Burlington, VT - The Herald of Randolph, Barton Chronicle, and Addision Independent have endorsed Peter Welch for U.S. Congress. Editorial excerpts and full versions follow:

"We need only ask that when in Congress the battle lines are drawn, Rep. Welch and Sen. Sanders will be on our side, on America's side, and not on the side of those whose reckless policies have placed our youths in mortal peril, ransacked our treasury, defamed our precious reputation, and eroded our security." - Herald of Randolph

"Mr. Welch has a good record in the Vermont Senate and we believe he would be the best addition to our Congressional delegation." - Barton Chronicle

"While breaking the Republicans' control of Congress is the most critical issue in this race, a vote for Peter Welch is also a vote for experience, knowledge and know-how. To be an effective representative, one first has to know the issues thoroughly and to know how the legislative process works. Welch has a wealth of experience on legislative issues and process, and he knows where he stands on the issues... On each issue, and there are dozens more, Welch's views are articulate, informed and offer a thoughtful approach to addressing the problem." - Addison Independent

"Drive Them Out" & "A Model Demonstration" - Herald of Randolph - October 26, 2006

What is a free and democratic people to do when their leaders prod them into an unprovoked and unnecessary war, spilling the blood of their sons and daughters in a desolate land in pursuit of vain and foolish ends?

What is such a people to do when they hear their treasured democratic heritage mocked throughout the world and savaged at home by a government that knows neither truth nor honor?

There remains but one recourse for a people burdened with such leaders, and that is to rise in wrath and drive them out.
Drive them out of their marbled offices. Drive them from the reins of power. Drive them out.

Exactly that is the task before the American people in the election of 2006-to exact retribution, simply by casting their ballots to replace Republicans with Democrats in the halls and councils of Washington. Have no doubt about it: This is an historic choice, a choice whether an all-Republican govern-ment-House, Senate and Presidency--will be permitted to continue to run roughshod over the nation's well-being and good name, or whether it will be called to account.

At this writing, replacing the Republican majority in the House of Representatives appears likely; a change in the Senate leadership appears possible. Changing both must be the goal.

That's why, here in Vermont, the two national races-one for Senate and one for the House-must be decided, this time, on the matter of party affiliation. It hardly matters, this year, that Martha Rainville is a likeable, intelligent, strong-minded, competent new alternative-which she is. Or that Rich Tarrant is a man of proven ability who has doggedly overcome his own inexperience and some bad advice to evolve into an independent-minded candidate with many of the most interesting ideas in the campaign.

What matters, unfortunately for Rainville and Tarrant, is that if elected to Congress, both will vote for Republican speakers and majority leaders and party whips and in so doing they will vote to keep the leadership of the national government in Republican hands. In 2006, this is an unacceptable alternative.

We need not ask candidates Peter Welch and Bernie Sanders precisely what plans they have to end the carnage that President Bush, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and the rest have wrought. We need only ask that when in Congress the battle lines are drawn, Rep. Welch and Sen. Sanders will be on our side, on America's side, and not on the side of those whose reckless policies have placed our youths in mortal peril, ransacked our treasury, defamed our precious reputation, and eroded our security.

Vermont will do the right thing when it elects Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch to Congress on Tuesday, Nov. 7.

A Model Demonstration

Notwithstanding the clear choice presented above, we think the race for Congress between Peter Welch and Martha Rainville is worthy of an Honorable Mention award, no matter how it turns out. The two candidates have put on a model demonstration of how to elucidate essential differences without resorting to undue negativity.

Senate President Welch has brought to the race a long history of being able to work effectively throughout the political spectrum. He remains focused on what can be accomplished-what used to be called politics as "the art of the possible."

Never have his qualities been on better display than in the last two legislative sessions. With an overwhelming Democratic majority in the Senate, Sen. Welch could have chosen high-profile posturing and confrontation with the Republican Gov. Jim Douglas. He didn't do that, and the result was that Montpelier, unlike Washington, was not stuck in neutral gridlock. We are crossing our fingers about how next year's Senate will function without Welch at the helm.

Gen. Martha Rainville came into the race with no experience in electoral politics at all, but she pretty much convinced us that the skills she used in the National Guard are the same ones needed by a successful politician. It's all about working with people, Rainville said, and she clearly knows how to do that. Despite a few blunders due to inexperience, she is running a strong but always civil campaign, appealing to a broad swath of voters even in Democratic Vermont.

"Our suggestions for November 7 - U.S. House" - Barton Chronicle - October 25, 2006

Many Vermonters say they vote for the person not the party. In an ordinary year the contest for our seat in the U.S. House of Representatives would be hard to call. Both major party candidates, Republican Martha Rainville and Democrat Peter Welch, are well qualified. Both have conducted civil campaigns focused on important issues facing the nation.

This year, though, is not a usual year. Congress under Republican control has allowed the Bush administration to act as it will, without the oversight envisioned by the authors of the U.S. Constitution.

Mr. Welch has clearly stated his opposition to the ill-conceived war in Iraq, and his desire to see Congress assert its proper role as a co-equal branch of government. Ms. Rainville has done nothing to reassure those who see her as a likely vote in favor of the Republican status quo.

We endorse Mr. Welch in the hope that at least one branch of the national legislature will change hands. There is no guarantee that the Democrats will exercise power wisely, but we know the Republicans haven't.

Mr. Welch has a good record in the Vermont Senate and we believe he would be the best addition to our Congressional delegation.

"Peter Welch for Congress" - Addison Independent - October 26, 2006

In the race between Democrat Peter Welch and Republican Martha Rainville for Vermont's lone seat in Congress, one issue is paramount: Do Vermonters want to enable President George Bush to maintain control of both the House and Senate, or will they cast a vote to place an appropriate check on this president's radical and disastrous agenda? If voters want Bush to "stay the course" on domestic issues and foreign affairs, then a vote for Rainville will help assure that path. If voters want a change in the nation's direction and a check on the president, then a vote for Peter Welch is critical.

