Vermonters ‘Spread Fred’ All Over Ballot

All during the fall campaign season, one of the most popular bumper stickers in Vermont read simply “Spread Fred.”

And spread him they did, writing in the name of Fred Tuttle, a retired dairy farmer and low-budget movie star, for offices ranging from president to high bailiff.

Tuttle, 77, is a 10th-grade dropout who has survived three heart attacks and prostate cancer, is nearly blind in one eye and is a borderline diabetic. He hobbles around on two canes because his knees are shot from decades of milking cows.

Tuttle’s rise to prominence in politics and filmmaking came in the last year, after his neighbor, filmmaker and sheep farmer John O’Brien, cast the Tunbridge farmer in the starring role in “Man With a Plan.”

It wasn’t a Hollywood blockbuster. The movie was so low-budget that none of the actors has been paid.

Tuttle “acted” as himself, a retired dairy farmer whose body and farmhouse are both in pretty rough shape and who decides to run for Congress because “I need the money.”

The “Spread Fred” motto crops up in the film, introduced in a scene where campaign workers spread manure as a gimmick.

The movie has been getting rave reviews as O’Brien takes it to film festivals around the country. Tuttle sometimes comes along, resulting in some novel experiences for a man who spent most of his working life at the business end of a cow.

In August, Tuttle and O’Brien visited the Chicago Art Institute. O’Brien said Tuttle was pretty impressed, commenting as he gazed at the paintings, “You know, I think some of these might be originals.”

Tuttle is a natural in a state known for its political whimsy. Its lone congressman, Bernard Sanders, is a socialist who just won his fourth term by defeating a Republican.

No official statewide tally of write-ins was taken, but in his hometown of Tunbridge, Tuttle got 5 votes for Congress, 2 for president, 3 for state treasurer, 2 for secretary of state, 1 for attorney general, 2 for state senator, 2 for state representative and 14 for high bailiff.