On April 16, 2003, George W. Bush visited the shop floor at the Boeing plant in St. Louis, Missouri. His 90-minute appearance drew several hundred men and women who help make the military's $48 million F-18 Hornet fighters, 36 of which were deployed during the Iraq war. The purpose of Bush's visit was twofold: to offer thanks to the blue-collar workers equipping US soldiers for their foreign adventures and to provide reassurance in an atmosphere of climbing unemployment.

One week prior to Bush's visit, the St. Louis plant announced layoffs for about 250 people. Already in 2003, Boeing had eliminated 5,000 positions nationwide, in addition to the 30,000 jobs the company cut in 2002. Bush's so-called "Hardware in the Heartland" tour, which included stops across the industrial Midwest, was part of a post-war campaign strategy to capitalize on the US military prowess demonstrated in Iraq. "Sure, he talked about his domestic agenda," a White House official told Time magazine concerning the Boeing appearance, "but there were F-18s in the background."

But the "Hardware in the Heartland" tour skipped a number of locales where thousands of hard-working men and women were contributing more than their share to the war effort. While the Boeing employees sat listening to Bush's remarks, just 50 miles to the northeast 265 workers in the apparel factory in Greenville, Illinois were far from idle. Averaging more than 1,000 desert-tan camouflage shirts per day, 194,950 of which were bought in 2002 by the Department of Defense and worn by the US infantry in the Middle East, these workers were not allowed many breaks. Equally harried were the 300 workers at the Kevlar helmet factory in Beaumont, Texas, who fill 100 percent of the US military's demand for battlefield headgear. A factory in Marion, Illinois also kept in rapid motion, soldering millions of dollars worth of cables for the Pentagon's TOW and Patriot missiles. Presidential plaudits were not forthcoming for these workers -- all of whom are inmates in federal prisons.

Captive Labor Force

Were it not for this captive labor force, the military could hardly meet needs ranging from weapons production and apparel manufacture to transportation servicing and communications infrastructure. US soldiers are well-equipped with guns to fire, clothes to wear, vehicles to drive, radios to call and maps to help them navigate, thanks in large measure to the 21,000 inmates working for Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons. In 2002, the company sold $678.7 million worth of goods and services to the US government, over $400 million of which went to the Department of Defense.

Government reliance upon prison inmates for war production is hardly new. Founded in 1934, Federal Prison Industries, also known as UNICOR, started lending a hand in WWII, as prison factories ran two and three shifts per day for military manufacturing, increasing output threefold before the armistice was declared. In four years, FPI produced more than $75 million worth of everything from aircraft to dynamite cases, parachutes, cargo nets and tents, all for shipment to troops in the European and Pacific theaters. As early as May 1941, the Atlanta federal penitentiary alone was producing eight to ten train carloads of war materiel per day. During the Korean War, 80 percent of FPI output went to defense, with sales reaching over $29 million, and the number of inmates employed by the corporation topped an unprecedented 3,800. More recently, FPI has been no less vital. During the 1990-91 Persian Gulf conflict, inmates produced belts, camouflage battle-dress uniforms, lighting systems, sandbags, blankets, night vision eyewear, chemical gas detection devices and bomb components. Even after the September 11 attacks, inmates took a role in relief work; their labor supplying virtually all the protective goggles worn by recovery staff at the New York and Pentagon sites.

No Ordinary Contractor

Over the years, FPI has grown exponentially, now ranking as the government's thirty-ninth largest contractor -- in no small part due to the quantity and diversity of apparel items it manufactures for the Department of Defense. The company has churned out more than 150,000 Kevlar helmets in the past 24 months, more than $12 million worth. Aside from the battle-dress shirts sewn at Greenville, the company is also a major supplier of men's military undershirts, $1.6 million of which it sold to the Pentagon in 2002. In that year, FPI made close to $3 million fashioning underwear and nightwear for the troops. Inmates also stitch together the vestments donned by military pastors and the gowns cloaking battlefield surgeons. If an item of clothing is torn in combat, it will likely be sent to the prison shop in Edgefield, South Carolina, where it is mended at a cost of $5 per shirt and or pair of trousers. In 2002, 700 prisoners based at FPI laundry facilities located in Florida, Texas and Alabama washed and pressed $3 million worth of military apparel.

