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By elgene McCarthy RappaKannori >rw« Oantrihutinjr Irilrr
Just back from an unsuccessful Senate campaign in Minnesota, 1 feel obligated to report that I did my best to defend the county and its residents under attack from press and politicians.
The fact that I had served 22 years in the Congress of the United States was dismissed as a minor qualification. My proposals for dealing with the crisis in housing finance were discounted. My program for the orderly marketing of agricultural products in international trade, without ill-advised and ill-timed interventions by Presidents and Secretaries of State and by Congress, was set aside as irrelevant, as was a defense tax recommendation which would have equalized American competition with Japanese and German manufacturers and helped finance the federal debt. My plan to schedule a reduction in the arsenal of nuclear weapons was not weighed seriously.
The central, almost the sole issue of the campaign, was that I had been living as my critics said “down” in Virginia, in “Rappahannock County”, with Virginia gentle folk for 12 years.
In my defense I pointed out that I had been living in the county for only five years, and that consequently whatever baneful effect life in the county might have on me, it was limited to five years, rather than 12, and that by quantitative measure, depending on how the percentages were figures, my critics were either 120 percent wrong, approximately, or approximately 70 percent right, both errors being well within the tolerable margin of error in political campaigns.
Having challenged the arithmetic of my critics, without noticeable effect, I turned to their history and geography, noting, first, that if one is living in Rappahannock County, he is not living “down” in Virginia, but “out” in Virginia; that Rappahannock County is commonly referred by established Virginians as the "free State of Rappahannock” and that some residents of the county were not above suspicion as to their loyalty to the South during the Civil War or, as it is called in Virginia. “The War between the States.”
These responses seemed to stop the critics momentarily but they came on strongly, charging “me with associating with Virginia gentry in Rappahannock County.” This was a difficult issue for me and one that got me into deep trouble. I said, in fact asserted, that there certainly were a good number of ladies in Rappahannock County but that the number of men of my acquaintance that could properly be called “gentlemen" was small, and that even though the sports and games — fox
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