A Maverick in Congress? | Vanguard Press | Feb. 18, 1988
-
Upload
sevendaysvermont -
Category
Documents
-
view
216 -
download
0
Transcript of A Maverick in Congress? | Vanguard Press | Feb. 18, 1988
-
8/11/2019 A Maverick in Congress? | Vanguard Press | Feb. 18, 1988
1/1
A MAVERICK IN
CONGRESS?
BURLINGTON
W ith the formal entry of
Burlington Mayor Ber-nie Sanders into Ver-
mont's congressional sweep-
stakes almost certain, politi-cal observers are wondering
just how an Independentwould survive in a Congressdominated by the two-party
system.There's also the question of
how ef fect i ve a congressman
Bernie might he. Would an
outspoken socialist be con-stantly red-baited by the Cap-
itol Hill establishment, liberal
Democrats included? If Ver-mont's only House member isa radical outsider. will the state
go unr epr esented on key com-
mittees and be denied its fairshare of federal funds? Does
an independent lawmakerhave any hope of getting evena single bill enacted?
These considerations are
cer tai n to be raised by bothhis Republican and Democrat-
ic foes should Sanders makethe race. At th i s t i me, some of
the exper ts bel i eve Sanders
might just squeak through to
victory in such a three-cornered contest, but hischances could well hinge onhow convincingly he countersdoubts about his c lout inWashington.
Contrary to Sanders' asser-tion that a successful inde-pendent campaign for Con-gress "has never been done inAmerican history," severalprecedents do in fact exist.Congressional historians in-terviewed by the Vanguardsuggest that a third-party hope-
ful would be wise to examinehow independents have pre-viously managed to win andhow they fared afterwards.
The most recent House vic-tories by candidates not run-ning on "either the Republicanor Democratic lines occurredi n 1 9 80 . J o e Skeen won as awrite-in candidate that yearin New Mexico's second con-gressional district, whileThomas Foglietta captured aPhiladelphia seat as anunaffiliated reformer.
Both these cases reflectedhighly unusual local circum-stances, however, and each ofthese nominal independentshas since been re-elected on amajor-party ticket.
Foglietta abandoned his
Republican allegiance in 1980
to challenge both the official
GOP designee and the Demo-
cratic incumbent. He owed hisvictory to Democrats dissatis-fied with their party's standard-
bearer, who was conveniently
convicted on bribery chargesmidway in the campaign.Foglietta then caucused withHouse Democrats, gained aseat on the Armed ServicesCommittee (a rich producerof pork for the south Philly
Navy yard), and easily beat
Republican contenders in thenext three elections.
Skeen was actually a regis-tered Republican at the timeof his write-in triumph eightyears ago. In a contest com-plicated by court battles over
ballot status, he defeated the
Democratic nominee, a last-minute substitute for a de-ceased incumbent, as well asth e Iormer member's widow,wh o also ran a write-in cam-paign. The conservative law-
maker immediately joined the
Republican contingent in theHouse and was rewarded withcommittee posts of practicalimportance to his largely rural
district.
A precedent somewhatmore relevant to Sanders' ownpolitical situation may befound in the 1972 independ-
ent candidacy of Boston's Joe
Moakley.
Though a lifelong Demo-
crat, Moakley decided to
oppose his party's nominee,
the arch-racist Louise DayHicks, who two years earlierhad won the seat long beld by
former House Speaker John
McCormack. Hicks argued
that an independent would be
unable to work effectively inCongress, but a majority of
voters in th e Massachusettsdistrict disagreed. Moakley
was then sworn inas a Demo-crat and has since become oneof the party's fiercest loyalists
on Capitol Hill.
To locate a model of a full-
fledged Socialist in Congress,
it is necessary to tum backsome 70 years to the strangecase o f Congressman Victor
eo .g r. _ _ V It o M a r c a l l t o f t l oUniversity of Vermont politi-cal scientist Garrison Nelson.
While members of the two
established parties may not
rush to embrace a victoriousSanders, he speculates, they
would probably not ostracize
him, either. "The circum-stances and attitudes were just
so different then that Berger
shouldn't be seen as a realante-
cedent to Bernie," Nelsonsuggests.
Nelson, a specialist in con-
gressional history, thinks theclosest parallel to Bernie Sand-
ers, politically and personal-
time and place when affilia-
tion with the GOP often meant
being opposed to the Tam-
many Hall machine that dom-,
inated the Democratic Party.
Despite tireless service tohis constituents, Marc was acasualty of Franklin
Roosevelt's re-election land-
slide in 1936. Two years later,
however, he reclaimed theHouse seat from the Demo-
crats by running, with Repub-lican endorsement, as the can-
didate of a new progressiveformation called the Ameri-
can Labor Party (ALP).