Federal inmates also do their part to ensure that US forces are never outgunned. FPI factories produce a variety of components for weaponry ranging in size from 30mm to 300mm, the caliber of battleship anti-aircraft guns. FPI is there to help with more sophisticated hardware as well. To bombardiers and gunners in training, the company supplies practice targets and devices used to simulate battle conditions. In the lead-up to the 1991 Gulf war, inmates at the Marion facility and elsewhere ramped up production of cable assemblies for Patriot missiles. More recently, the company broadened its output to include the remote control panels, as well as the launchers, for the TOW and other guided missile systems. It is not just the technology that has developed over the years. Though there has been no formal and updated review, most military officials report that the workmanship of FPI's weapons parts has improved markedly since the early 1990s, when a Defense Department inspector found that FPI cables sold to the Army failed at nearly twice the rate of the military's next worst supplier.

In today's military, virtually all ground troops are equipped with small microphone headsets which wire them to each other and to off-site command centers. FPI sold $7 million worth of essential components for these headsets to the Defense Department in 2002 -- but this is only a tiny fraction of the company's massive business with communications procurement officials at the Pentagon. FPI has 14 prison factories employing more than 3,000 inmates manufacturing electronics equipment. In 2002 alone, these workers crafted $30 million worth of the wire assemblies that go into all types of land, sea and airborne communication systems. Inmates working for FPI also provide the Defense Department with thousands of dollars worth of services in mail sorting, and the company averages more than $4 million per year in printing services, generating everything from letterhead and envelopes to military maps, calendars and training manuals.

Unfair Competition

From Humvee repair to the manufacture of millions dollars worth of electrical cords for the Army, FPI offers a wide array of goods and services. But along the way, FPI has picked up a bevy of critics. One of the foremost complaints about the company stems from the unusual legal relationship it maintains with the US government. According to the legislation that founded FPI in the era of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the company enjoys a special "mandatory source status" which requires federal agencies to buy its products even if the same items can be purchased cheaper elsewhere. Many businesses claim that this special status gives FPI undue competitive advantage.

In 1997, this issue came to a head. After FPI doubled its stake in the military glove market over the course of several years, private glove manufacturers joined with a range of other apparel and furniture makers to fight the unfair competition. Supporting their outcry was the Defense Personnel and Support Center, in charge of most of military's apparel purchasing, which complained that FPI's products were on average 13 percent more costly than those of commercial companies. Eventually, a General Accounting Office investigation revealed a pattern of higher prices, slower delivery and lower quality goods from FPI than from the private sector.

Though problems remain, most Defense purchasing representatives interviewed (none of whom would speak on the record) report that FPI has cleaned up its act significantly, while the mandatory source requirements have also been loosened. In the case of the glove industry, the company agreed to avoid taking more than $7 million of the government contracts.

Still, FPI's relationship with the non-prison labor market remains strained. The company's driving purpose is to turn a profit in order to offset costs in the expensive prison system, while also bolstering prison security by keeping close to 25 percent of the inmate population as busy as possible. But with the prison population skyrocketing, FPI struggles to find enough new products and consumers to keep its work force occupied. FPI's competitors in the textile industry are in no less of a bind, with more than 200,000 jobs heading overseas since 2001. Increased trade with China, a country infamous for its prison labor, has decimated the industry, leaving many domestic manufacturers on the defensive. Imports now account for at least 70 percent of US glove sales. Since the Defense Department is required to buy US-made goods, it is one of the few remaining safe havens where glove and other apparel makers can retreat from overseas sweatshop and prison labor competition.

