Are you sick and tired of watching Rep. Gary Condit (D., California) repeatedly flout standards of basic human decency in his obstruction of the Chandra Levy investigation? Are you disgusted by reports that he will run for reelection and already is planning a fall fundraiser, even as he hides from reporters, investigators, and Miss Levy’s parents? Don’t get mad. Get even!
Don Vance, a friend of the Levy family, has launched a Modesto-based organization called Americans for Credibility in Congress. It has a website called, appropriately enough, defeatgarycondit.org. This site is designed to inform and inspire citizens who wish to remove Condit from Congress. The group also accepts donations from those who wish to engage their checkbooks in this effort.
Defeatgarycondit.org is impressive in all that it offers activists who want to take their frustrations with Condit into the streets of California’s 18th Congressional District. The site includes suggested slogans for picket signs (e.g. “Honk if you think he’s Guilty,” “Drip, Drip, Drip,” and “Condidit Country”). A colorful map directs drivers to Condit’s field office at 920 16th Street in Modesto. And a calendar offers a variety of options for street demonstrations. Condit detractors gather daily (except Sundays) outside his office from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. and from 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. A large rally called “It’s time for him to go!” is scheduled for the American Legion Hall in Merced. (Ironically, merced is Spanish for “mercy,” a concept apparently utterly alien to Condit.)
The site features an interactive survey in which people can vote on whether Condit should quit and whether his colleagues should expel him from the House of Representatives. It also links to a pro-resignation petition at www.expelcondit.com which visitors may download and circulate among others who believe Condit should return immediately to the private sector.
“If this pressure can lead the congressman to speak with the Levys’ investigators which he said through his attorney Abbe Lowell last night that he will not do,” Vance told Fox News Channel’s Paula Zahn, “then that will make their job a little bit easier.”
Vance added: “The pressure we’re trying to put on the congressman besides resigning is to come public and prove his innocence in the world of public opinion that feels that he’s a suspect in this case, unlike the legal aspect.” Officially, police still say Condit is not a suspect.
So, is all this just another project of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy? While Condit’s GOP and conservative constituents certainly are among the chorus calling for his ouster, Vance is no Republican.
“I’m a Democrat myself,” said the leader of this grassroots campaign. “A lot of the other members who associate with me are Democrats. It’s more or less a non-partisan effort that we have.” Vance told me by phone Friday morning, “I voted for Condit in the past, but not in the past two elections.”
Vance urges citizens to make donations to Americans for Credibility in Congress. They can be mailed to Post Office Box 486, Modesto, California 95353.
“We cannot use any of these funds to support any other candidate, according to our filings with the Federal Election Commission, only to defeat Condit,” Vance says. “We will try to take out ads, if we find that that’s the thing to do. We’ll print signs and bumper stickers and send mailings to people we have on our list of supporters.”
Gary Condit is performing the impossible: making Bill Clinton look like a model of virtue and probity. Condit’s lies to the Levy family have amplified their pain. His destruction of evidence and deceit of police officials hindered their probe and merits his prosecution for those misdeeds, even if Chandra Levy knocks on her parents’ door tonight, fresh from a long hike in the Himalayas and bewildered by everything she has missed. Condit’s phony, self-serving lie-detector test mocks the authorities as well as the American public, as does his current state of self-imposed exile. Americans who are appalled by all this should check out defeatgarycondit.org and play a small part in helping to drag this degenerate from power.