Babe Ruth
FERGUSON, ANDREW
Babe Ruth Republican governor hopeful Ruth Dwyer tries to take back Vermont. BY ANDREW FERGUSON Burlington, Vermont Ruth Dwyer, the Republican candidate for governor of Vermont, spent the last...
...So I did some research...
...Thirty percent...
...And her mother says, 'She just finished first grade and they're holding her back because she can't read...
...She . . . spreads hate wherever she goes...
...Too late...
...The eerily prescient subhead reads: "Get 225,000 counter-culturalists to settle in the Green Mountain State and exercise their franchise—and you've begun a unique social experiment...
...There she developed a solid grounding in the conservative credo: school choice, regulatory reform, tax cuts, free-market health care reform...
...Dwyer said the other day...
...Act 60 effectively ended local control of schools and concentrated education policy in the capital of Montpelier...
...It was a good day...
...The reformers and uplifters finally overplayed their hand this spring, however...
...Can I govern...
...Contributing to the populist unrest is a vast, rococo edifice of environmental regulation built up over many years, likewise centralized in Montpe-lier...
...The barnstorming tour was over and she was relaxing in the club car as the train rolled back toward Burlington...
...she asked last week, repeating a question that often comes up...
...Again under mandate from the busy-busy-busy state supreme court, the legislature took a hurried eight weeks to write and pass a law legalizing, in all but name, same-sex marriage...
...There's not much percentage in it for her as a candidate, and besides, she says, "you get so sick of being called hatemonger, homophobe, all that...
...They say, How do you find common ground, when the state's so divided...
...Her marriage—to a local vet-erinarian—recently ended in divorce...
...In this unforgiving political environment, Mrs...
...The urge to reform has also invaded Vermont's classrooms—more here perhaps than in other states...
...She thinks she's stupid.' "Now, I know she's not stupid...
...She is also unflappable, which will come in handy over the next month in a state where a large segment of the population is intent on flapping her, if that's the phrase...
...Don't say I said that...
...But it was the education crisis that brought her into politics, in the early '90s...
...Her campaign slogan is "Listen to the People," which in present-day Vermont doesn't sound at all like boilerplate...
...I wasn't the one who tried to shove civil unions down everybody's throat...
...Polls show a solid majority of Vermonters disapprove of the "civil unions" law, disapprove of the way it was rushed through the legislature, and disapprove of the legislature that rushed it through...
...Dwyer will shift into overdrive...
...Johnsbury businessman who's the Republican candidate for state auditor...
...The websites will bristle, the hecklers will foam and froth, the editorial board of the Rutland Herald may very well have a collective aneurysm...
...She propped her feet on an end table and took long pulls from a bottle of Budweiser...
...The overheated rhetoric now routinely deployed against Dwyer suggests that she's a Republican who might win...
...Ruth Dwyer is one scary woman," says one of the websites devoted to alerting Vermonters to the dangers of Ruth...
...So I ran for the school board...
...The establishment forces trying now to unnerve Mrs...
...Is it something in the water...
...Insurers have responded as you'd expect, by leaving the state...
...The state's deep-seated traditions of libertarian cussedness were beclouded with heavy infusions of social uplift and goo-goo reform, exemplified in the person of Rep...
...An admirer of the Canadian "single-payer" health care system, Dean has tried inch by inch to transform the state's system in its image, piling regulations and mandates upon hospitals and insurers, encouraging ever larger numbers of Vermonters (20 percent, about twice the national average) to enter the state-run Medicaid program, and shifting costs onto the private market...
...She's a basket case, she's tense, she's insecure...
...If people see that's what you're trying to do, then you've found the common ground...
...And test scores decline...
...There wasn't a conspiracy, of course, but there's no doubt that some kind of social experiment is well underway at the hands of the state's political class...
...For this you get called a Nazi in Vermont...
...For a century Vermont was arguably the most conservative, or at least the most libertari-state in the country...
...We want lower taxes, good schools, affordable health insurance...
...It's just I get so pissed at what they're doing to these children...
...And that's not all...
