Small town provokes big outrage
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In Vermont, vote to impeach president spurs backlash
By Jenna Russell
Boston Globe Staff
March 18, 2006
NEWFANE, Vt. -- The protest unfolded in a white meeting house on one of the prettiest town commons in Vermont. The debate at the Town Meeting was by all accounts unfailingly polite. And when the secret ballots were counted, residents of this tiny resort town had voted 121 to 29 to impeach President Bush.
The roomful of rural neighbors expected a reaction. But none of them thought their small act of dissent would provoke national outrage.
Angry calls and e-mails flooded Newfane, population 1,680, the next day. One critic sent a mock thank-you note, signed ''Usama Bin Ladin," that applauded the town for its help in ''bringing down" America. Some regular guests of the picturesque, 175-year-old Four Columns Inn notified its owners that they would never visit again.
''Shame on you," one caller said on the town clerk's voicemail. ''A little Socialist town like yourself is a disgrace to America."
Three years into the war in Iraq, with the president's approval rating at an all-time low of 34 percent last month, protests against the Bush administration are mostly small and scattered, even in the most liberal outposts.
Many Newfane residents objected to the impeachment vote, saying it did not represent the town, and was not worth the embarrassment and potential economic damage in lost tourist dollars.
Vermont has a national reputation as a hotbed of progressive sentiment. It was the first state to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples, and its only congressman, US Representative Bernard Sanders, is an Independent who describes himself as a socialist. Town meetings in the state have, in the past, reached beyond local affairs to vote on such weighty matters as reducing nuclear weapons. In March 1974, at least one Vermont town meeting voted to impeach then-President Richard M. Nixon -- an action that also attracted national attention.
But not everyone in the Green Mountain State approves of sweeping political statements by small towns. When Newfane's Town Meeting called for impeachment this month, the first of five Vermont towns to approve similar resolutions, many residents felt the moves unfairly cast the entire state against the president, and would ultimately prove damaging to Vermont's reputation.
''I think it hurts the state," said Lenore Salzbrunn, the president of the Newfane Business Association. ''We need to stop adding to the negative news about Vermont."
She said 68 senior citizens who had planned a bus tour of the area, and at least seven other out-of-staters, had sent word that they would cancel plans to visit, in protest.
Other Newfane residents noted that 150 people, or fewer than 12 percent of voters, had weighed in on the impeachment proposal, although the entire town was vilified in the backlash.
''I don't think it was the right time or place to bring up the issue," Newfane town clerk Janice Litchfield said. ''I hate to have anything taint our town."
The Newfane Town Meeting vote asked Sanders to file articles of impeachment. Sanders, who is running for the US Senate, said in a statement the day after the vote that he understood the sentiment of the voters, but since Republicans control both the House and Senate, ''it would be impractical to talk about impeachment."
Partly in response to the town meeting votes, however, Sanders signed onto a House bill that calls for a bipartisan investigation of the president's actions to determine if there are grounds for impeachment.
''Do I believe the Republican leadership is going to let it happen? No," Sanders said in an interview yesterday. ''But we should at least make those demands."
Twenty-nine of 201 Democrats in the House have signed onto the bill, which was introduced in December by Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat.
The current distaste for bold opposition to government policies is surprising given how much has gone wrong for the president, said James T. Kloppenberg, an American history professor at Harvard University. But it is not unexpected after years of effort by the Bush administration to ''create a climate where any opposition is characterized as treason," he said.
Dan DeWalt, the Newfane selectman who proposed the vote on impeachment, said he had not anticipated the scale of the backlash when he decided to bring the debate to Town Meeting. To DeWalt, a ponytailed musician, woodworker, and teacher who displays a running tally of Iraq war deaths outside his home on a muddy hillside near the Rock River, the vote seemed like one more way to push back against a government he sees as dangerous.
''I'm constantly trying to think of what I can do because I just feel powerless," he said. ''Town meeting is this democratic thing, and it seemed like a real opportunity -- instead of me writing a letter, this would be the town speaking."
DeWalt, 49, moved to Vermont in the 1970s and won election to the Board of Selectmen last year. He had no trouble placing the impeachment article on the Town Meeting agenda; of the first 82 people he asked to sign his petition, 78 agreed, he said. Distracted by another time-consuming project -- starting a free local newspaper -- DeWalt said he did little to get out the vote or campaign for his cause.
He did alert three other Vermont towns -- Marlboro, Putney, and Dummerston -- which adopted his idea and called for votes on impeachment at their town meetings. Voters in all three towns approved the measures. A fifth town, Brookfield, also voted for impeachment.
Heartened by the votes in neighboring towns, and even by the backlash, DeWalt said he is encouraging more Vermont towns to take impeachment votes.
In nearby Brattleboro, Town Meeting member Dora Bouboulis said she plans to call for a vote on impeachment at her town meeting next Saturday.
''If a month from now Rockingham votes, and then another town does, it will stay in the news and keep the pressure on," said DeWalt, who got irate phone calls from as far as Alabama and Los Angeles after the vote in Newfane.
The Newfane Town Meeting was the first for Salzbrunn, who moved to Vermont from Stamford, Conn., four years ago. She said she felt compelled to speak up in support of the president, despite warnings from friends that she had not lived in town long enough to share her opinion. Standing up in the meeting house, Salzbrunn described watching from her New York office on Sept. 11, 2001, as planes hit the World Trade Center.
''I felt so grateful that [Bush] stood up and took on this awesome responsibility," she said. ''To me, it really is a grave issue because we're at war, and I would like not to have the enemy laugh at us."
If more votes are taken in other Vermont towns, it will not please Newfane innkeeper Bruce Pfander, who managed to woo back most of his angry regulars by explaining a fraction of residents had cast ballots.
''I'm all for discussion, but I think there are more effective ways to make change that don't risk other people's livelihoods," Pfander said.
Others in town hoped the movement would spread.
''It would be a beautiful thing if this was the match that lit the fire," said Adam Julian, 22, a manager at the Williamsville General Store.
Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com.
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