tax system; we'll have a more democratic foreign policy, we'll have radical changes in environmental policy," he said. "What I have said is, 'This is a campaign of hope. I believe we can make fundamental "The only way that real political change takes place is when the people themselves begin to stand up and say, 'We're sick and tired of what's going on. We want he continued. "So long as people feel that they're powerless, that they're incapable of fighting the establishment, that's the process by which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." Sanders also mentioned another project.

After leaving City Hall, he taught at both Harvard College and Hamilton College in upstate New York. It was then that he began writing a book about his eight years as Burlington's mayor and the need for a new political movement. "I would hope that if I win this I could finish it up quick with a happy ending," Sanders said. Coffin, the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said Sanders' appeal is one reason no strong Democrat entered the race. "Many of the things he stands for are the same kinds of issues that have been part of the Democratic agenda for a long time," she said.

A Democrat, Coffin added, runs the risk of splitting the same pool of votes and assuring Smith's reelection. Money was another Democratic deterrent, Coffin said. With Sanders and a Democratic contender looking to a similar pool of contributors, campaign dollars could have been diverted away from Welch's gubernatorial candidacy. Finally, the 1988 primary left a bad taste in the mouths of many Democrats. Coffin described the four-way race as "bitter and divisive" for the party and "exhausting" for the candidates.

Left with little money to put into the campaign for the general election, Poirier stood at September's starting gate at a severe financial disadvantage from which he never recovered, she said. Out of office Another boost of circumstances for Sanders is that he is no longer the mayor of Burlington. In both the 1986 and 1988 campaigns, Sanders split his time be- SPECIAL SALE 1 mMm i The lowest prices in years! I a fl -2 v. i v. 1 I'-, 3 ry mi I xn.

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