(Host) Republican U.S. Senate candidate Len Britton says he hopes to garner the support of Vermont’s Tea Party movement in his effort to unseat Senator Patrick Leahy in November.
VPR’s Bob Kinzel reports.
(Kinzel) Britton says the election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts to the U.S. Senate this winter serves as a clear message that the voters of New England are ready for a change in leadership in Washington.
Britton has never run for public office before but he says this lack of electoral experience is an asset in his race against Leahy who was first elected to the Senate in 1974.
Speaking on VPR’s Vermont Edition, Britton said he hopes the support of the state’s Tea Party movement will help his campaign effort.
Tea Party supporters held rallies in Montpelier and Rutland on Thursday to protest increased government spending and high tax rates and in a number of states the movement has vowed to defeat many incumbent members of Congress.
Britton says he understands their frustrations:
(Britton) "I’ve talked to the Tea Party folks a lot. I think that they share some of the frustrations that I do with what’s been coming out of Washington recently and it’s a very interesting movement. It just brings up out of whole cloth and my experience with the Tea Party folks has been very positive…But at the end of the day they would like to see the way we do business in Washington change and that’s an opinion I share with them."
(Kinzel) Recently the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations and labor unions can spend an unlimited amount of money to influence a political campaign as long as the expenditures are made independent of any candidate.
Senator Leahy has called the ruling the worst decision handed down by the Court in his lifetime.
Britton says he supports the decision and he argues that it establishes a better financing system than the current practice where many candidates rely heavily on the donations of political action committees:
(Britton) "What is more toxic to our political system is the notion of AT&T doing a commercial for a political candidate or AT&T donating special interest money to a candidate’s campaign which may or may not influence the way they vote. I think that we have the latter in our system currently and I think that it’s doing great damage to our political system."
(Kinzel) At this time, Britton is the only announced candidate for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination.
For VPR News, I’m Bob Kinzel in Montpelier.