RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

He was in right place, at right time in history

Bob Stafford was the last of the old-time Vermont politicians who climbed the ladder of political offices in the expected way. His was a most amazing journey, though, during which he evolved from one of the most conservative-hawkish politicians to what he calls a Republican-moderate. His philosophical evolution mirrored that of the state, which moved at the same time from conservative Republican to liberal Democratic.

I once asked him how it happened, what prompted the transformation, and he replied that it was fueled by his own education as he gained perspectives of statewide and national affairs.

"When I was young and in the Rutland City prosecutor's office and then the state's attor-ney's office, I thought in terms of local problems," he said. "Then I got involved in statewide politics and began to realize that some things had to be dealt with on a statewide basis. The same process of personal education continued when I went to Washington and began to realize that the problems in many cases were nationwide – air and water, maintaining the military – and had to be thought of that way."

Someone once described Stafford's political career as the perfect example of that lucky person who was always in the right place at the right time. It started with his tenure as Rutland County state's attorney, which led him to become deputy attorney general, which led him to his election statewide as attorney general. While Stafford was serving as attorney general one member of the press dubbed him the "Golden Boy of the GOP," noting that he was young, handsome and articulate, and a war hero as well.

In those days the lieutenant governor almost always went on to become governor. But one day in 1956 Consuelo Bailey, who was the first woman lieutenant governor, called him to say that she had decided Vermonters would not elect a woman to be governor and so she had decided not to seek re-election as lieutenant governor to clear the way for someone else. She had decided that Bob Stafford was that someone else.

This was the way Stafford recounted the conversation to me in 1989: "She called me one night and the best of my recollection is that she said, 'Robert, I don't think the state is ready for a woman governor, so I am not going to run again. I'm going to announce that fact in about a month. Meanwhile if you are interested, you've got a month to get going.' And I did."

That month was critical because it gave Stafford a leg up on his opponent in the primary, the speaker of the House. He won election as lieutenant governor and then ran for governor in 1958 when Joe Johnson decided not to run again. That 1958 gubernatorial election showed the growing strength of the Democrats because Stafford won by fewer than 1,000 votes.

In 1998 I visited Stafford at his home in Rutland to catch up. I had been thinking of him because it seemed that everywhere I turned I ran into something named for him.

That winter we had had a devastating ice storm, prompting President Clinton to declare the state a disaster area under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. Our son was in college, so I had been working through the paperwork of the national Stafford loan program. My brother works at the University of Vermont, next door to what was then the brand new $10 million Robert T. Stafford Hall.

I wrote a news story and then a column about my interview and a few days later received a letter from the senator saying that "the article had come at an opportune time. A recent small business paper had referred to me as the 'late Robert Stafford,' your article proved the paper's statement to be a gross exaggeration."

The interview I had with Sen. Stafford that afternoon made some big news, with Stafford's comment that he didn't really think Jack McMullen, a newcomer to the state, should be running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate.

As we talked that May afternoon, I asked him whether he knew McMullen. He said he did not, and went on to say, "I am bothered by people from another state or another part of the country with large sums of personal money suddenly moving to Vermont and running for office here. There ought not to be any sense that Vermont is for sale. I want to be fair to Mulholland, or whatever his name is, but generally speaking, I think it is more appropriate for a candidate for a major office to spend some time in Vermont and understand the problems the state faces before suddenly deciding to be a candidate for our top offices."

I instinctively corrected Stafford when he mispronounced McMullen's name, and at that point had no thought of using the mispronunciation in my story because I didn't want to embarrass Stafford. After I corrected Stafford, though, he continued on, explaining that "when you combine all the features — having a lot of money and suddenly coming to Vermont — I don't think it is good for Vermont for Mr. Mulholland to run until he has been here a while and learned what we are like."

And this time when he pronounced Mulholland, he turned the name into three long syllables — MUL-HOL-LAND — staring at me as he did so. I thought to myself then that Stafford knew exactly what he was doing: He was sending the message that the senior Republican in the state, a man who spent 28 years in the Congress, had no idea who this fellow was, McMullen, or Mulholland, or whatever his name is.

When I wrote my story (the lede: "Vermont's senior Republican statesman, former U.S. Sen. Robert Stafford, says Jack McMullen hasn't lived in Vermont long enough to represent the state in the U.S. Senate") you could almost hear the impact of Stafford's withering dismissal on the McMullen campaign. And throughout the rest of the campaign, reporters and others referred to McMullen as "Mulholland or whatever his name is."

Chris Graff, former Vermont bureau chief for The Associated Press.