FPI's military glove production is not the only source of controversy. Skeptics also point angrily to the desert-tan battle trousers worn by the troops in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Out of the 1.3 million pairs of these trousers bought by the Defense Department last year, all but 300,000 were produced by FPI, which means that at least three out of four active-duty soldiers in the region wear pants made by the inmates of the FPI factories in Atlanta and in Beaumont and Feagoville, Texas. These sorts of numbers have earned FPI critics from a range of perspectives. FPI competitors, such as Propper International, point out that they use free labor to make the exact same trousers for the government at $2.39 cheaper per pair. Organized labor questions why the government should buy from a company which depends solely on inmate workers, while paying sub-minimum wages (from 25 cents to $1.15 per hour), skirting workplace safety standards and enjoying exemption from the payroll and Social Security taxes levied on other employers.

In 1997, FPI lost a rare battle when, due to the "volume and tenor" of complaints, it withdrew plans to begin making American flags at its jailhouse tailor shops. FPI had completed a thorough market study, and the bulk of its flags were to be destined for the Veterans Administration, to be draped over coffins at military funerals.

Meese Vs. China

FPI argues, and some studies support its contention, that its work programs not only help with prison security, but are also superior to old-fashioned prison activities like breaking rocks, since manufacturing jobs equip inmates with job skills they can use upon their release. Most inmates jump at the chance for a job with FPI, since it is one of the few legal ways to earn money while incarcerated. However, the question remains whether these for-profit programs have an overall adverse effect on the prospects for rehabilitation of prisoners. Where prison factories can turn a profit, there is less incentive to invest in more expensive ways to fill the time, such as counseling, drug treatment and literacy programs. In California, for example, where prison for-profit work programs are increasingly popular, inmate educational and vocational programs have been cut statewide by almost 20 percent, with a loss of roughly $35 million for prison educational spending and 300 fewer prison teachers.

Some advocates of for-profit prison labor, like Edwin Meese of the Enterprise Prison Institute, contend that programs like those of FPI have a huge potential to boost the economy. While serving as attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, Meese oversaw the implementation of stiffer sentences for drug offenders -- a major cause of the historic swelling of the US prison population. In Meese's view, if inmate work programs were reformed in the right way, they could avoid competing with free American workers, while beating countries like China at their own game. By expanding for-profit prison factories, but limiting them to the production of items that would otherwise be produced in foreign sweatshops or prison factories, the US could actually stem the flow of jobs and profits abroad. Critics respond that such plans drive wages down at home for free workers, while also undermining the potential for useful job training for inmates, since the majority of the repetitive and low-skill jobs which inmates hold are the very same jobs which will all be either overseas or inside the prisons by the time an inmate is released.

Politics Of Exploitation

FPI's military production raises security concerns as well. Some wonder if the Defense Department's over-dependence on inmate labor will dry up the nation's so-called "warm industrial base," a term referring to the small commercial manufacturers that specialize in stepping up production during times of war. They fear that as these small specialty factories disappear, the military runs the risk of being caught with its pants down if prison riots or inmate work stoppages should happen to coincide with future drives toward military intervention.

Inmates are often involved in highly sensitive work involving the physical safety of soldiers in the field. In 2002, FPI earned $12 million in sales of body armor to the Defense Department, and in 1999 inmates patched holes in $30,000 worth of faulty parachutes. There is no security screening to work in FPI factories. As an experiment, Middle East Report contacted three of the men convicted for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Two had not only worked in FPI factories, but also reported being compelled to do so. Mohammad A. Salameh put up a long legal fight before he was finally excused from working for the company. Salameh pointed out that since he, along with more than 29 percent of the total federal prison population, is not even a legal resident of the United States, he should not be legally permitted -- much less forced -- to work for the company. Ultimately, when the Bureau of Prisons released Salameh from the job, they admitted in court documents to having forced him to work for FPI. Officials argued that the compulsory labor was justified since higher-risk inmates were easier to monitor if they were kept busy. Under such policies, it certainly seems that the potential and incentive for sabotage of FPI's military products would be high. Ironically enough, it is such practical and security concerns which could eventually weaken FPI's grip on production for the Pentagon.