...The editors of the Rutland Herald, the state's second largest newspaper, concur: "Bigotry trails Dwyer like a dust cloud," they editorialized not long ago...
...Dwyer at 40 percent...
...Congress...
...Nine Republicans had voted for the civil-unions bill...
...No, it's something in the schools...
...It would have had no practical effect whatsoever, but they were just thrilled...
...Popula-\ tion dropped below 400,000, as young people sought opportunity elsewhere...
...For this you get called a Nazi in Vermont...
...Mostly these are well-meaning people," says John Hall, a St...
...Ruth Dwyer is a beef farmer by trade...
...She shrugged...
...I went through hell on that school board...
...It was, in the phrase you hear from one Vermon-ter after another, the straw that broke the camel's back...
...She prefers to frame the civil-unions issue as the latest in a long line of indignities that overweening, centralized government has inflicted on a state whose citizens prize local control above all else...
...You want divisive—that's divisive...
...Originally only a handful of towns were designated as "rich" and thus lost tax revenue...
...From a crystal blue sky the sun poured down onto hollows and uplands showing hints of gold and crimson, and as Dwyer emerged from the rear of the train to speak briefly at each whistlestop, a small but enthusiastic crowd would shout her name and wave little flags...
...But beginning in the mid-sixties an in-migra-tion of "flatlanders"—an alarming number of whom wore pony tails, drove VW minibuses, and listened to Quicksilver Messenger Service—began to repopu-P Jto^;- late the state...
...In the meantime the state entered a genteel decline...
...In the small towns of Vermont these days, Ruth Dwyer is a bona fide hero...
...Hey, I wasn't the one who signed Act 60...
...A gain of eight seats—easily achiev-able—would put the House in Republican control...
...She smiled again, sounding (and looking) less like the leader of a populist revolt than a governor...
...And she is—if there were another way to mention this, I'd find it—strik-ingly pretty...
...She's 42...
...For the first time in his career, Dean is drawing less than 50 percent in the polls, the most recent showing him at 44 percent and Mrs...
...The economy lagged...
...Sorry...
...There goes the homophobe vote...
...You know, they call me divisive...
...To anyone who inquires they will happily fax a 1972 article from Playboy called "Taking Over Vermont...
...Today there are three, and a couple of those may soon leave...
...The governor nowadays is Howard Dean, a Democrat who assumed office at the death of his Republican predecessor in 1991 and has been overwhelmingly reelect-ed every two years since...
...televised debate, hecklers interrupted her opening statement with shouts of "Nazi...
...Then this little 7-year-old girl, Kelly, who I'd been teaching to ride for three years—all of a sudden she can't ride...
...She's probably not a homophobe, by the way...
...Ten years ago there were at least twenty entities writing health insurance policies in Vermont...
...It is also a tortuous, highly intrusive means of wealth redistribution—Karl Marx meets Rube Goldberg...
...Look, it's pretty simple...
...And then...
...She walks in a parade, she goes to the Rotary—she's treated like a rock star...
...Five of them lost in the primary...
...Well, we all do really want the same things, we Vermonters...
...her right index finger was bandaged from where she'd sliced it the day before, hauling firewood...
...The political culture was remade...
...But it's a funny thing about people who subscribe to a social ethic of "live and let live," as Vermonters like to say they do: It takes a lot to get them riled up...
...The survivors face stiff challenges in November...
...Meanwhile small businesses are seeing their premium costs rise by as much as 40 percent annually, and the number of uninsured is rising, too...
...They have tied their hopes to a flag-bearer who has demonstrated ignorance, insensi-tivity and intolerance...
...pected surge first in voter registration, then in turnout on primary day...
...Anyway, I'm thinking: I've got a real problem with this...
...After two terms in the legislature she ran against Dean for governor in 1998, gathering an unexpectedly strong 41 percent...
...They're teaching whole language, creative spelling, all this developmental psychology bullshit—" She looked at my tape recorder...
...It's better than castrating bull calves," she said later...
...In the early nineties the legislature legalized adoption for gay couples, and the state government itself provides benefits to same-sex couples—reforms she sees no reason to undo...
