POLITICS: Peterson Says Cheney Also Voted Anti-Sugar
October 23, 2004
By Mikkel Pates, Herald Staff Writer

Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., is accusing Vice President Dick Cheney of misleading sugar farmers about the administration's support for the industry.

Peterson said the Bush administration is "keeping secret a plan" to increase sugar imports from South America. And he said the administration has failed to mention that Cheney voted in 1985 to gut the sugar program when he was a member of Congress, he said.

Peterson issued a critical news release late Friday in anticipation of Cheney's visit to Moorhead on Monday. Minnesota is one of the so-called battleground states in the Nov. 2 election. Peterson said the Bush administration has been negotiating free trade agreements with the Andean countries (Colombia, Bolivia, Equador and Peru), which collectively export 1.5 million tons of sugar, and will complete those negotiations after the November elections.

"These secret negotiations have the potential to destroy the sugar industry," Peterson said. Peter Hong, Minnesota communications director for the Bush-Cheney campaign in St. Paul, said he didn't have documentation of Cheney's 1985 vote. He said, "Kerry and his friends should spend less time dreaming up conspiracy schemes and should spend more time on the issues northwest Minnesota cares about."

The Bush-Cheney campaign a month ago went on the offensive with Kerry over sugar, with visiting USDA Undersecretary Bill Hawks noting Kerry had voted against the sugar program several times in the Senate. Peterson says that Cheney, while a congressman in Wyoming, also voted against sugar. According to the Congressional Quarterly, Cheney voted on Sept. 26, 1985, to lower the loan level price support for sugar by 1 cent a pound per year until it reaches 15 cents a pound, and to eliminate the cost of transportation in setting market stabilization prices.

"Cheney voted against the sugar program even though they had sugar beets in Wyoming," Peterson says. "He was pretty much a free market, anti-government guy. They don't trust him from way back when he represented Wyoming."

Peterson, up for re-election himself in Minnesota's sprawling 7th District, earlier withheld support for presidential hopeful Kerry, D-Mass., until he got a written assurance that Kerry would oppose the Central American Free Trade Agreement based on its impact on sugar. Meanwhile, Mark Froemke of Grand Forks, president of the Northern Valley Labor Council and an American Crystal employee, said his group is planning some kind of "feedback" when Cheney visits. "He's not going to come to the valley and get a free ride, especially with his poor history of negotiations on behalf of the sugar industry, which I work in. And I'd sure like to keep my job," he said.

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