Storm Greets Lone Dissenter in Vote to Broaden Bush’s Powers

OAKLAND —  The calls came in so fast that Rep. Barbara Lee’s voice mail message system bogged down. She has received 20,000 e-mail missives in the last three days. Plainclothes police officers guarded her Washington, D.C., office.

After casting the lone vote against giving President Bush broad authority to combat terrorism, Lee has become a lightning rod for strong views that divide a nation perched on the edge of war. Judging by the flood of mail and other contacts, constituents and others see her either as a symbol of deep conscience, abject cluelessness, rare reason or misguided pacifism.

An agonized Lee cast her vote late Friday after sleepless nights and lengthy consultations with religious leaders, friends and family members. From the floor of the House of Representatives, she had warned a nation traumatized by attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center that “we must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target.”

It was the historic clarion call of California’s 9th Congressional District, home to a university with a peace studies major, a city with its own left-wing foreign policy and a generation-long tradition of challenging the ruling-class ethos of America.

On Monday, residents of that district, which covers parts of Berkeley and Oakland, voiced mixed opinions about their congresswoman’s vote. Some said they were ashamed of her action, while others praised it or at least admired the courage she showed in voting her conscience.

If any district would send a representative to Congress who would be the “1” in a 420-1 vote against war powers, it would likely be the 9th. And if any district were to reward such a vote with another term in office, it would likely be the 9th.

“This is a district that has stood out in the country in terms of the strength of the voices, the consistency of the voices against war and militarism as solutions to any of the problems we have in the world,” said Wilson Riles Jr., who is running for mayor of Oakland and applauded Lee’s decision on Monday.

A poll posted on the Web site https://www.SFGate.com--a combined effort of the San Francisco Chronicle and local NBC-TV affiliate KRON--showed that 59% of respondents approved of Lee’s vote, saying she “stood up to pro-war fever.” Another 9% said they disagreed but respected her for voting her conscience. Only 32% said her vote “weakened [the] unity of [the] nation.”

Staff in Lee’s Oakland office said calls Monday were 85% positive, although her press secretary in Washington described responses from within and outside the district as a decided “mixed bag.”

Scores of people stopped by Lee’s Oakland office. Some complained and threatened to unseat her in the next election, while others delivered flowers in appreciation of her courage. Her staff members listened through bulletproof glass inside her office on the 10th floor of the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building.

“We’re deeply upset by this vote,” said Jennifer McMahon, a 31-year-old public relations worker. “When my husband and I heard about this Friday night we felt ashamed of our ZIP Code.”

Martin McMahon said he and his wife called Lee’s office all weekend and decided to visit when they could not get through. “Congress made the right decision,” he said. “What’s wrong with her?”

Retired high school history teacher Eldon Rowe said he was so angered by the vote that he composed a letter to hand-deliver to Lee’s office. As Rowe read his letter aloud for a reporter on the street outside the office, passersby stopped to listen. One walked up and shook his hand.

“You’re elected to represent voters,” Rowe read, “and not become a preacher for your own form of moral values. In all the things that Gary Condit did, at least he represented our interests. You didn’t do that. You failed.”

As he read a newspaper during a sunny lunch hour in downtown Oakland, consultant Gus Newport said he was proud of Lee. “There are alternatives to waging war and I’d like to see some of them explored,” he said.

Newport said he understood the widespread desire to react quickly. He was in New York City when the World Trade Center was struck, and he flew home to Oakland on Friday under tightened security.

“I thought it was a brave act,” he said of Lee. “For days now, I’ve heard the criticism from so-called liberals on the street. And I’ve just said to them ‘Do you want your politician to vote on the basis of what she thinks is right or to take the party line just to stay in office?’ ”

In nearby Alameda, the noon-hour regulars at the Pop Inn dropped their sports arguments for a heated discourse on geopolitics.

“I don’t like her attitude. I think she’s totally wrong,” said 66-year-old retired gas worker Don Infarrera.

Just down the bar, under a sign that announced “Hangover Square,” John Sullivan nursed an Anchor Steam beer and a shot of whiskey. “Leave her alone,” he said. “She voted her conscience.”

To which Infarrera replied: “I think she ought to be recalled.”

Sneered electrician Glenn Forster: ‘There’s a word for people like her: peacenik.”

In Berkeley, many people sympathized with Lee, saying her vote was not a swing vote that influenced foreign policy, but a singular voice of conscience.

“We have to take a look at the consequences 24 months down the road for the things we do today,” said Rolf Bell, development director for Habitat for Humanity International in Berkeley. “If we’re not careful, we’re going to be perceived as the enemy by 1 billion Muslims worldwide. If we act rashly, the terrorists have already won.”

Sandre R. Swanson, Lee’s chief of staff at her home office in Oakland, consulted with the congresswoman by telephone throughout the difficult days leading up to the vote on House Resolution No. 64. Swanson’s cousin was a flight attendant on United flight 93 and perished when the hijacked plane crashed in Pennsylvania.

“Our discussions did consider the possibility that we would stand alone in this vote, but that was dismissed as irrelevant,” Swanson said. “This isn’t a popularity contest vote.”

Swanson said Lee’s vote was not based upon emotion but upon common sense and congressional duty. Representatives are the men and women who declare war; Lee did not want “to openhandedly turn over that power to the president.” Her vote, he said, “had nothing to do with sympathizing with terrorists.”

Lee got her start in politics working for former Rep. Ron Dellums. She was elected to the Assembly in 1990 and to the state Senate in 1996. So liberal is her district that those voters who decline to state a party affiliation often are to the left of the Democratic Party.

“I wasn’t surprised by her vote. I was surprised that other people were surprised,” said state Sen. Don Perata (D-Oakland), whose district overlaps Lee’s congressional district.

Perata noted that her tenure in Sacramento “was less about a legislative program and more about taking positions and making statements that were liberal, some would say ultraliberal.”

In Sacramento, she pushed bills ranging from studying the status of African American men to providing more aid for pregnant public school students and dealing with issues of homelessness.

“Clearly, she was one of the most liberal people in the Legislature, always advocating on behalf of poor people,” said state Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City). “She knew everyone from [Nelson Mandela] on down who was interested in those issues. Much of her advocacy was to use the bully pulpit.”

Murray, who counts himself among her friends, said he chuckled when he heard that Lee had cast the sole vote against the congressional resolution. While he lauded her “conviction and strength,” he noted that the vote was in keeping with her “ultraliberal, pacifist” philosophy.

Lee is not the first member of Congress to take a solo stand against going to war. Jeannette Rankin, Montana’s lone representative and the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, cast the only votes against World War I and World War II.

Although a statue of Rankin stands in the Montana State Capitol, she paid the price for her convictions. She was defeated for reelection after each vote.

Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley, doesn’t think the 9th District will judge Lee as harshly.

“She may lose some votes, but I don’t think her career is in any way threatened,” Cain said, “because of the very unique nature of her district. . . . There’s a tradition in this seat of pacifism going back to the Vietnam War.”

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Times staff writers Dan Morain in Sacramento and Marisa Schultz in Washington contributed to this report.