A Go-It-Alone Democrat Who's Seeking Company
By Robin Toner
The New York Times
December 23, 2001

WASHINGTON Dec. 22 - Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, cast the only vote in the Senate against the Bush administration's antiterrorism legislation this fall, deploring its effects on civil liberties and chiding his Democratic colleagues for pushing it through.

But earlier this year, his critics noted, Mr. Feingold was also one of the handful of Democrats who voted to confirm the man behind that legislation - Attorney General John Ashcroft. It was the kind of against-the-grain positioning that cemented Mr. Feingold's reputation this year as one of the Senate's leading mavericks - and as a man who was reaching for broader influence in his national party. He describes himself as a "Wisconsin progressive," hard to place on the ideological spectrum, but popular back home where his willingness to break with his fellow Democrats proves that he does not blindly toe the party line.

He acknowledges that this is not a role that endears a senator to his colleagues. Among his lonely crusades was an effort to block an otherwise automatic Congressional pay raise. "I'm pretty sure I wouldn't win a Mr. Popularity contest," said the 48-year-old liberal in his ninth year in the Senate. "I have no illusions about that."

It is, however, a useful niche in the broader market of national politics, to which Mr. Feingold is clearly drawn. As one Democratic strategist put it, "lone man of conscience" is "not a bad place to position yourself in the Democratic primary."

Mr. Feingold says it is unlikely he will run for the Democratic presidential nomination, but does not rule it out, a position shared by maybe half a dozen of his Democratic Senate colleagues. He has made the rounds of college campuses in recent months, delivering an idealistic call to arms to the nation's youth, urging them to join the fight for civil liberties, an end to the death penalty, and numerous other causes.

He says he wants to play a role in how the next nominee is chosen, particularly to counter the influence of the Democratic Leadership Council, the group formed in the late 1980's to try to push the Democratic Party to the center after several electoral defeats. "In the long run, the erosion of support, especially of young people but also of others, will continue if we don't get a little bit back to some of the progressive roots" of the party, he argues.

Mr. Feingold, who has long crusaded for an overhaul of the campaign finance laws, argues that the Democratic Party became too "corporatized" in the 1990's, spending too much time raising money and adopting a trade policy that "sells American jobs down the river." He added, "Our future is not in trying to be a Republican-lite party, which is what I feel like we are now. Our future is in showing people on farms, and on Main Street, that we're more with them than the other party."

Al From, the founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, replied, "I can't think of a more progressive and good decade for average people in this country than the 90's." Mr. From added, "There has been and always will be a small left in this country," but he argued that the key to winning the presidency is the swing vote in the center.

Mr. Feingold is hardly a conventional liberal. He was the only Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote to confirm Mr. Ashcroft, whose nomination was bitterly opposed by liberal groups. Mr. Feingold said he took that position because he believed a president had a right to choose his cabinet and that a nominee should not be rejected on ideology alone.

Mr. Feingold was criticized for being excessively concerned with process over substance. But he
says he has no regrets about his vote, even after watching Mr. Ashcroft take positions in the fight against terrorism that many civil libertarians have deplored, on matters from detention to military tribunals.

"Anyone who wonders about that question should ask themselves if they think George Bush or Dick Cheney disapprove of anything John Ashcroft is doing," Mr. Feingold said. "We're really making a huge mistake to allow this almost repressive attitude toward civil liberties to not be attached to the administration itself."

Since casting his vote against the administration's antiterrorism legislation, Mr. Feingold acknowledges that he has received some "very salty" e-mail messages, but says the response was "far more positive than I anticipated."

He said he wanted to vote for the law, which gave federal authorities new surveillance, investigatory and prosecutorial powers for the fight against terrorism. But, in a late- night standoff with Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, who was eager to move the legislation, Mr. Feingold tried unsuccessfully to amend the law, and criticized the Senate's haste in dealing with it. Mr. Daschle did not appear to be amused.

Now Mr. Feingold, whose term runs through 2004, is out on college campuses, telling young people he could "use some allies" in the defense of civil liberties. "It's in your hands," he tells them. "Help us avoid overreactions and help us avoid gutting the very foundations of our nation." He says the reaction is powerful and positive.