As the US occupation of Iraq stretches on with nary an "exit strategy" in sight, however, it is hardly surprising that the politics of prison labor are also nowhere in view. Neither the period of occupation nor prison production offers much in the way of telegenic triumphs for White House politicos to exploit. Around the same time that US troops north of Baghdad were storming Saddam Hussein's notorious Abu Ghraib prison (where, in another grim irony, the US is now detaining many hundreds of Iraqis), George W. Bush was winding up his "Hardware in the Heartland" tour with a stop in Santa Clara, Calif., to rally the employees of United Defense, builders of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. A raucous cheer ran through the crowd when Bush noted that the company also produces the Hercules tank recovery vehicle, one of which had played a starring role in the war's most famous (and famously staged) cinematic tableau -- the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdous Square in central Baghdad.

With American casualties mounting in Iraq, and little good news about domestic employment either, even the Bush campaign must understand that a reprise of such photo-op moments would be in poor taste. So the 21,000 inmate employees of FPI, despite their vital importance to Bush's wars, remain distinctly behind the scenes.

Ian Urbina is a reporter for the New York Times and former associate editor at the Middle East Research and Information Project.

"Word got around the department that I was a good Arabic translator who did a great Saddam imitation," recalls the Harvard grad student. "Eventually, someone phoned me, asking if I wanted to help change the course of Iraq policy."

So twice a week, for US$3,000 a month, the Iraqi student says, under condition of anonymity, that he took a taxi from his campus apartment to a Boston-area recording studio rented by the Rendon Group, a DC-based public relations firm with close ties to the US government. His job: translate and dub spoofed Saddam Hussein speeches and tongue-in-cheek newscasts for broadcast throughout Iraq.

"I never got a straight answer on whether the Iraqi resistance, the CIA or policy makers on the Hill were actually the ones calling the shots," says the student, "but ultimately I realized that the guys doing spin were very well and completely cut loose." And that's how Baghdad's best-known opposition radio personality was born six years ago -- during the Clinton administration. It was one of many disinformation schemes cooked up by the Rendon Group, which has worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations fighting the psy-op war in the Middle East.

"The point was to discredit Saddam, but the stuff was complete slapstick," the student says. "We did skits where Saddam would get mixed up in his own lies, or where [Saddam's son] Qusay would stumble over his own delusions of grandeur." Transmissions were once a week from stations in northern Iraq and Kuwait. "The only thing that was even remotely funny," says the student, "were the mockeries of the royal guard and the government's clumsy attempts to deceive arms inspectors."

The Saddam impersonator says he left Rendon not long ago out of frustration with what he calls the lack of expertise and oversight in the project. It was doubly frustrating, he says, because he despises Saddam, although he adds that he never has been involved with any political party or opposition group. "No one in-house spoke a word of Arabic," he says. "They thought I was mocking Saddam, but for all they knew I could have been lambasting the US government." The scripts, he adds, were often ill conceived. "Who in Iraq is going to think it's funny to poke fun at Saddam's mustache," the student notes, "when the vast majority of Iraqi men themselves have mustaches?"

There were other basic problems, too. Some of the announcers hired for the radio broadcasts, he says, were Egyptians and Jordanians, whose Arabic accents couldn't be understood by Iraqis. "Friends in Baghdad said that the radio broadcasts were a complete mumble," the student says. One CIA agent familiar with the project calls the project's problem a lack of "due diligence", and adds that "the scripts were put together by 23-year-olds with connections to the Democratic National Committee."

Despite the fumbling naivete of some of its operations, the Rendon Group is no novice in the field. For decades, when US bombs have dropped or foreign leaders have been felled, the public relations shop has been on the scene, just far enough to stay out of harm's way, but just close enough to keep the spin cycle going.

As Franklin Foer reported in the New Republic, during the campaign against Panama's Manuel Noriega in 1989, Rendon's command post sat downtown in a high-rise. In 1991, during the Gulf War, Rendon operatives hunkered down in Taif, Saudi Arabia, clocking billable hours on a Kuwaiti emir's dole. In Afghanistan, group founder John Rendon joined a 9:30am conference call every morning with top-level Pentagon officials to set the day's war message. Rendon operatives haven't missed a trip yet - Haiti, Kosovo, Zimbabwe, Colombia.

