Outsider in the White House (25 page)

We also went to an agricultural region. There, we heard from small farmers who believed that they would lose their farms and be forced into the cities if they had to compete with American agribusiness. They predicted massive dislocation if NAFTA passed.

During the course of the NAFTA debate, various congressional members expounded on the need for American workers to become more competitive in the global economy. I was so impressed by their arguments that I introduced legislation that would make the president and members of Congress competitive with their Mexican counterparts. My office discovered that members of the Mexican Congress earned about $35,410 a year. If American workers were going to have to compete against Mexicans who were forced to live on $1.00 an hour, I thought that members of Congress should lead by example and lower their $133,644 salaries to the Mexican level. I didn't get many cosponsors for this legislation.

In late October, my office organized a large meeting in Montpelier in opposition to NAFTA. About 300 Vermonters showed up, mostly workers, farmers, and environmentalists, to protest the agreement. Dave Bonior of Michigan, the Democratic Whip in the House, who, along with Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, was helping to lead the anti-NAFTA effort in Congress, gave the major speech.

During the NAFTA debate, every editorial page in the state of Vermont opposed my position—over and over and over again. As the only statewide official who opposed NAFTA I was called a “protectionist,” an “anachronism,” a “tool of big labor.” Some of my political opponents even suggested that I was a racist and anti-Mexican.

But the media support for NAFTA went far beyond Vermont. In fact, in a nation which polls said was divided pretty evenly on this legislation,
every
major newspaper in America supported NAFTA. Every one. It was an incredible display of the power and unity of corporate America defending its interests. The
Washington Post
was running editorial after editorial, column after column, in support of NAFTA—and printing virtually nothing in opposition. Toward the end of the debate, the paper ran a huge story that showed how much in campaign contributions members of Congress who opposed NAFTA received from trade unions. Somehow, they forgot to run the story about the money that pro-NAFTA members were getting from corporate America.

The class divisions in the NAFTA debate were very apparent. Virtually every major corporation in America supported it, while opposition came from unions, many environmental groups, family farm organizations, and working people throughout the country. The political divisions created some strange alliances. On the pro-NAFTA side were the corporatist elements of both the Democratic and Republican parties, including liberals, moderates, and conservatives. Bill Clinton, George Bush, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Jerry Ford stood together with moderate Speaker of the House Tom Foley and the arch right-winger Newt Gingrich.

In opposition to NAFTA were progressives like Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader, centrists like Ross Perot, and right wingers like Pat Buchanan. In the House, the most vocal opposition came from a left-right coalition. On November 17, 1993, NAFTA won approval in the House by a vote of 234 to 200. One hundred fifty-six Democrats, 43 Republicans, and I voted against it. It is one of the great political ironies of the NAFTA debate that if George Bush had been reelected in 1992, NAFTA would not have passed. A number of Democrats who voted for NAFTA did so because they wanted to support a Democratic president.

Three years have come and gone since NAFTA was passed and the results are clear: a soaring trade deficit with Mexico and the loss of over 260,000 jobs. Polls now show a sizeable majority of Americans are opposed to NAFTA, as are an increasing number of congressional members.

In 1993 I spent a great deal of time fighting the carpet industry. What? The carpet industry? Let me explain: In 1992 a woman from Montpelier, Mrs. Linda Sands, called my office. She had an unusual story to tell. Seven years earlier a new carpet had been installed in her house. After the installation, the air in her home became heavy with a strong chemical smell. A short time later, she and several of her children became ill with body tremors, chronic headaches, dizziness, and respiratory problems. They went through hell.

Frankly, I had real doubts about this story. A congressman receives a lot of strange phone calls. But a member of my staff, Anthony Pollina, who had been talking with Mrs. Sands, urged me to take this seriously, and so I paid her a visit. This was my introduction to the very serious problem of indoor air pollution, and a disorder called “multiple chemical sensitivity.” Mrs. Sands, it turned out, was not alone in having been made ill by certain carpets. During one stretch, over 6,000 people telephoned the Consumer Product Safety Commission wanting information about the problem, and twenty-six state attorneys general across the country had petitioned this agency to have the carpet industry issue warning labels on their products. Both the industry and the agency were stonewalling the attorneys general.

