At a Sept. 23 debate Brian Dubie waved in the air a sheaf of 8.5 x 11 printouts. The Republican candidate for Vermont governor announced he was holding a “list” of people “who need to be incarcerated,” but whom his Democratic rival Peter Shumlin would release under his proposed corrections reform plan. Fanning the papers, Dubie charged:
“These are the 780 individuals that are on that list. On this list there are people that deal with pornography with children. There are drug dealers. There’s a comprehensive list of who these people are. That’s what my ad says. That’s what the list is.’
Sixty years earlier, another man waved papers, declaring:
“I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”
Sen. Joseph McCarthy never made his list public, but repeatedly insisted it was real and it named card-carrying Reds who threatened the security of the United States. History guesses, but cannot prove, that McCarthy’s list never existed.
But soon after Dubie’s list waving, it emerged that the papers he brandished were not what the candidate claimed. The document did not contain 780 inmates’ names. It did not reveal one name. It was not a list. It was simply a printout explaining state statutes.
The incident is an ironic twist on Vermont’s key role in bringing down Sen. McCarthy. In 1954, four years after McCarthy waved his list, Vermont Republican Sen. Ralph Edward Flanders ridiculed and condemned his Wisconsin colleague, who — through lies, fear mongering, and fabricated charges–had caused innocent people to be blacklisted, ruined lives and livelihoods, and poisoned the political atmosphere.
Flanders called the junior senator from Wisconsin’s allegations “”a vicious and dishonest thing,” and introduced a motion to censure McCarthy that inspired a cowed Senate to break McCarthyism’s spell.
