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Vermont senior political correspondent Peter Freyne, pictured right, broke a big story this week about Vermont's upcoming 2006 U.S. Senate race. In an exclusive report linked below, Freyne breaks the story about how leading GOP candidate Rich Tarrant is publicly claiming he is pro-choice even though recent documents filled out by Tarrant show the exact opposite. In other words, Tarrant got caught right at the beginning of the campaign lying through his teeth.

Here are the details. Tarrant did an interview with Freyne, starting out saying "I'm so damn honest, I answer every question." Freyne then asked him a round of questions, one of which was about Tarrant's position on abortion. Tarrant, Mr. So-Damn-Honest-I-Answer-Every-Question, three times refused to say whether he supported a woman's right to choose. After the interview, however, Tarrant's campaign manager emailed Freyne to say that Tarrant believes that "the law on this issue is settled and must be respected."

Here's where it gets interesting. Freyne writes "So, Rich Tarrant, the wealthy, wannabe U.S. senator from Vermont, does support a woman's right to choose, right? Wrong." Here's how we know:

"According to a 2003 IRS tax filing obtained after the interview and just before deadline, Mr. Tarrant expresses vehement opposition to safe, legal abortion...The 23-page Form 990-PF was filed on behalf of the Richard E. Tarrant Foundation Inc...Tarrant goes out of his way to make it perfectly clear that not one red cent of his foundation's money will go to an organization that...supports abortion rights."

In other words, right out of the gate, the Republican candidate for Senate is openly lying to Vermonters about his views on a critically important issue. Though Tarrant has pledged to spend up to $5 million of his own money to try to buy the election, no amount of money is going to be able to hide his disgusting belief that he can just go around lying to voters. We're lucky Vermont's Independent Congressman Bernie Sanders is running against Tarrant for the seat - lord knows there are enough slimy characters in the Senate and we don't need to add another one in Tarrant.

Sources:
Freyne's exclusive report on Tarrant lying about his position on a woman's right to choose

Authors Bio:

David Sirota is a full-time political journalist, best-selling author and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist living in Denver, Colorado. He blogs for Working Assets and the Denver Post's PoliticsWest website. He is a Senior Editor at In These Times magazine, which in 2006 received the Utne Independent Press Award for political coverage. His 2006 book, Hostile Takeover, was a New York Times bestseller, and is now out in paperback. He has been a guest on, among others, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and NPR. His writing, which draws on his extensive experience as a progressive political strategist, has appeared in, among others, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Baltimore Sun, the Nation magazine, the Washington Monthly and the American Prospect. Sirota was a twice-a-week guest on the Al Franken Show. He currently serves in a volunteer capacity as the co-chairperson of the Progressive States Network - a 501c3 nonpartisan organization.

In the years before becoming a full-time writer, Sirota worked as the press secretary for Vermont Independent Congressman Bernard Sanders, the chief spokesman for Democrats on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, the Director of Strategic Communications for the Center for American Progress, a campaign consultant for Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and a media strategist for Connecticut Senate candidate Ned Lamont. He also previously contributed writing to the website of the California Democratic Party. For more on Sirota, see these profiles of him in Newsweek or the Rocky Mountain News. Feel free to email him at lists [at] davidsirota.com Note: this online publication represents Sirota's personal views, and not the official views of the organizations he works with.