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"Man With a Plan" Becomes Reality
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Race
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Feb 14, 2009 07:06am |
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| Category | Profile |
| News Date | Thursday, October 1, 1998 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | In 1996, Fred Tuttle, a 79-year-old retired dairy farmer, was the star of a movie, "Man with a Plan," in which he played Fred Tuttle, a 76-year-old retired dairy farmer who runs for Congress. The fictional Fred won and moved to Washington. The real Fred recently won the Republican primary for the Senate, but hopes he won't have to leave Vermont.
Why was Tuttle running? Most politicians, after all, are happy to leave their home districts, and only pretend to hate Washington. In the movie, Fred runs because he needs a good-paying job with health benefits that doesn’t require references or a high school diploma. In real life, however, things are a bit more complicated.
Tuttle is the close friend of his 35-year-old neighbor and filmmaker, John O'Brien, who directed him in "Man with a Plan." O'Brien, whose father ran in the Democratic primary for Governor of Vermont in 1976, was disturbed a few months ago to see that one Jack McMullen, late of Cambridge, Mass., was the sole candidate in the Republican Primary to oppose long-time Vermont senator Patrick Leahy. The multimillionaire McMullen felt he understood the needs of Vermonters because he had owned what some sources described as a "ski chalet" in Warren for 15 years. So, to provide both a protest candidate for voters and a promotional vehicle for his film, which is to air on PBS in October, O’Brien convinced Tuttle to run and filed his candidacy papers in July. |
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