In the course of my investigation I met a researcher in Massachusetts, Dr. Rosalind Anderson, who had developed a test with mice to measure the toxicity of carpets. A lot of her mice were dying.

I met with three workers in northern Georgia who had worked in a factory that produced carpets, and they told me about the serious health problems experienced by the employees.

I heard from physicians around the country who were treating people who had been made ill from certain carpets. For instance, Dr. Doris Rapp recounted her experience with school children: “Over the years I have treated a large number of children from all over the United States, many of whom could no longer attend school after new carpets were placed in their school.” Dr. William J. Rea wrote, “My colleagues and I have seen over 20,000 chemically sensitive patients over the last 20 years. Many of these patients have been made ill by the fumes emanating from new carpet.” And Dr. Aubrey Worrell, Jr., wrote, “I have seen many patients who have become chemically sensitive and completely disabled because of exposure to toxic carpet in their home or their workplace. It is my feeling that the chemicals coming from carpets, in many instances, cause severe illness.”

I discovered that, irony of ironies, the Environmental Protection Agency itself had removed over 20,000 feet of new carpet from its
own
headquarters in Washington after several hundred workers there suffered health problems caused by toxic carpets.

At my request, Representative Mike Synar, chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources of the Government Operation's Committee, held a very well-attended hearing on the health problems associated with carpets. The media picked up on the issue and it received wide coverage in newspapers and magazines, and on national television.

And my phone was bopping off the hook from people all across the country who had been made sick by carpets.

Throughout this entire process, we had been pleading with the people at the Consumer Safety Products Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency to do something. There's a problem here. Address it. Meeting followed meeting. Letter followed letter. Nothing happened. They were worse than pathetic.

Finally, after extensive negotiations with the Carpet and Rug Institute, the attorneys general, Mike Synar, and I reached an agreement with the industry. The manufacturers agreed to put a warning label on all carpets, place a counter display of the label in the stores, and commit substantial sums to researching the problem in order to produce a safer product.

In 1994, I faced my toughest campaign since winning political office in 1981. I barely survived.

I knew we were in for an interesting race when my conservative Republican opponent, State Senator John Carroll, opened his campaign by expressing concern about the growing gap between the rich and the poor. How come I always run against the only Republicans in the country who want to tax the rich and are worried about income inequality?

Carroll ran a very smart race. Overnight he went from a conservative to a moderate, and spent most of his campaign appealing to Democrats. He also benefited from the strong anti-incumbent, anti-Washington sentiment that was blowing across America, which gave the Republicans their first majority in the House in forty years.

I assisted his efforts by running a very stupid campaign—the worst of my political career. I allowed Carroll to define me, and didn't at all go on the offensive. He had been the leader of the state senate during a disastrous, unproductive, and unpopular session, but I barely discussed his record. When he put some slick ads on television and attacked me and my record, I allowed them to go unanswered for a whole month. In addition, my voice failed me over the final several weeks—making me sound tired and sick. My whole campaign was overly cautious and poorly executed.

At 11 p.m. on election night, political pundits thought Carroll would win. But overcoming historical trends, we did better than expected in small, rural towns that usually vote Republican. At 1 a.m. the Associated Press declared me the winner, and at 10 a.m. the next morning, Carroll called me to concede.

Susan Sweetser has hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on me. Cathy Riggs is the wife of right-wing California congressman Frank Riggs, a former police officer, a lawyer, and a well-known GOP operative. She has been listed on two consecutive Sweetser Federal Election Commission (FEC) financial reports as a consultant.