...So I'm thinking, jeez, what's wrong with these kids...
...This year she stands to do much better...
...We're going to be the first state to control drug prices!' You could see the gooseflesh rise on their arms...
...Not surprisingly, as the reform settles in, the list of rich (money-losing) communities continues to grow and the number of "receiving" towns shrinks...
...BY ANDREW FERGUSON Burlington, Vermont Ruth Dwyer, the Republican candidate for governor of Vermont, spent the last Saturday of September on an antique train, barnstorming the western length of the state, from Burlington down to Vergennes and Middlebury and then on to Rutland...
...She's been a public figure in Vermont for much of the last decade, having served several years in the state legislature...
...They just want a government that will pay attention to them...
...As a rule, the progressives who man Vermont's press and political establishments tolerate and sometimes even compliment Republicans, on the important condition that the Republicans agree to lose...
...Bernie Sanders—known throughout the state simply as "Bernie"— the only (avowed) socialist in the U.S...
...This spring they tried to pass a law to control the prices of prescription drugs...
...That's really all they're asking," Mrs...
...It's not so complicated...
...But Mrs...
...You've got to see her out campaigning in the towns to get a real taste of it," said Brian Dubie, who's running with her as the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor...
...She lives there with her mother...
...Before last month's primary there was an unexShe favors school choice, regulatory reform, tax cuts, free-market health care reform...
...At a recent Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...They all hated me...
...From 1856 to 1962 every governor was a Republican...
...The principal, the teachers, the superinten-dent—they're all pro-NEA, they're saying, 'We're doing great, just give us more money.'" She smiled...
...To this day many Vermonters of a libertarian bent, the conservative remnant, suspect the transformation of their state was the result of a loosely plotted conspiracy...
...One-hundred-proof left-wingers in Vermont tend to regard Dean as a crypto-Republican because of his reluctance to raise income taxes, his less than hysterical support for the civil-unions bill (he signed the bill in private, declining to hold a public ceremony), and other deviationist traits...
...Ooooh...
...Dwyer for the moment looks serene...
...But her hands are a farmer's hands...
...But in the legislature they do see Vermont as a kind of laboratory for social engineering...
...I asked her mother what's going on...
...Of course, she doesn't need to...
...Goaded by an imperious state supreme court, the legislature in 1997 enacted Act 60, a property tax initiative that took money from "rich" communities and sent it to poorer "receiving" communities...
...She liked it okay...
...They have coalesced in the newly formed Progressive party, whose gubernatorial candidate, Anthony Pollina, polls at about 5 percent or more in statewide surveys...
...Overnight, stark black-and-white signs—Take Back Vermont—popped up across the countryside...
...They're reluctant to object even to people who won't leave them alone...
...On her farm, in the town of Thetford, on the New Hampshire border, she raises beef cattle and sheep, and gives horse riding lessons to supplement her income...
...Dwyer's campaign might seem hopeless...
...It turns out, 30 percent of these kids were being held back, year after year, because they were not, quote-unquote, develop-mentally ready to read...
...If no candidate reaches 50 percent in November, the election will be decided in the state legislature at the beginning of the year, at which time Mrs...
...Like most of the Take Back Vermont counter-reformers, she's a populist and a libertarian...
...Under him the experimentation has accelerated...
...Yeah, I can govern...
...This would be news...
...Her accent is part Vermont, where she has lived for twenty-five years, and part Long Island, where she grew up...
...Vermont Republicans have been infected with a desire to win," the paper cautioned, with a revealing choice of verbs...
...Dwyer's allies there may hold a majority...
...I'm living in Thetford, and I'm watching my tax bills going up by double digits every year," she said, "but it's to pay for these great schools we have, so I figure okay, we'll suffer...
...Ruth Dwyer, of course, objects to the civil-unions bill, too, but as de facto head of the Take Back Vermont "movement," she doesn't stress the issue...
...One man, one vote" reforms shifted legislative power from the small towns to urban B^"/ j if i centers like Burlington, home of the state university and many of the flatlanders who had arrived via the newly opened Interstates...
Vol. 6 • October 2000 • No. 5