The firm is tight-lipped, however, about its current projects. A spokesperson refuses to say whether Rendon is doing any work in preparation for the potential upcoming invasion of Iraq. But a current Rendon Arabic translator commented, "All I can say is that nothing has changed -- the work is still an expensive waste of time, mostly with taxpayer funds." However, Rendon may just prove to be one step ahead of the game. If Saddam is toppled, a Rendon creation is standing by to try to take his place. The Iraqi National Congress (INC), a disparate coalition of Iraqi dissidents touted by the US government as the best hope for an anti-Saddam coup, has gotten the go-ahead from US officials to arm and train a military force for invasion. The INC is one of the few names you'll hear if reporters bother to press government officials on what would come after Saddam.

At the helm of the INC is Ahmed Chalabi, a US-trained mathematician who fled from Jordan in 1989 in the trunk of a car after the collapse of a bank he owned. He was subsequently charged and sentenced in absentia to 22 years in prison for embezzlement. Back home in Iraq, he's referred to by some as the so-called limousine insurgent and is said to hold little actual standing with the Iraqi public. Shuttling between London and DC, Chalabi hasn't been in Iraq for over years, and draws "more support on the Potomac than the Euphrates," says Iraq specialist Andrew Parasiliti of the Middle East Institute in Washington DC.

"Were it not for Rendon," a State Department official remarked, "the Chalabi group wouldn't even be on the map."

With funding first from the CIA throughout the 1990s and more recently the Pentagon, Rendon managed the INC's every move, an INC spokesperson acknowledges, even choosing its name, coordinating its annual strategy conferences, and orchestrating its meetings with diplomatic heavy hitters, such as James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. Not that the Rendon Group was the first purveyor of psy-op tactics for promoting US foreign policy in the region. In fact, some of the most impressive spin maneuvers and disinformation campaigns occurred during the Gulf War in 1991, the lessons of which are particularly pertinent as the US again gears up.

Most notorious was the work of PR giant Hill & Knowlton (H&K) (for which current Pentagon spokesperson Torie Clarke worked after she was an aide to John McCain and Bush's dad). Subsidized by the Kuwaiti royal family, H&K dedicated 119 executives in 12 offices across the country to the job of drumming up support within the United States for the 1991 war. It was an all-out grassroots blitz: distributing tens of thousands of "Free Kuwait" T-shirts and bumper stickers at colleges across the US and setting up observances such as National Kuwait Day and National Student Information Day. H&K also mailed 200,000 copies of a book titled The Rape of Kuwait to American troops stationed in the Middle East. The firm also massaged reporters, arranging interviews with handpicked Kuwaiti emissaries and dispatching reams of footage of burning wells and oil-slicked birds washed ashore.

But nothing quite compared to H&K's now infamous "baby atrocities" campaign. After convening a number of focus groups to try to figure out which buttons to press to make the public respond, H&K determined that presentations involving the mistreatment of infants, a tactic drawn straight from W R Hearst's playbook of the Spanish-American War, received the best reaction.

So on October 10, 1990, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a hearing on Capitol Hill at which H&K, in coordination with California Democrat Tom Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter, introduced a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah. (Purportedly to safeguard against Iraqi reprisals, Nayirah's full name was not disclosed.) Weeping and shaking, the girl described a horrifying scene in Kuwait City. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," she testified. "While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns and go into the room where babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die." Allegedly, 312 infants were removed.

The tale got wide circulation, even winding up on the floor of the United Nations Security Council. Before Congress gave the green light to go to war, seven of the main pro-war senators brought up the baby-incubator allegations as a major component of their argument for passing the resolution to unleash the bombers. Ultimately, the motion for war passed by a narrow five-vote margin.