Back in Congress, Mar-cantonio emerged as an un-compromising maverick. Heparted company with the con-
servative Republican bloc in
the House and sharply criti-
cized New Deal Democrats for
not going far enough in theirprescriptions for the country'seconomic ills.
Marc was re-elected in 1940
DD the ALP ticket by a hugemargin. By then he had be-
come an exceptionally astuteparliamentarian, applying the
rules of the House-usually
manipulated by reactionaryDixiecrats-e-to the advantage
of leftist causes. Though he
could generally count on hav-
ing only about 50 voting allies
in the 43Somember body, Marc
was able, through his mastery
of procedural details, to delay
passage of several pieces of
repressive legislation.He also managed to steer a
major reform measure through
a largely hostile House. Prob-
ably the most ardent civil
rights advocate in Congress,Marcantonio led the fight that
eventually resulted in aboli-
tion of the poll tax. This de-
vice had been used s inceReconstruction to disenfran-
chise black voters in the South.
The congressman also head-ed campaigns to stop an epi-
demic of Ku Klux Klan
lynchings.
The powerful Dixiecrat fac-
tion retaliated for acts like
these b y preventing Marc fromgaining a seat on the HouseJudiciary Committee. He was
also regularly red-baited,
inside and outside Congress,
for foUowing Moscow's lineon many international issues.Marcantonio denied he was acommunist, explaining by way
of analogy that he would not
become a nudist just becausecommunists were in favor ofwearing clothes. Years later,
Marc served as an attorneyfor the US Communist Party
as it came under attack fromMcCarthyites.
Charges of being a subver-
sive did not diminish Mar-cantonio's popularity among
h is constituents. For a t ime,the Republicans and Demo-
crats acknowledged his elec-
toral invincibility by enders-
ing him for re-election after
M a y or .. . . . . landon
Berger.
First elected to the House
in 1910, this Socialist Party
member f r o m Milwaukee nev-er got along very well with his
Republican or Democraticcolleagues. Indeed, they re-
fused to let Berger even take
his seat following the 1918
election. The former editor of
a radical journal had been sen-tenced a month earlier to a2(}year prison term on sedi-
tion charges for strenuouslyopposing US entry into World
War I.
Berger's conviction wasoverturned by the US Supreme
Court in 1921, but the House
had again barred him from its
estimable ranks. The voters,however, would not disowntheir crusading representative.
After being elected once more
in 1922, Berger was finally per-
mitted to participate in Con-
gress, where fo rs ix more yearshe continued to irritate thepower brokers.
Could Burlington's own
socialist leader expect similar
treatment ifelected in 1988?
Not liItely, in the opinion nf
Iy, would be Vito Marcan-
tonio.Born of Italian immigrant
parents in 19()2, Marcantonio
was one of tIie greatest fig-
ures in USradical politics. Hissuccessful and highly contro-
versial career began at thegrassroots in New York's East
Harlem in the 1920s, and re-
mained firmly implanted thereuntil his death in 1954. In
between, Marcantonio servedseven terms in the US House
of Representatives, made astrong race for mayor of New
York City, and proved con-
elusively that a progressivepolitician could stay outside
the two-party system and still
gain national stature."Marc," as he was univer-
sally known in his polyilJot dis-
trict, first won election to theHouse in 1934. A protege of
then-Mayor Fiorello La-
Guardia, the young congress-man was th e nominee of theCity Fusion Patty, which he
had helped form with the "lit-
tle Rower ....as laGuardia wa sealled. Marcantonio also ran
. on the Republican line in a
he won both parties' prima-
ries. But in 1950, as the "Red
Scare" reached its peak, the
two parties united behind asingle nominee. Aided by
three successive editorials inThe New York Times urging
his defeat, the Republicrats
finally got rid of Marcantonio.
He died four years later ,just
as he was about to run for hisformer seat as a non-partyindependent. Tributes poured
in from every slate as well as
from Puerto Rico, whose inde-pendence Marcantonio hadchampioned. Some 10,000
mourners filed past his coffin
in 24 hours, even as the Cath-
olic Church was forbidding
priests from officiating at his
burial. InCongress, several
members rose to say that,while they did not much care
for Marc's politics, theyrespected hisintegrity and val-ued his friendship.
Dismissed by mainstream
chroniclers as a gadfly or an
aberration, Vito Marcantonio
is not much remembered bytoday's progressives. Bernie
Sanders is, however, wellacquainted witb M arc's career.In an interview this week,Sanders called Marcantonio
"a very great congressman ....
Sanders agreed that, should
he run for Congress, he will
be attacked as a potentially
ineffective gadfly. "What the
people of Vermont would have
to decide,"Sanders said, "iswhether their interests arebeing properly served by the
435 Republicans and Demo-
crats who now make up theHouse. They'll have to deter-
mine if it wouldn't be better
to have at least one independ-ent voice speaking out on theirbehalf."
UVM's Nelson thinks that
l