Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post
Newsgroups: americast.wpost
From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com
Organization: American Cybercasting
Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com
Subject: Mr. Bartlett Goes to Washington; Politically and Ideologically, Md. Freshman
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 92 09:22:42 EST
Message-ID: <35.1992Nov8.092243@AmeriCast.com>

Mr. Bartlett Goes to Washington; Politically and Ideologically,
Md. Freshman Breaks the Mold<By Kevin Sullivan=Washington Post
Staff Writer=

Martha Bartlett is cozied up to the wood stove in the kitchen of
her Frederick farmhouse, sitting beneath a clock that has a
painting of the Last Supper as its face. She is 89 and furious
that her 66-year-old son has just been elected to Congress.

"Did you win?" she asks Roscoe Gardner Bartlett Jr., who
confesses that he did. "Well, goodbye," she says. "We won't see
you again.  When you go into Congress, the family will never see
you."

An angry mother is just the tip of the odd iceberg that conserva-
tive Republican Bartlett will ride into Washington after his
election day trouncing of Democratic state Del.  Thomas H. Hat-
tery in Maryland's 6th District race.

Bartlett, a country gentleman with a pencil-thin mustache vaguely
reminiscent of Vincent Price, is a retired farmer, teacher,
builder and inventor who has never held elective office.

He talks like a twangless Ross Perot, using phrases such as
"within a gnat's eyebrow" and "catching 14 kinds of Hades" to
describe someone being yelled at. He uses the term "flaming li-
berals," and once referred to some women as "femi-Nazis." He
later apologized, saying he didn't realize the phrase would of-
fend, and he still considers among his political enemies "all the
tree-huggers and trial lawyers."

A descendant of one of the signers of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, Bartlett was born on a dairy farm in Kentucky and reared
in Pennsylvania before moving to Maryland when he was 17. He is
the father of 10 children, and holds bachelor's degrees in theol-
ogy and chemistry and master's degrees in physiology and biochem-
istry. He taught for 23 years at the University of Maryland, Ho-
ward University and several smaller schools, and he also worked
as a researcher for the National Institutes of Health.
Bartlett's research in human physiology led him to design breath-
ing devices that have been used by divers and astronauts - he
once appeared on the "Today Show" to discuss them - and he has
more than 20 related patents to his credit.  He also has
developed land and built houses in his varied career, which has
included two unsuccessful runs for Congress in the 1980s.

In addition to children, he has raised innumerable horses, sheep,
cows, cats, dogs and other critters at Gayfield, his 140-acre
farm in Frederick. He shares the 150-year-old brick farmhouse,
which has 32 rooms and 9 1/2 baths, with his wife, Ellen, their
mothers and three of their children.

The sheep - Bartlett raises black ones - share the back pasture
with the dirt-bike racing course built by Barlett's 19-year-old
son, Ross, a molecular biology student whose racing trophies
nearly fill the family room. Just off the same room, Bartlett
built a greenhouse that is home to a family of goldfish in a pond
and a stuffed beaver frozen in mid-gnaw next to a stump.

Three days after winning a seat in Congress, Bartlett was back at
Gayfield from a trip to thank voters.  Wearing a dark blue suit
and black wingtips, he was down on one knee, waving a big yellow
leaf at a dozen honking geese.

"C'mon, c'mon," Bartlett urged. He wanted the geese to come
closer for a photograph, a nice shot of the new congressman down
on the farm. The geese just honked angrily and left Bartlett
kneeling in the wet leaves, looking, at the very least, un-
congressional.  Bartlett, who is starting what he hopes will be
"8 or 10" years in Congress at an age when most people retire,
knows he's not a typical congressman. For starters, he plans to
give $60,000 of his $129,500 congressional salary annually to es-
tablish two $5,000 college scholarships in each of his district's
six counties.

And politically, Bartlett is upside-down and backwards.

A deeply conservative Republican, Bartlett got campaign help from
far-right-wingers such as Patrick J. Buchanan and Oliver L.
North. Yet he was supported by Democratic incumbent Beverly R.
Byron, who was still smarting from her bitter primary loss to
Hattery.

Bartlett never used the word "Republican" in his advertising,
even though the GOP has been the dominant party in his Western
Maryland district for decades. Byron is a Democrat - as were her
husband and her husband's parents, who held the seat before her -
but she has always been a moderate who appealed to the rural
district's conservatives.

"I did not want to give Democrats a guilt trip voting for me,"
Bartlett explained. "I'm very proud of being a Republican, but I
needed a lot of Democratic votes."

And the National Rifle Association, which clings to Republicans
like glue, endorsed Democrat Hattery based on his voting record
in the state legislature. Bartlett, a gun owner who says his
brother holds several world records for big-game hunting and is
"the second best shot in Florida," called the NRA's endorsement
"stupid."

So did Paul Lane, a man with shoulders like cinder blocks and a
pistol hostered on his hip, who is co-owner of the Gun Center in
Frederick and helped campaign for Bartlett.

"I feel that he represents me and people like me who are gun
enthusiasts," Lane said when Bartlett stopped by Friday to thank
him for his support.

Bartlett said Lane's faith was well placed.

"No matter how stupid (the NRA is), I have to vote my conscience,
and I feel very strongly about our Second Amendment rights,"
Bartlett said.

After an election in which Democrats recaptured the White House
and maintained their hold on Congress, Bartlett says his role in
Washington will be "the loyal opposition."

"You've got to show a little decorum as a freshman," Bartlett
said. "But I'm 66 years old and I'm not going to sit back and be
quiet."

No matter what Bartlett thinks, his mother back in Frederick is
still skeptical about his new job.

"They don't work hard; they just sit there and sleep," she said.
"It's the easiest job in the world as far as actual work is con-
cerned."<02:36 11-08C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor-
poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)