New Politics Are Stirring Up the Coast

It’s a stirring comment on the sterility of what passes for political debate in this country in 1998 that Verso’s new edition of “The Communist Manifesto” is well on its way to becoming a bestseller. Colin Robinson, Verso’s executive director, tells me that he’s already sold 22,000, and the bookstores are shouting for more.

Set the robust clarity of Marx’s outline of the revolutionary program next to the platforms and programs of our two major parties and you can see why the manifesto is selling like hot cakes. Liberalism is in crisis, conservatism is in crisis and popular disdain for the pretensions of both parties is profound.

This is all to the good, if it means a shake-up in rooted prejudices and the emergence of creative new coalitions. There are some encouraging signs. Take, for example, the contest for district attorney of Mendocino County, stretching along the coast, three hours north of San Francisco, mostly rural, politically volatile.

Coming down to the wire in Tuesday’s primary are two contenders. The first is the incumbent, Susan Massini, a right-wing Republican who has had the post for a decade. It cannot be said that she has distinguished herself. She’s got a high conviction rate amassed at the expense of the usual victims and suspects--welfare mothers mostly trying to feed their children, drug-dependent thieves and alcoholics. She sought the death penalty for Eugene “Bear” Lincoln, and when the jury acquitted him of capital murder in about an hour last year, Massini charged him again, on lesser charges of manslaughter, refusing to justify her action.

Her leading opponent is an altogether more interesting fellow in the form of Norman Vroman, a registered libertarian, former cop, lawyer, deputy district attorney, deputy public defender, municipal court judge and, for nine months, an inmate of various federal penitentiaries.

Vroman didn’t file tax returns for a number of years because, as he says, “There’s no law that requires you to file a federal income tax return, and I believe the government should follow its own rules. It had nothing to with money. It was about principle. If the government requires you to follow the law, they must provide a law for you to follow.”

In 1991, Vroman was charged with felony tax evasion and five counts of failure to file. The judge instructed the jury that if they determined he had in fact not filed, they were bound to find him guilty. Sympathetic to Vroman, the jury acquitted him of the felony and found him guilty of a misdemeanor, for which he was given 17 months, of which he served nine.

From this experience, Vroman says he learned a number of lessons. The first was on the matter of jury rights. “The jurors came up to me after the trial and said they’d wanted to find me innocent, but felt they had to obey the judge.” They didn’t, of course. As any supporter of the Fully Informed Jury Assn. knows, jury members have only to consult the law and their own consciences. So Vroman pledges that “when I’m elected D.A., I’ll inform judges I want the fully informed jury instruction given in every criminal case, meaning the jury has the option of either following the law as the judge instructs them or their own conscience, in which case they can set aside the law.”

Vroman says he learned something else: “Among people who get arrested, there are two distinct groups, and I don’t think the district attorney’s office recognizes that distinction. In one group are the criminals who plan their crimes and prey on society. In the other group are the law breakers--the citizens stumbling along in life who somehow run afoul of the law. . . . I will have no mercy on criminals. The law breakers would be approached with the focus of making them aware of what caused them to run afoul of the law and prevent that from happening again.”

The third lesson Vroman learned is that, for him at least, right now the prudent course is to file a federal tax return: “I fought the battle and I lost. I’m not going let them hit me again.”

He says that for every voter affronted by his tax conviction, there are five who admire him for standing up to the feds. Vroman has built a solid coalition, from the National Rifle Assn. at one end to supporters of medical marijuana use at the other. Greens like his promise to go after corporate polluters and ravagers of nature. Even in legal circles in Ukiah, he has supporters who know him as a capable lawyer. Of course, there are liberal Democrats frightened of his libertarian populism and perturbed by his stand on juries, guns and taxes. There are Republicans who fear him as unpredictable (constitutional radicals tend to be). But that’s what makes Vroman exciting and, one hopes, an augury of political change. He’s got a decent shot at it.