across the connecticut river
Bernie Sanders’ nearly two decade quest to win statewide or federal office neared fruition in 1988, when he created enough of a plurality to cost the Democratic candidate a victory, ushering Republican Peter Smith into Congress.
Sanders mentions this race often when defending his mixed record on guns, notably in the October debate,
Let’s also understand that back in 1988 when I first ran for the United States Congress, way back then, I told the gun owners of the state of Vermont and I told the people of the state of Vermont, a state which has virtually no gun control, that I supported a ban on assault weapons.
In 1988 I lost an election because I said we should not have assault weapons on the streets of America.
In 1988, just to set the record straight governor, I ran for the U.S. House. We have one House member from Vermont, three candidates in the race. One candidate said, you know what, I don't think it's a great idea that we sell automatic weapons in this country that are used by the military to kill people very rapidly. Gun people said, there were three candidates in the race, you vote for one of the others, but not Bernie Sanders. I lost that election by three percentage points. Quite likely, for that reason.
There is no reason not to take Sanders at his word when he says he lost the ‘88 race on guns. Just as there is no reason not to believe that two years later, with the help of the NRA, he won the 1990 race - finally achieving his goal of federal office - on guns.
When Congressman Smith went to DC, he had an epiphany of sorts about gun violence after going to a hearing featuring inner city youth:
“I’ll never forget, [the next day] brushing my teeth, looking in the mirror in my bathroom and realizing, as clear as day, I’m going to have to look at this face for the rest of my life in the mirror, and I want to be proud of the person I see,” Smith said. “I went back and looked up the gun bills.”
Smith found a bill to ban the sale of some assault weapons. He signed on as co-sponsor.
The NRA’s revenge on the freshman congressman was swift.
A few days before Election Day in 1990, the National Rifle Association sent a letter to its 12,000 members in Vermont, with an urgent message about the race for the state’s single House seat.
Vote for the socialist, the gun rights group said. It’s important.
“Bernie Sanders is a more honorable choice for Vermont sportsmen than Peter Smith,” wrote Wayne LaPierre, who was — and still is — a top official at the national NRA, backing Sanders over the Republican incumbent.
Did the NRA win the race for Sanders? It depends on whom you ask. Smith’s campaign manager had no doubts: “The gun vote brought us down.” Reporting at the time called it a “decisive issue.”
In the one 1990 congressional race in which gun control appeared to be a decisive issue, Bernie Sanders unseated former Rep. Peter Smith, R-Vt., a gun- control supporter whom the NRA had squarely in its sights. Sanders, the only avowed socialist in Congress, voted against the Brady Bill.
The NRA`s political action committee pumped nearly $1 million into 1990 congressional races, including the Sanders-Smith race.
And more from the Washington Post.
the party of the majority was a bit unsettled when he voted against the so-called Brady bill, which would impose a seven-day waiting period on the purchase of handguns. It wasn't so much his position that upset Democrats but that he -- a self-proclaimed man of principle -- appeared to oppose the bill for strictly political reasons: The National Rifle Association played no small role in bringing him to office by campaigning vigorously against Sanders's opponent, Republican Peter Smith, who had switched his position on gun control.
"He can give you all the lofty reasons he wants for opposing Brady -- but it was strictly a survival vote," maintains a source close to Vermont politics. "He wants to get reelected next year. Period.
Sanders dismisses the notion that he "caved to the NRA." He offers a multitude of vague reasons for opposing the bill, not surprisingly ending with lofty principle.
One of the common refrains the Sanders campaign uses to defend his repeated opposition to the Brady bill is that Vermont is a rural state with a vibrant hunting culture.
Let’s go across the Connecticut River, then, into New Hampshire, another rural state with a vibrant hunting culture. One on which Republicans at the time had a stronger hold than they did Vermont. One political cycle after Bernie made it to Congress, New Hampshire’s largely rural second district elected its first Democrat to the House in 80 years, Richard Swett.
During Swett’s tenure, President Clinton pushed for an assault weapons ban. It had the backing of President Reagan, who personally lobbied for it. Still, the NRA’s power to intimidate made the vote a close one. In Swett’s own words:
Like so many of our greatest triumphs, the assault weapon ban came with a hefty price. It ended the political careers of many dedicated public servants, both Democrats and Republicans. After voting for the Crime Bill, I received death threats and the NRA targeted me heavily in the next election. It was not a fun experience, but I did not regret putting the lives of my fellow citizens ahead of my personal ambition, even though it ended my political career.
Across the Connecticut River in Vermont, Republican Congressman Peter Smith was the first to be targeted by the NRA. After saying he would support an assault weapons ban in 1990, he became the NRA’s only target that year. Their campaign against him was successful, and in Smith’s place, the then mayor of Burlington, a man by the name of Bernie Sanders, was elected to Congress. Sanders would go on to vote against Brady not once but five times.
Throughout the country similar stories played out, as Democrats and Republicans alike lost their seats to heavy spending and aggressive attacks from the NRA – all because they supported a responsible and necessary ban on assault weapons. The NRA used big money to defeat elected officials who dared to defy them, and replace them with people who would and did vote against common-sense proposals like Brady.
Swett, who was obliged to wear a bullet-proof vest because of his vote, looks back on that time and that vote in a manner strikingly similar to Peter Smith, the neighboring gun lobby casualty from across the river in Vermont.
I’m often asked if I regret my choice – if looking back, knowing how it would end, would I have voted differently. And my answer is the same every time. I wouldn’t change a thing. When it comes to preventing gun violence, no personal sacrifice is too great. Because this is a fight that is worth winning.
Another Democrat would not hold that seat until 2006.
What does any of this matter in the 2016 presidential race? The answer is it ought not to at all. It should be a sad chapter in the long history of how special interests pervert our political representation.
But it does, because the truth of this history contrasts with the prevailing storyline of the 2016 presidential primary, that one of our leading candidates is a man of principle, while the other is the compromised politician. Clearly this is not the case; gun policy was an acceptable trade-off for the price of a seat in Congress, where Sanders could expand on his core economic priorities in a much larger way than as mayor of Burlington.
And true or false narratives aside, it speaks to a second factor vital to choosing a president: flexibility. There are votes and policy in Hillary’s career that go against my current beliefs. In every case, she has evolved since then, publicly, vocally. Yet Bernie remains rigid on his five Brady votes and only just now is reconsidering his support for gun manufacture immunity from liability, a protection he did not extend to other industries, such as fast food. Even as of this writing he is not committing to closing the so-called Charleston loophole, which, had it been closed, might have prevented a massacre.
Sanders’ lack of flexibility on this and other issues that are outside the orbit of his core economic message is to me a big warning sign for both the inevitable, exponentially larger attacks of a general election, and of his ability to work with a divided Congress on getting anything of substance done. That the far majority of current and former elected officials in both Vermont and New Hampshire are backing Hillary to me underscores these warning signs. Finally, his refusal to raise money for Democrats that would be with him on the ballot recalls the pain of the 2010 electoral disaster, one which New Hampshire has only slowly begun to dig itself out of. “Political revolution” makes a nice slogan, but it’s not a plan.
