He Bravely Took On Pat Leahy

By Ted Cohen

A guy named Nat Frothingham is going to be eulogized later this month in his adopted hometown of Montpelier, the capital of Vermont.

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While most attendees at the memorial service will have known Frothingham as the heart and soul of local journalism, he once did something equally as bold as starting a newspaper.

He did that, too, something known as the Montpelier Bridge.

But Frothingham a half-century ago first showed his boyhood spirit when he tossed his hat in the ring for the U.S. Senate to compete against Pat Leahy for the seat being vacated by Republican George Aiken, a Vermont institution.

The Green Mountain State had never elected a Democrat to the upper chamber so odds initially favored Richard Mallary, a former state legislator ending his second congressional term.

The Democrat primary pitted Leahy, 34, against a guy named Nat Frothingham, 35 at the time.

Frothingham was an outsider, from Massachusetts, having moved to Vermont three years before that 1974 senate election to teach high school. Leahy was a Vermont native, from Montpelier, and, at the time, top county prosecutor in the state's largest city.

Jake Brown, in a remembrance published in The Bridge after Frothingham died earlier this year, remembered his friend running for the United States Senate, and against a much bigger name at that.

"His long-time friend Mason Singer suggested at the time it might be an uphill battle, given his opponent was a fellow named Patrick Leahy," Brown recalled. "But Nat persisted and campaigned vigorously around the state."

"Singer still has some of Nat's campaign materials," Brown said, "and they contain sentiments that are unmistakably relevant today.

"'Americans are stunned,'" Nat wrote in his flyers at the time, "'by the arrogance of those in power and the abuse of public trust. We ask if renewal is possible. We ask how faith can be restored…'"

"And then he called for the impeachment of the then-president Richard Nixon," Brown said.

Leahy trounced Frothingham by nearly 70 points on election day, and went on to beat Mallary by 20, but the defeated Democrat's indomitable spirit kept him involved in civic and public affairs for the rest of his life.

Frothingham died peacefully at the age of 86 on March 13, at Central Vermont Medical Center, after a short illness.

A public celebration of his life is to be held at 3 p.m., August 15, at the Unitarian Church of Montpelier.