Only later was it discovered that the testimony was untrue. H&K had failed to reveal that Nayirah was not only a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, but also that her father, Saud Nasir al-Sabah, was Kuwait's ambassador to the US. H&K had prepped Nayirah in her presentation, according to Harper's publisher John R MacArthur, in his book Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War. Of the seven other witnesses who stepped to the podium that day, five had been prepped by H&K and had used false names. When human rights organizations investigated later, they could not find that Nayirah had any connection to the hospital. Amnesty International, among those originally duped, eventually issued an embarrassing retraction.

When asked if it acknowledges the incubator story as a deception, H&K's media liaison, Suzanne Laurita, only responded: "The company has nothing to say on this matter." Pushed further on whether such deception was considered part of the public relations industry, she reiterated, "Please know again that this falls into the realm that the agency has no wish to confirm, deny or comment on." Years later, Scowcroft, the national security adviser at the time, concluded that the tale was surely "useful in mobilizing public opinion".

H&K's baby-atrocity routine really won over the hearts, but for the minds of realpolitik skeptics the Pentagon had other methods. To sway them, the Pentagon flooded the major media outlets with reports of a top-secret satellite image that allegedly showed 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks amassed at the Iraqi-Saudi border.

Once again, this was misinformation. When the US military refused to hand the satellite image over to the press, several investigative journalists opted to purchase commercially available, but equally detailed, satellite images on the open market. Shots of the exact same region, during the same time frame, revealed no Iraqi soldiers anywhere near the border. The journalists hired a coterie of experts, including a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who specialized in desert warfare imagery, and the verdict was the same: no Iraqis, just desert and a lot of US jet fighters sitting wing-tip to wing-tip at nearby Saudi bases.

But by the time those questions began circulating about the Pentagon's supposed satellite image and the web of decisions being spun around it, the US military was already set on course. Once again, a similar mobilization is in high gear, with skeptical questions lagging behind.

Not available for syndication. ©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.

While the impetus to remove big money from politics is weak nationally, it has accelerated on the state level. Maine, Massachusetts and Arizona have all passed campaign finance reform laws, and North Carolina, Missouri and Oregon may soon follow. Most strikingly, in Vermont this year the governor's race, which features a third-party populist who never would have stood a chance in the old soft money system, is quickly showing how immediate the impact of clean elections can be.

In June, 1997 Vermont passed one of the most comprehensive campaign finance reform laws in the country and the signing of the "Clean Elections" bill was a generally festive occasion. Democratic Governor Howard Dean was on hand for congratulations and photos with the bill�s main architect, Anthony Pollina, whom he enthusiastically dubbed �Mr. Campaign Finance Reform�. Little did Dean know that he might become the law�s first casualty.

This year the Vermont Governor�s race will be decided for the first time on a financially level playing field, and the state Progressive Party, which has selected none other than Anthony Pollina as its candidate, is mounting a serious blitz on Dean. With nearly 20 years of grassroots organizing in the state, Pollina is a familiar face in Vermont politics. In Vermont�s 1984 congressional race, Pollina ran as a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition candidate and won the democratic primary. He lost the election but garnered 20 percent of the vote. "He�s experienced and very well respected." remarked April Jin, longtime Vergennes Democratic Party Chairman who recently resigned her post to join the Progressive Party. "There�s no doubt he can pull over a good number of liberal democrats."

With the exit of John McCain from the national race, the only one left still seriously talking about campaign finance reform is Ralph Nader. Both Bush and Gore have far too much to lose by touching the issue and the general consensus in Washington seems to be that campaign finance reform is headed nowhere. But, while the impetus to remove big money from politics has slowed nationally, it has accelerated on the state level. Maine, Massachusetts and Arizona have all passed campaign finance reform laws, with support for similar initiatives growing in North Carolina, Missouri and Oregon. In Vermont, the governor's race is quickly providing further indication of just how immediate the impact of clean elections can be. By opening the election to a third-party populist who otherwise never would have stood a chance in raising enough money to run, Vermont's clean elections law has also already begun reinvigorating real democratic debate and restoring the principle of "one person, one vote".

