Vermont is an ornery Yankee New England state.  In 92 it gave Perot a hefty 23% of its vote, four points greater than the national average.  In 96 it gave third-party/independent presidential candidates (Perot, Nader, Browne, Hagelin, etc. etc.) a total of 16%, which was an even more impressive six points greater than the national average.  There is no such thing as party registration in this land of maple syrup, and it is a natural spawning ground for independent politics in my opinion.

    Senior Democratic Senator Pat Leahy is a traditional liberal Democrat.  He supports campaign finance reform, opposed meaningful entitlement reform, like affluence testing or raising eligibility/retirement age, and amassed only a 25% rating from the Concord Coalition in 1997.  He will be very tough to beat, and frankly I do not even think we should try.  A respectable showing, enough to knock him down twenty points or so, down from his 72% showing in 98 against the non-candidate candidate Fred Tuttle, is all we should realistically shoot for in 2004.  There is no obvious figure in Vermont politics poised to appeal to the centrist reform sentiment in this state despite the fact that third-party/independent presidential candidates won some of the highest percentages in the nation in 92 and 96.  So we will have to run a respectable unknown candidate for now, I believe.

    The junior Senator from Vermon, Republican Jim Jeffords, takes a results-oriented approach to governance.  Here is a quote of his which appears in the Almanac of American Politics:
 

"The country demands that we be bipartisan. They're more involved in solving difficult situations we have for individuals, more than they are with political posturing and all. So, that's me. I'm independent, these are all well-known facts."

    As for those issues important to ARP, Jeffords has a fairly good record on fiscal issues. He supported the Kerrey-Moynihan package of centrist Medicare reforms which got shot down in '97, which included such provisions as an increase in eligibility/retirement age and affluence-testing the distribution of benefits.  He also supported the bipartisan Chafee-Breaux balanced budget plan of 96, which included such provisions as holding the line on tax cuts and recalculating downward the inflated Consumer Price Index, which is used by the government to calculate benefits.  He scored an impressive 88% and 96% rating from the Concord Coalition in the years 95 and 96.

    While he has always voted against Kentucky Senator McConnell's filibuster of campaign finance reform legislation, he has always held back from actively co-sponsoring such legislation -- until this year.  Emboldened by the success of his moderate GOP counterpart in the House, Chris Shays, Senator Jeffords signed on as a co-sponsor of the McCain-Feingold reform bill in January of this year, and is now firmly in the ARP camp on both major issues of our platform, fiscal reform and campaign finance reform.

    Therefore it is my recomendation that ARP endorse and support Jim Jeffords for re-election in 2000.  In his last election, Jeffords was hard-pressed by Democratic State Senator Jan Backus, and won by only 50%.  This is a closely contested senate seat, and I am sure Jeffords will be grateful to any group who might make the difference for him in that presidential year.  In addition, the word now is that independent Vermont At-Large Congressional District Representative Bernard Sanders is thinking about running against Jeffords.  The most recent polls show such a race as too close to call.  In such a situation, a Jeffords victory in a close race where the ARP makes the difference might also serve to raise our profile nationwide.
 

AT LARGE CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

    Vermont, a small state, has only one Representative, who serves at-large in the House, and is the sole spokesman for his state in that body.  The current incumbent, Bernard Sanders(I) is a no-questions-asked, bluntly frank socialist, and is proud of it.   It was as Mayor of Burlingon that he made his first big political splash here.  Curiously, it was his conservative position on gun control (he opposes it) which basically persuaded the people of Vermont to overlook his radical left views, so there he serves, and has for 9 years, since 1990.  And in his last time at bat, in '98, he received 64% of the vote.

    While one can admire his independent spirit, and his readiness to ardently support an ideology that is on its deathbed in the rest of the world, there is also little doubt that his is an incumbency which screams for a challenge from a credible centrist coalition such as ours.  Now the Democrats didn't even try in 98; they fielded no challenger at all.  And, when you add in the fact that in Vermont third party and/or independent Presidential candidates received an unmatched 16% of the vote in 96, it becomes apparent that if there is any congressional seat which the ARP should contest, this is it.  In '00, this incumbent should definitely be one of our targets.  In this connection, it is interesting to note that at one point polling showed Sanders with a 1:1 Favorable/Unfavorable ratio of 45%-48% in this district, plus or minus 4%, a clear indication that he is indeed vulnerable.   At this point, there is no obvious figure on Vermont's political horizon who appears to be a viable standardbearer in this district for ARP.  However, if the current establishment Democratic leadership are folding up their tents and going away here then they may have left a significant vacuum, possibly in the person of Democratic candidates who were prevented from challenging Sanders.  This might bear investigating.  Additionally, it appears that there is at least the possibility that Sanders may move out of the House in 2000 to challenge Jeffords for the latter's Senate seat.  On those two factors depends whether our goal should be merely to plant the ARP flag or to go for an all-out victory.  If Sanders decides to stay put, our goal should be to win at least 14% of the vote, which would be sufficient to hold Sanders to 50%, assuming his support in 98 holds constant through 00.  If Sanders decides to move on, then we should go for an absolute victory, and look closely at the option either of running one of our own candidates or of endorsing one of the Republicrat candidates.