Political Science
Portland Magazine
College of Arts and Sciences
October 25, 2019
Delivering the first-ever talk in Dundon-Berchtold Hall’s Brian J. Doyle Auditorium: US Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who was on campus to attend a memorial Mass for Fr. Claude Pomerleau, CSC, his beloved brother-in-law (“Mon Père frère” the senator called him affectionately, “My Father brother”). Senator Leahy fielded questions on environmental legislation, global warming, the need for sensible gun laws, bipartisanship, nuclear weapons, interfaith relations, Supreme Court confirmations, health care, and more. An excerpt of his remarks follows:
“Don’t throw away your vote. Don’t fail to vote. You’re never going to find the perfect candidate. Go out there and listen to the candidates, talk to their staff. Are you going to agree on every single point? Of course not. The idea that you can have a checklist and if a candidate doesn’t agree with it 100 percent you can’t vote for them? That’s a mistake. You usually end up with the worst of all possible alternatives. Look behind the Twitter feeds; read and follow real information. Talk to your professors. They can steer you toward good objective information about Republican and Democratic candidates.
Years ago, I was an observer as Nicaragua had its first free election in decades. At 4 in the morning people were lined up all the way down the street to vote. By noon everybody had voted; not 60 percent or 70 percent, everybody. Our country had to fight for the right to vote; the Civil Rights fights; the things that happened during Jim Crow…if you saw some of the countries I’ve gone to where people have fought revolutions, people have been jailed, summarily executed, families destroyed for trying to have the right to vote…don’t throw away your vote, good Lord.”
“There’s no one size fits all. I went to law school at Georgetown… I always used to go to the Senate and just sit and watch, knowing I’d never serve there since Vermont was the only state in the union that had never elected a Democrat or a Catholic. I went back home to Vermont to practice law. There had been a scandal in the prosecutor’s office; he announced on a Friday that he was going to quit. The governor called me and said, ‘You need to take over that position on Monday.’ I told him, ‘Well, I’m practicing civil law,’ and he told me, ‘Get a couple of good criminal law books and read ’em. Just stay for a year and see.’ I stayed for eight years. I loved it because it was public service. Something I never expected to be. I never planned for it. My point being, you never can say, ‘Okay, right now, here are the exact steps I need to take.’
I think what you do, if you’re interested in a life in politics, is find somebody you really care about who’s running. I don’t care if they’re Republican or Democrat—find somebody who inspires you. Go to work for them, volunteer for them. Find things where you can make a difference. Sometimes it’s a non-governmental organization; there are so many places in this country where somebody of your age and your talents can mean a great deal. Look at one of those, find something that interests you, volunteer. You might not make a lot of money, but you’ll get a better sense of where you want to go. If you really want to do it, you’ll get there. But there’s no point A to B to C, as there wasn’t for me.”
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