Vermont Split Between Pride and Partisanship

At the Whistle Stop Cafe on the outskirts of James M. Jeffords’ hometown, patrons listened intently Thursday as their state’s Republican U.S. senator announced his divorce from the party.

A waitress named Patty adjusted the radio volume so everyone could hear Jeffords’ voice cracking as he declared, “Increasingly, I find myself in disagreement with my party. . . . It has become a struggle for our leaders to deal with me and for me to deal with them.”

“You know what, that takes guts,” the waitress said. “He’s following his conscience. We like that here.”

But as Jeffords explained how the Republican Party no longer reflects the moderate principles that have guided his career, a couple who signaled Patty for a coffee refill was less generous.

“The word I’m thinking [of] right now is ‘traitor,’ ” the wife said. She was so angry that Jeffords was single-handedly executing one of the most stunning shifts of power in U.S. Senate history that she refused to give her name.

“I might bump into him again, not that I’d ever vote for him again,” she said.

Her husband stirred his coffee and remarked, “She’s pretty opinionated. Can you tell we’re Republicans?”

Just up Lincoln Hill Road, Bill Smith sat in the parlor of the Maple Crest Bed and Breakfast, a property that has been in his family since 1808. Moments after Jeffords concluded his speech, Smith was fuming.

“I’ve known Jim Jeffords since high school,” Smith sputtered. “His sister was in my class. I’ll get over this, but right now I have to say I’m feeling disappointed.”

Smith said Shrewsbury, a town of about 1,200, has traditionally supported Jeffords. “And I guess we still will. But I can tell you there are some people who won’t forgive him for this.”

About 100 miles north in Burlington, Jeffords was greeted with cheers when he said, “Indeed, my decision is about affirming the principles that have shaped my career.”

He expressed frustration with the GOP’s shift to the right in recent years. But he indicated that his decision to leave the party was triggered by his profound disagreements with almost every policy priority of President Bush.

“Looking ahead,” Jeffords told his audience in a hotel overlooking Lake Champlain, “I can see more and more instances where I will disagree with the president on very fundamental issues: the issues of choice, the direction of the judiciary, tax and spending decisions, missile defense, energy and the environment, and a host of other issues, large and small.”

Indeed, Bush’s election only “underscored the dilemma I face within the party,” Jeffords said. Instead of getting to help shape the Republican agenda, Jeffords said that, as a committee chairman, he felt pressure to toe the line for the White House.

“More and more,” Jeffords said, “I find I cannot.”

The last straw, Jeffords said, was the Bush budget proposal that called for a $1.6-trillion tax cut but couldn’t make room for funding a special education program that the federal government created but has for years failed to finance.

“That’s why I stood up and said, ‘No, we can’t give all this money back,’ ” Jeffords said after his speech. “We have too many priorities, education No. 1.”

The change caught many Vermont voters by surprise. Jeffords was elected as a Republican just six months ago and is capping a long GOP career that stretches back to his election to the state Senate in 1967.

The woman in the Whistle Stop Cafe here said she was particularly outraged by the timing of Jeffords’ decision. “This is something he should have done before the November election. A lot of us wrote checks to him, thinking he was a good Republican who would represent our party. We won’t be making that mistake again.”

State GOP officials also were deeply disappointed.

“I feel a sense of betrayal,” said Patrick Garahan, chairman of Vermont’s Republican Party and the state’s finance chairman for the Bush campaign last year. “It [will cause] incalculable damage in the short term for Republicans and the president.”

Garahan said many in the party believe Jeffords should resign from the Senate and then face reelection as an independent. Other lawmakers, including Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), have done so when they changed party affiliation. Jeffords has not indicated whether he has considered that option.

Another state GOP official said the party’s offices have been flooded with calls from Republican donors to Jeffords asking for their money back.

But many expect that leaving the GOP will enhance Jeffords’ popularity in a state that has grown increasingly liberal since its bucolic charm began attracting urban refugees.

The state went heavily for Democrat Al Gore in last year’s presidential race, elected a self-described socialist to the U.S. House and has only one other statewide GOP officeholder, James Douglas, the state treasurer.

Jeffords continues to outpoll Bush in the state by a wide margin, largely because he supports abortion rights, conservation and other planks of a progressive agenda.

Jeffords was elected by a wide margin in November, and “he’d be elected by a wide margin again,” said Paul Austin, 63, an engineer in Burlington.

Many in the state were offended by the White House’s treatment of Jeffords after he refused to back Bush’s tax cut. The administration did not invite Jeffords to a ceremony honoring a Vermont teacher and threatened a price protection program for Vermont dairy farmers.

Playing off the popular “Got milk?” advertising campaign, one Jeffords supporter held up a sign Thursday morning that said, “Bush: Got Jeffords?”

Jeffords said he had been agonizing over the decision for weeks but hadn’t made up his mind until Wednesday, when he flew back to Vermont with his wife, Elizabeth. The couple has long maintained a house in Shrewsbury, in the hills above Rutland, where Jeffords formerly practiced law.

As their plane arrived in Burlington, Jeffords was greeted by a group of well-wishers, as well as critics holding signs expressing their disappointment.

Jeffords said his seat has been held by Republicans longer than any other in the Senate. He repeatedly referred to the moderate legacy of his GOP predecessors, including George Aiken and Robert T. Stafford.

They “stood for moderation, tolerance and fiscal responsibility,” Jeffords said. “They were all Republicans. But they were Vermonters first.”