Control of the U.S. House is so central to this election that is outweighs all other consideration.

This newspaper's concerns with the Bush administration's mismanagement of our national resources and damage done to our international prestige over the past five years are well known to our readers (and those long-standing concerns, we might add, have largely been validated), so we won't belabor the mounting perils that would face the nation if Bush is allowed to reign two more years with a rubber-stamp Congress.

Equally important, however, is the poor performance of this Republican-led Congress, not to mention the scandals the Republican majority has brought upon itself. The latest incident with Rep. Bob Foley, R-Fla., is only on the nation's radar screen because of the blatant hypocrisy of the crime when he was chair of a committee to protect our country's children, and, more importantly, because the Republican leadership - that pious lot that were holier-than-thou in 1998 - were caught covering up the incident and leaving Foley in power even though they knew of his tendency to prey on male pages. Shameful and disgraceful.

More importantly, in our opinion, has been the tone this Congress has set for the past six years. Big business has had a free hand in profiting at our government coffers, run roughshod over environmental protections, dictated labor issues, ghost-written tax and energy policies to benefit the wealthiest few, pushed free trade at the expense of American workers and possibly to the detriment of America's long-term industrial capability, and created a culture of profiteering with little respect to the public good. (International Paper's bottom-line decision to burn tires at its Ticonderoga plant despite knowledge that it would not meet state-of-the-art pollution control standards is just one example.) Rather, today's politics reward corporate greed and the buying of political influence. The result has been the scandalous fall of Enron (close buddies to George Bush), WorldCom and several others; along with the stain of corporate lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pled guilty to three felony charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, and has implicated several GOP congressmen.

Similarly, this Republican Congress has encouraged a culture of political expediency where the ends justify the means - a morally bankrupt premise. This has been a Congress that allowed and encouraged Tom DeLay to gerrymander the state of Texas to an absurd degree to ensure Republican control. It's a Congress that passed the Patriot Act without adequate safeguards to protect Americans' individual privacy and protection from a heavy-handed government. And it's a Congress that has allowed this president to revamp this nation's constitutional rights in times of war, so that Americans now observe fewer freedoms than other Western nations and condone the torture of prisoners.

As well as scandal-ridden and misguided, this Republican Congress has been inept. Well-known Washington Post political analyst David Broder - a moderate by almost any historical standard - recently said of this Congress that it had "worked fewer days - and accomplished less - than any Congress in recent history, and much of its routine work on spending bills was postponed until after the election. The legacy of what it left undone - especially in the fiscal area - will damage future generations long after the memories of DeLay and Foley and their follies have vanished."

Or consider this assessment of Congress, as reported by Broder, by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "The 109 th Congress took our already large projected budget deficits and passed legislation that will make them larger. The legislation increased deficits from 2005 through 2011 by $452 billion. Moreover, the budget deterioration over the past six fiscal years - 2000 to 2006 - is the largest deterioration for any six-year period in the past half-century."

Why, Vermonters must ask themselves, would Americans want to permit Bush and his Republican-dominated Congress to continue control of the nation when they have failed so miserably on so many fronts?

While breaking the Republicans' control of Congress is the most critical issue in this race, a vote for Peter Welch is also a vote for experience, knowledge and know-how. To be an effective representative, one first has to know the issues thoroughly and to know how the legislative process works. Welch has a wealth of experience on legislative issues and process, and he knows where he stands on the issues.

He's against Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, was opposed to the war in Iraq from the start and maintains that the open-ended presence of American troops there has become a "provocative element" in the violence. A timeline, therefore, should be developed to get American troops out of the Iraqi conflict as soon as possible, while shoring up rapid response forces for neighboring allies. He's against privatizing Social Security, would reform Medicare Part D for simplicity and fiscal responsibility, and end the oil-industry give-away and put that money - around $7 billion in the past five years - into renewable energy development. He'd push for National Guard parity by giving the Guard's chief the rank of four-star general and elevate the Guard to membership on the Joint Chiefs of Staff so the Guard isn't shortchanged in budget, staffing and strategy decisions. He'd renew the nation's commitment to environmental stewardship and he'd work to support family farms in Vermont and across the nation, noting that the decision to strip $1.5 billion out of the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill denied $100 million in grants to Vermont farmers and is another example of how the president and this Republican-led Congress "fails to know how government can work on behalf of its citizens to take our country in the right direction. We must have an energy policy that lowers and stabilizes energy costs and we must have an agricultural policy that supports family farms."

On each issue, and there are dozens more, Welch's views are articulate, informed and offer a thoughtful approach to addressing the problem.

While Rainville's career in the military is impressive and her political intentions sincere, she is a newcomer to politics and that inexperience has been demonstrated several times in the campaign. While a few bobbles might be expected, the plagiarizing of political talking points on the issues speaks volumes about her lack of knowledge. Her recent criticism of our involvement in the Iraq War is also a classic flip-flop - having been a loyal supporter of Bush's decision to invade Iraq without a peep of protest for the past few years - and makes one question her integrity on this issue. On those issues that she has been clear about, she solidly supports Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and opposed creation of more wilderness in the Green Mountain National Forest - both of which are stands the vast majority of Vermonters oppose.

On too many other issues, she talks in platitudes and - unknowingly or not - maintains she would be an independent force in Congress even though not a single savvy person in the state believes that would be so.

Most importantly, a vote for Democrat Peter Welch offers Vermonters the best hope for change on the national scene, and the opportunity to restore many of the values that have been eroded by Bush and this Republican-led Congress.

Angelo S. Lynn