Liberals’ Hope Is a Vermont Centrist

As Vermont governor, Howard Dean was known as a buttoned-down and bottom-line chief executive. He fought higher taxes, cut programs over the cries of fellow Democrats and often sided with business when the choice was jobs versus the environment.

Which explains why many people back home scarcely recognize Howard Dean the presidential candidate, who has stirred liberals across the country with his blunt talk and passionate antiwar speeches.

“A lot of us laugh and say, ‘Howard, we hardly knew you,’ ” said Elizabeth Ready, the state auditor and a liberal Democrat. Added Bob Sherman, a Democratic lobbyist, “The Howard Dean I see running for president is a lot different than the Howard Dean who ... governed Vermont. He was a moderate.”

In an interview this week in his expanded campaign headquarters here, Dean said he has been candid about his range of views. Asked about his emergence as the champion of disaffected liberals, the former governor said he would leave the labeling to others.

“I am liberal about some things and not liberal about others,” he said.

Dressed in blue jeans and a green state police T-shirt, he went on, “I don’t characterize myself as anything. I think people need to make up their own minds.”

Indeed, as he seeks the White House, Dean makes no secret of his more conservative side. He boasts of repeatedly balancing Vermont’s budget, even though state law allows deficit spending. He touts his friendly relations with the National Rifle Assn., saying gun control is an issue best left to each state. He expresses mistrust of the left and right, describing himself as a centrist. “I have always been very skeptical of ideologues,” he said.

Still, it was his vocal opposition to war with Iraq and scorn for Democratic rivals he dubbed too quick to compromise with Republicans that first attracted liberals to his insurgent presidential bid. The question now, many analysts say, is whether Dean can broaden his appeal by reaching more toward the middle.

Dean sees no need; he only seems liberal, he tells crowds, because the Bush administration is so far right.

But Dean, who left office in January after 11 1/2 years as governor, has backed away from certain positions that could prove politically troublesome. In 1995, advocating a balanced federal budget, he suggested cutting Social Security, defense spending, Medicare and veterans’ pensions. He no longer favors those steps.

“You do not have to actually make cuts in things like Medicare or in things like Medicaid or even in defense. What you have to do is restrain the increases in spending,” Dean said last month on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” As for a constitutional balanced-budget requirement, he said, “I go back and forth on that.”

Circumstance thrust Dean into Vermont’s top job. He was serving as lieutenant governor, a part-time post, when Gov. Richard Snelling died of a heart attack in August 1991. Dean, a physician, finished with a patient before taking the oath of office a few hours later.

Snelling, a Republican, had pushed through a spending cap and temporary tax hikes to help balance Vermont’s budget during the recession of the early 1990s. Colleagues from Dean’s nine years in the state Legislature pressed him to abolish the caps, keep the higher taxes in place and expand social programs. But he refused, revealing a tightfistedness that persisted throughout his governorship.

As the economy improved and surpluses accrued, he paid down debt, trimmed some taxes and invested in onetime infrastructure improvements. In the process, he helped Vermont secure New England’s best bond rating.

“He kind of acted as a brake on the Democrats in the Legislature that were more to the left of him,” said Jan Backus, a former Democratic state senator. “He tended to be an incrementalist.”

Vermont is one of the most liberal states in the nation. It was the first to prohibit billboards along highways and to pass a bottle recycling bill. It claims the country’s only Socialist member of Congress, former Burlington Mayor Bernard Sanders. Given that backdrop, some of Dean’s fiercest political battles were fought with fellow Democrats over health care and his support for welfare reform.

On health care, Dean pushed through a program guaranteeing coverage to all Vermonters under age 18, an achievement he touts as he campaigns for president. But the program disappointed legislators who favored a more sweeping plan.

Dean also was on good terms with Vermont’s business community -- a relationship some considered too cozy. “His top advisors were all money people, brokers and bankers,” said Ready, a regular Dean adversary when she served in the Legislature.

