ustxtxb_obs_1986_04_18_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

Washington, D.C. THE SUCCESS of Lyndon LaRouche’s far-right candidates for lieutenant governor and sec retary of state in the Illinois Democratic primary last week may be derived, in part, from the peculiarities of Cook County machine politics, but they are more significantly a result of aggressive political organizing and propaganda. Whatever else they , may be, LaRouche’s National Democratic Policy Committee candidates are not dead-fish Democrats. They run on hot issues: AIDS tests and quarantines, war on drugs, international banking conspiracy, higher prices for farmers, reopening heavy industry, etc. Last week as Janice Hart, a long-time LaRouche associate, was likening herself to Joan of Arc and calling for a new Nuremburg Tribunal for criminals, Mark Fairchild, the candidate for lieutenant governor of Illinois, was issuing, by comparison, a reasonable and appealing call for use of eminent domain to return land to the farmers and reopen steel mills. Politicians in Washington may dismiss this as kookiness, but there is ample evidence that it is precisely this sort of politics that sells in the Midwest. LaRouche supporters claim they have more than 800 candidates running in Democratic primaries around the country this year 14 for the Senate, seven for governor, 146 for the House of Representatives in 27 states, and more than 600 for various state offices. In 1984, LaRouche ran more than 2,000 candidates nationally, and while they never won a statewide election, his candidates often get as much as 30 percent of the vote and have been elected to local school boards, city councils, and party committees. In 1984, LaRouche appeared on national television in 14 half-hour commercial spots at a cost of up to $230,000 each. He told viewers the Soviets were planning nuclear war and that Walter Mondale was a Soviet secret police “agent of influence.” James Ridgeway’s columns, which appear first in the Village Voice, are a regular feature of the Observer. OVER THE LAST two years LaRouche-backed politicians in the Farm Belt have gained considerable popularity. Tommy Kersey, the Georgia farm organizer long associated with the American Agriculture Movement, the farm protest organization which staged the tractorcade to Washington in the late ’70s, has crisscrossed the Midwest speaking on the LaRouche platform. LaRouche’s vicepresidential candidate in 1984 was Billy Davis, a Mississippi farmer. Pat “Family Farmer” O’Riley, the wellknown Minnesota farm organizer, has been identified with LaRouche in the past. “I like a lot of his organizations, but I was never a member of any,” he said recently. LaRouche politicks among farmers in the Midwest through regular conference calls where Billy Davis and other organizers mix talk about the price of hogs with discussion of the destructive influence of the International Monetary Fund. \(In recent months, however, Kersey has fallen out of favor with LaRouche for having joined Larry Humphreys in armed opposition to foreclosure. As LaRouche now views it, Kersey and Humphreys are dupes of the AntiDefamation League, run with left-wing “countergangs” in spreading “depression.” and are “in alignment” with the Soviet Union and its intelliIn California, two Democrats, apparently supporters of LaRouche, have won uncontested races for the Democratic congressional nominations in districts normally controlled by Republicans, according to a spokesman for the state Democratic committee. In addition, two LaRouche politicians were elected in Santa Clara County to the state Democratic committee. When their loyalties were discovered, they were thrown off. The LaRouche organization claims a membership of 10,000 in California with 200 candidates currently running for office there. Both estimates are probably inflated. Also in California, LaRouche supporters claim to have upwards of 120,000 signatures, or a required 393,000, to put on the November ballot an initiative rec -ing universal tests for AIDS. LaRouche wants to quarantine all those with the disease. In Texas, Noel Cowling is running against populist Jim Hightower for the Democratic Party’s nomination as agriculture commissioner. Cowling argues that Hightower is the “barefoot boy of Wall Street,” and says “he is promoting a fascist populism, modeled on the cultish ‘small is beautiful’ outlook which oligarchical financial interests wish to impose on the technology-proud American farmer.” If he is successful, Cowling argues, “the American farmer will be reduced to the level of his Ethiopian counterpart, scratching out a less than subsistence crop of roots and nuts, and the cartels will have total control of a dwindling food supply.” In Maryland, Debra Freeman, another long-time LaRouche associate, is running against Barbara Mikulski for the party’s Senate nomination. In her 1982 race against Mikulski for Congress, Freeman ran a radio ad that featured barnyard noises and called Mikulski the “Beast of Baltimore.” Freeman got 19 percent of the vote. LaRouche has actively courted the black vote, running black candidates for city council in Atlanta. Roy Innis, former CORE director, appears at LaRouche functions, as does Hulan Jack, the former Manhattan borough president. LAROUCHE also has been tied to the Republicans in the past. Russ Bellant, a reporter who has tracked LaRouche over the years, wrote in the Detroit Metro Times in 1984 that former LaRouche organization members revealed to him that the Republican National Committee had asked big GOP donors to pump some $90,000 into LaRouche’s campaign in 1976. In the final hours of the campaign, these funds would enable LaRouche to attack Carter on television and ask his supporters to vote for Gerald Ford. These same sources told Bellant that the LaRouche inner circle met regularly during 1976 to plan pro-Ford and anti-Carter activities. When Ford lost, LaRouche joined with the Republicans in suits charging Carter with vote fraud. LaRouche greeted the election of Ronald Reagan with enthusiasm. James Watt, Reagan’s first interior secretary, considered hiring LaRouche as a consultant. LaRouche has had ties to the National Security Council, where knowledge and support for Star Wars helped him curry favor. He and his supporters also met with top officials in the CIA. LaRouche operations are the source The LaRouche Phenomenon By James Ridgeway 14 APRIL 18, 1986