10.22.05

Vermont GOP candidate gets caught lying through his teeth

Vermont senior political correspondent Peter Freyne, pictured right, broke a big story this week about Vermont's upcoming 2006 U.S. Senate race. In an exclusive report, Freyne breaks the story about how leading GOP candidate Rich Tarrant is publicly claiming he is pro-choice even though recent documents filled out by Tarrant show the exact opposite. In other words, Tarrant got caught right at the beginning of the campaign lying through his teeth.

Here are the details. Tarrant did an interview with Freyne, starting out saying "I'm so damn honest, I answer every question." Freyne then asked him a round of questions, one of which was about Tarrant's position on abortion. Tarrant, Mr. So-Damn-Honest-I-Answer-Every-Question, three times refused to say whether he supported a woman's right to choose. After the interview, however, Tarrant's campaign manager emailed Freyne to say that Tarrant believes that "the law on this issue is settled and must be respected."

Here's where it gets interesting. Freyne writes "So, Rich Tarrant, the wealthy, wannabe U.S. senator from Vermont, does support a woman's right to choose, right? Wrong." Here's how we know:

"According to a 2003 IRS tax filing obtained after the interview and just before deadline, Mr. Tarrant expresses vehement opposition to safe, legal abortion...The 23-page Form 990-PF was filed on behalf of the Richard E. Tarrant Foundation Inc...Tarrant goes out of his way to make it perfectly clear that not one red cent of his foundation's money will go to an organization that...supports abortion rights."

In other words, right out of the gate, the Republican candidate for Senate is openly lying to Vermonters about his views on a critically important issue. Though Tarrant has pledged to spend up to $5 million of his own money to try to buy the election, no amount of money is going to be able to hide his disgusting belief that he can just go around lying to voters. We're lucky Vermont's Independent Congressman Bernie Sanders is running against Tarrant for the seat - lord knows there are enough slimy characters in the Senate and we don't need to add another one in Tarrant.

Posted by David Sirota at 12:15 PM