While Dean was instrumental in preserving hundreds of thousands of acres of open space, critics say he was too willing to capitulate to developers and allow growth that contributed to sprawl and the pollution of Lake Champlain, Vermont’s natural gem.

“If the question was enticing new business in the state, giving them what they wanted or needed in terms of permits, locations, you could pretty much predict Howard would come down on the side of what business wanted, even if meant sprawling development,” said Patrick Parenteau, a law professor at Vermont Law School and a former state environmental commissioner.

Dean responded to such critiques by saying he was proud of how he “balanced the needs of a growing economy with the imperative of preserving our environment.”

On no issue is the contrast between Dean’s national image as a liberal and his reputation at home more evident than gay rights.

As he campaigns for president, Dean has won broad support from gays and lesbians for signing a bill that made Vermont the only state to give gay couples the same legal rights as married people. Dean says he put principle ahead of polls and stood up for what he believed in spite of the political risk. And he almost lost reelection in 2000 after the bill sparked a backlash.

But the matter of civil unions -- like the governorship itself -- was foisted on him by external events.

In 1999, the state Supreme Court unanimously decreed that gay couples were due the same legal rights of marriage as heterosexuals. Dean left it to lawmakers to respond, saying only that he would not sign a bill permitting gay marriage.

After a prolonged and fractious debate, the Legislature reached its compromise, coining the “civil union” concept that allows gay partners such benefits as inheritance and hospital-visitation rights, but not the same recognition as heterosexual marriage.

When the bill reached his desk, Dean signed it in the confines of his office, away from the reporters and camera crews gathered for a news conference. Critics bitterly quipped that he signed it in the closet. Dean says he avoided a showy ceremony to prevent further divisiveness.

To many in Vermont, the episode was pure Dean, a governor who focused on a few issues -- health care for children, a balanced budget, paying down debt -- and pursued them with few distractions.

“He was very much middle of the road, not at all amenable to most pressure groups,” said Philip Hoff, a liberal Democrat who served as the state’s governor for six years in the 1960s. Apart from Dean’s health-care program, Hoff said, “I looked on him more as a referee than an instigator of new ideas.”

But if people like Hoff are bemused by Dean’s reputation outside Vermont, they are quite familiar with his direct, let-the-chips-fall manner of speaking. As governor, he once accused lawmakers of “living in La-La Land” for proposing a budget he deemed too costly. In 1993, he derided welfare recipients, saying that if they “had any self-esteem, they’d be working.” He later apologized for the remark.

Despite such occasional miscues, Dean sees his candor as one of his main assets. And some fellow Vermonters agree.

One is Jean Pecor, who owns a horse farm in Williston. With her stallion Rossini hovering over her shoulder, Pecor said that, in her eyes, Dean hadn’t changed. As governor, he may not have taken positions on issues like war and peace, but he never really had to. His authenticity was the thing she admired.

“I mean, he may be genuinely wrong,” Pecor said. “But he is genuine.”

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Dean’s Vermont track record

As Vermont governor, Howard Dean made fiscal prudence and improving children’s health care the hallmarks of his administration. Some highlights of his 11 1/2 years in office:

* Economic policy: Dean repeatedly balanced the state budget, even though Vermont is one of the few states without a constitutional requirement to do so. He cut state debt significantly, boosting Vermont’s credit rating to the best in New England, and often overrode Democratic lawmakers who favored higher taxes and more spending.

* Environment: Hundreds of thousands of acres of forests, farmland and recreational areas were protected from development. Critics say Dean too often favored business over environmental protection and failed to do enough to remedy Vermont’s water pollution problems

* Gay rights: He signed the nation’s only law allowing “civil unions” of gays and lesbians after legislators worked out the measure’s details.

* Health care: He built on a state program to guarantee health coverage for all people under age 18. He also expanded child immunizations and started a program of home health-care visits for newborns. Some Democrats were disappointed that he did not push a plan for universal health care in the state.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times