Though clearly the underdog, Pollina is experienced with the issues. He spent 5 years as a policy advisor to independent representative Bernie Sanders working on agricultural and environmental issues, later going on to found Rural Vermont, a farm lobby group. For the last 6 years Pollina has worked as a senior policy analyst at Vermont Public Interest Group (V-PIRG), and besides pioneering the campaign finance law, he also led such efforts as the push to put a check on Vermont�s ever-expanding �factory farms� and agro-businesses, and more recently, a bill that would make Vermont the first state in the country with an across-the-board price cap on all prescription drugs.

In June, Pollina became the first gubernatorial candidate as well as the first statewide candidate in the country to qualify for clean election funds. He did so by collecting $35,000 from at least 1500 individual in-state contributions of no more than $50 each-- no small feat in a state for which an election season on average brings in fewer than 1000 contributions for an incumbent. "It was extremely difficult. In some places we received checks as low as 60 cents. At times even I�m amazed that we pulled it off." commented Ellen David Friedman, Pollina�s campaign director. "With an all volunteer staff, we canvassed campuses, tabled the county fairs, went door-to-door in every district, held spaghetti dinners in town halls, walked parades, went to union locals. Really, we did it all..." David Friedman explained while standing in her kitchen alongside her teenage son who, with a team of other students, toured the neighborhoods signing up several hundred new voters. "The only things we didn�t do were mass mailings and newspaper inserts since the campaign simply didn�t have the money for that."

The campaign now has the money, $265,000 in fact. Aside from prying open the political spectrum to underfunded outsider candidates, Vermont�s clean elections law is taking politics from the hands of big donors and returning it to its proper place among voters. "It�s great. All of the sudden, office seekers actually have to campaign to win. They have to talk and listen to real people rather than just fund raise." remarked Garrison Nelson, UVM political science professor. "I think Dean had some serious learning to do." Clearly, Dean is a quick study, since he too qualified for the public funds. But in the process it forced him to reform his constituency from that of his 1998 campaign in which he received 1200 total contributions and 51 percent of his money out of state. No longer could he rely on fat checks, like those that he previously pulled in from health care interests totalling $44,000. Where airing statewide TV commercials used to suffice, the geographic distribution and small individual contribution requirements of the new law now required more canvassing and actual small-venue speeches. "Sure it was difficult." Governor Dean told me of meeting the qualifying standard. "It was also the right thing to do."

But doing the right thing just got risky and Dean is now forging a different path. In August, federal judge William Sessions III ruled against parts of Vermont's clean elections law, including limits on spending and out-of-state contributions. The case is being appealed but in the meantime those candidates who do not take public funding are free to raise and spend without restriction. Stating his regret, Dean announced that he would be returning the public money to raise private funds because he feared getting out-spent by his Republican contenders. "I am not going to fight this campaign with one arm tied behind my back" he remarked from his Montpelier campaign office.

Dean's primary concern is Ruth Dwyer, the likely GOP nominee. Dwyer, who declined public funding from the beginning, has already amassed more than three times her Republican opponent William Meub, and will draw heavy financial support out-of-state from anti-gay and pro-life organizations. In 1998 Dwyer pulled in 40 percent of the vote in her run for governor. This season she hopes to ride a wave of anti-civil union backlash in the state, and has been handing out "Republican Women like Men" bumper stickers and �Take Back Vermont" lawn signs, while also accusing the National Education Association (NEA) of advancing the homosexual agenda.

It�s an opportune moment for Vermont Progressives to make a move on the state level. The party already has four state representatives as well as the Burlington city councilman and mayor. They�ve also got the time and energy to spare this electoral season since Independent Rep. Bernie Sanders is sure to glide to an easy 6th term in Congress. The Democrats won�t dare mess with Sanders, and so far Vermont Republicans have had their hands full figuring out what to make of their own candidate. Karen Karin, a fiscal conservative from South Royalton, plans to run for the Republican nomination on the issues of tax reform, anti-gun control and the creation of a petroleum reserve in the Northeast. The complication is that Karen used to be a male. After a bout with urinary tract cancer ten years ago entailed heavy doses of estrogen, Karen, formerly named Charles, decided to have a sex change operation. The GOP is now wondering whether it will be able to keep a straight face while making civil unions its lead issue, especially since Karen, who has stated firm opposition to same sex unions, somehow managed to marry a woman in �96 after becoming a she.

