Doonesbury Challenges DeLauro
WASHINGTON, April 02–Charlie Pillsbury never considered being like Ralph Nader when he grew up, but when “daisy cutter” bombs sliced into Afghanistan’s human population last autumn he knew that the Green Party’s politics suited him.
Horrified by what he saw as the Bush Administration’s “violent response” to the Sept. 11 attacks, the 54-year-old New Haven resident launched a campaign in February to wrest the redistricted 3rd Congressional District seat away from six-term U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro.
“After 12 years of watching the world from my vantage point as [Community Mediation Inc.’s] executive director, I am fed up with seeing the failed, pernicious and violent policies of our national leaders come down like a hammer on the good people of New Haven, of Colombia, of Afghanistan, and who knows where next,” Pillsbury wrote in a sabbatical proposal he submitted earlier this year to his employer.
Although Pillsbury will continue working as a mediator for people seeking alternative dispute resolutions until the end of August, the Green Party nominee expects to have his campaign staff in place and his fundraising efforts in full swing by May 1.
If he receives enough individual contributions by that date, he noted, “Pillsbury for Congress” will open its office doors with the help of full-time campaign manager Michelle Branam, who is a fellow Green Party activist and member of the Connecticut Bar Association.
But to hire Branam and meet other campaign expenses, Pillsbury said, he must raise at least $20,000 beforehand and at least $100,000 by November in addition to obtaining the 3,000 signatures necessary to place his name on the ballot.
“I’m not in a position to self-finance. I certainly have some money, but the most I can contribute is $20,000. If I can raise it and I don’t have to, I won’t,” he said, especially since he will not accept money from political action committees and is not a “stratospherically rich” candidate. Pillsbury has already accumulated $5,000 of his projected total from individuals, including a donation from his old Yale University roommate and cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who partially based his syndicated comic strip character, Mike Doonesbury, on Pillsbury during their campus escapades together in the late 1960s.
Even family ties aren’t always a guarantee that you’ll receive large quantities of financial support — even if you are the great-grandson of the founder of the Pillsbury Co. as well as the son of George Pillsbury, a former Minnesota state senator (1970-1982).
“[My father] likes to see his kids involved in politics, but that doesn’t mean he has to agree with them or even give them money,” he said, before adding that his 77-year-old Republican mother promised to come “all the way from Minnesota” to work on his campaign.
Just as Pillsbury opposes DeLauro’s support of increased defense spending as well as her backing of the Defense of Marriage Act, which would deny recognition of gay and lesbian marriages, so do he and his father tend to butt heads over Pillsbury’s “love” for labor unions.
He and his father agree on some “significant issues,” he noted, which may stem from Pillsbury’s former party affiliations, first as a Republican teenager supporting Barry Goldwater and then from 1968 onward as a Democrat protesting Vietnam and military aid to Colombia in its ongoing civil war.
“My father and I are both pro-choice, and we both believe in democratic capitalism. That means, if capitalism is good for a few people than it is good for everybody, and we should be finding more ways to make more people capitalists.”
He and DeLauro also agree on some political issues, including opposing tax breaks for the rich, or what he referred to as the “kleptocracy.” His stance on less defense spending, however, remains adamantly different from DeLauro’s, especially when such spending, he says, takes away potential funds for Connecticut’s school systems, health care facilities and urban centers.
“Our cities, like Waterbury, are hurting financially,” Pillsbury said. “I would be fighting for more federal assistance instead of putting that money into the military-industrial complex.”
He is convinced that the Green Party can help him accomplish his goals as a House member.
“It can restore people’s faith in democracy,” Pillsbury said, ” because· it’s politics for people, not politics for the rich and famous.”
Published in The Waterbury Republican-American, in Waterbury, Connecticut.