We first learned about Riggs when we were formally contacted by the official House of Representatives bureaucracy that she was examining all of the bulk mailings that my office sent out. There was nothing improper or surprising about that. If a member of Congress sends a mailing to hundreds or thousands of constituents, an opponent has every right to research those mailings. They are a matter of public record, an expression of the candidate's position on the issues, and worthy of political scrutiny.

Riggs, however, went a lot further than that. She contacted my ex-wife, Deborah Messing, from whom I've been divorced for over twenty-five years. Deborah contacted her friend and neighbor, Anthony Pollina, who used to work with me, and Anthony contacted me. Deborah and I then talked.

Clearly, Riggs was hoping to find a disgruntled ex-wife who would spill the beans on her former husband. But that was not going to happen with Deborah, who has been remarried for over twenty years. While we don't see each other very often, we remain good friends, so Deborah told Riggs where to get off. Her sentiments were reflected all over Vermont. Christopher Graff, the long-time bureau chief for the Vermont Associated Press, captured the feeling in the state in a September 19 article under the headline “Vermonters Hold Their Own View on Fair Play in Politics”:

Vermonters, grasping sometimes desperately to the belief and hope their state is different, have a unique criteria to judge people, places, and proposals. “That's just not Vermont,” is the oft-heard refrain, with the variation “That's so un-Vermont-like.”

Things and ways that fit well elsewhere just seem inappropriate for Vermont. It may be as concrete as a Wal-Mart or as ambiguous as a neighbor's airs. The judgment is very subjective, but the verdict always deeply felt.

This is especially true in politics. What may be considered fair and proper in other states leaves Vermonters apoplectic. Campaign ads that even hint of criticism of an opponent are harshly condemned as mudslinging in Vermont, while they would be considered upliftingly positive in most other states.

It is against this background that Vermonters viewed Susan Sweetser's hiring of a private eye to probe Sanders' background. Such a hiring would not even gain a passing mention in most states these days. It is accepted practice. Cathy Riggs is a rising star in the ranks of Republican “opposition researchers.”

She says her background as an ex-cop, a law school graduate and wife of a congressman gives her an edge in political probing. And she said in a newspaper interview this past week that she checks everything. “I'm very thorough. I do a total, complete package,” she said. “Contacting an ex-wife is just something on my checklist.”

But clearly it is not on the checklist of Vermonters. Riggs' call to Sanders' ex-wife was viewed in Vermont as crossing the line. It's not fair play. It's not Vermont-like.

And what was especially un-Vermont-like was the reaction of the Sweetser campaign. Instead of talking to their own investigator to find out whether she had called Sanders' ex-wife, the campaign officials put the burden of proof on the ex-wife, a woman who had worked for 25 years to maintain her privacy.

The story of the hiring of Riggs came out on Wednesday. The Sweetser campaign spent most of Wednesday night and all day Thursday denouncing the story, calling it a fabrication and saying it was merely hearsay.

The campaign kept insisting that since the only source of the fact Riggs had called Sanders' ex-wife was Sanders, the story was suspect. The campaign spokeswoman spent Thursday saying, “All of this is innuendo and hearsay. We would like Bernie's ex-wife to come forward.”

Deborah Messing of Middlesex, who was divorced from Sanders more than 25 years ago, was reluctant to talk to the media on Wednesday, but when contacted again on Thursday, as the Sweetser campaign was casting doubt on the story, she agreed to be interviewed and have her name used.

It was a few hours later that Sweetser finally talked to Riggs and found out the telephone call had been made. Sweetser said she could not condone such a call. But by then, Deborah Messing had been dragged into the spotlight.

My campaign always does research on our opponent's public record. Needless to say, however, we have never hired a private detective to dig up dirt. It is a sad comment on the tenor of national politics that Cathy Riggs, responding to a piece about our refusal to probe my opponent's private life, “scoffed at Sanders' claim. ‘Everyone does research,' she said. ‘He's full of it.'”