"This could be Fred Tuttle all over again" Vermont GOP chairman Patrick Garahan commented, referring to the affable 79 year-old dairy farmer who in 1998 mounted a successful protest campaign for the GOP nomination against Jack McMullen, a millionaire management consultant and carpetbagger from Massachusetts. Tuttle, who ran with no funding, a campaign slogan of "Why Not!" and bumper stickers that read: "Spread Fred", sent McMullen packing after publicly embarrassing him with a quiz on how many teats a cow has. "The Republicans are in a complete panic about the Karen situation" April Jin told me from the Pollina campaign headquarters, a downtown Montpelier office that the Progressives took over from Operation Rescue when they pulled out of the state after losing the civil union vote. "Even if the state GOP can drum up someone better to run against Sanders, they know that a bunch of democrats will cross over simply to give Karen a win in the primary."

In broadening electoral options, Vermont�s law has also sparked endorsement debate where there once was little. The National Education Association (NEA), for example, Vermont�s largest labor union, recently composed a selection committee to interview and rate the gubernatorial candidates, something it had not done since 1992. But when the committee returned a near unanimous �favorable� rating for Pollina and a �neutral� rating for Dean, the union�s board of directors promptly overturned the vote, giving Dean the endorsement. "Both the membership and the committee were furious." commented an organizer who attended the meetings but requested anonymity. Vermont�s major newspapers covered the story but the endorsement stood. The state AFL-CIO, which backed Dean last election has yet to make any announcements, but the Vermont Labor Forum, a coalition of non-AFL unions, came out with an early endorsement for Pollina.

The debate is by no means limited to labor. "Among environmental groups there is a lot of controversy" remarked Mark Sinclair, senior attorney at Vermont's Conservation Law Foundation. "Pollina has the better record and great credentials coming from the largest environmental and consumer advocacy outfit in the state (V-PIRG), but he's still a long-shot candidate." Likewise, when the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, the state's largest pro-choice organization, announced its endorsement of Dean, two members of its top leadership resigned in protest.

So far, Bernie Sanders has hesitated to enter the fray. But with funding of their own, the Progressives can now afford to pull themselves from under his shadow. Despite the fact that many of his staffers and much of his support base is working on the Pollina campaign, Sanders says he�s made no endorsement decisions yet. Most Vermont political insiders speculate that Sanders is simply waiting for things to pick up speed. "Bernie is self-absorbed and probably nervous about alienating the democrats, but he�ll come around when the time is right." remarked one grassroots organizer close to Sanders� office who requested anonymity.

Pollina will face an uphill battle as many Vermonters fear that he could act as a spoiler, drawing enough votes away from Dean to grant the victory to Ruth Dwyer. Fortunately, Vermont�s constitution makes a spoiler scenario highly unlikely. A gubernatorial candidate must receive over 50 percent to win office. If no candidate gets an absolute majority, the decision automatically goes to the legislature which decides the matter in a secret ballot. With the democrats currently holding a firm majority in the legislature it's unlikely Dwyer would come out ahead. "Even if there is a reactionary swing from the civil unions bill, there�s no way it would put Dwyer over the top since a lot of her own Republicans think she�s too far right to vote for" commented Garrison Nelson. But Dean is not so sure. "I�m not prepared to say that the Democrats will lose the legislature, but it�s definitely going to get more conservative."

Regardless of the outcome, the Vermont governor�s race is a clear sign that campaign finance reform is the necessary first step toward restoring political accountability and thereby revitalizing the electorate. Furthermore by making issues not fund-raising the key to getting elected, the law is opening the way to underfunded grassroots candidates who can push the agenda in ways that politicians beholden to special interests never would. As such, clean elections promise to be the reform that makes other reforms possible.