Claudia with Contras, Nicaragua
Claudia with Larry Elder
Claudia with the Governator
Posted on 02/04/2004 11:11:55 PM PST by JohnnyZ
Rep. Barbara Lee's Republican challenger this year is an online CEO, an energetic campaigner -- and also the daughter of the Nicaraguan Contras' late military commander, a heritage that has some East Bay liberals and human rights activists howling.
Claudia Bermudez, 50, of Oakland, said she'll confront Lee on issues from homeland security to education. "I'm a businesswoman, I live here in the district -- I don't come as a Contra leader to come and overtake Berkeley."
But she touts her father's legacy on her campaign Web site, saying she's "proud to carry on a tradition of political activism that she inherited from her late father, Enrique Bermudez, who led the pro-democracy forces against the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s." Her father's 1991 assassination "was difficult, but deepened her passion for freedom, and steeled her resolve to continue her political efforts in Nicaragua and here at home," the site says.
In person, Bermudez is more blunt in comparing her father's war to her nascent campaign against Lee. "My father fought the communists in the mountains of Nicaragua, so I can certainly fight a communist here wearing high heels."
Some critics say Enrique Bermudez was no hero.
"I don't think it's fair to visit the sins of the father on the child -- however, she seems to be attaching herself to her father," said Garrett Brown, a Central American labor and social issues activist from El Cerrito, outside the 9th District. Helived and worked in the northern Nicaragua town of Esteli from 1984 to 1988.
"Her lineage is from one of the most undemocratic, violent violators of human rights that Central America ever knew, and I know this from my own personal experience, having lost Nicaraguan friends to the Contras," he said.
"He was one of the most brutal and bloody leaders of the Contra army, which was responsible for the massacres, kidnappings and tortures of school teachers, nurses, agrarian technicians. The Contras were the most anti-democratic force in play in Nicaragua during these years."
Unfavorable memory
Brown estimated there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of 9th District residents who lived in, visited or did solidarity work with Nicaragua, and are likely to remember his name unfavorably.
"They can say whatever they want," Claudia Bermudez replied. "I want them to give me the proof that my father ever violated anybody's human rights ... and if you want to talk about human rights, I will introduce you to a Sandinista torturer who's living in San Francisco."
It was a war, and her father was a respected career military officer striving to liberate his nation from communist oppression, she said.
"In the process, they killed 50,000 people and burned schools and health clinics," retorted Suzanne Baker of Oakland, an activist who's going to Nicaragua this week. "I wouldn't call them a pro-democracy movement -- I'd call them an anti-revolutionary movement, because I don't think those people had a clue of what democracy was all about."
'Focused visionary'
Bermudez said critics like Brown and Baker knew her father only through the media. "They never knew Enrique Bermudez, the man and the leader. My father has been villainized, but he was the most gentle, focused visionary that I've met in person, and that's who I get my inspiration from."
Uvaldo Martinez Jr., chairman of the California Republican National Hispanic Assembly -- of which Bermudez is Alameda County chair -- said her birthright could be an asset. "With her background, who better to promote democracy?"
Latino Republicans should have a "very positive" reaction to her father's legacy, he said -- "Anyone that opposes communism, we have to support" -- and besides, "her father's not running -- she is."
Focus on homeland
Making homeland security a campaign cornerstone "is going to play very well in her community," he predicted, and her status as a Latina Republican might "change the temperament of the opposition ... I mean, what are you going to say about her?"
Actually, the opposition might not have to say anything at all. The district's lopsided voter registration -- 62 percent Democrat to 11 percent Republican -- makes any GOP campaign not just an uphill battle, but an ascent of Mount Everest without a Sherpa.
Bermudez said she's doesn't buy into that.
"A lot of people, a lot of Republicans in the district don't go out and vote, they say 'What's the sense?'" she said. "We want to inject some energy ... Ms. Lee has not been effective in Washington, and I know I can be."
Not so, said Lee campaign chairman Lee Halterman -- few members of Congress are more tenacious and adept at fulfilling their district's needs, he said, citing as an example the dredging, security and other funding Lee has brought to the Port of Oakland.
Lee still popular
And while Bermudez joins a long line of Republicans who have condemned Lee's now-famous lone dissenting vote against the use of military force after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Lee won re-election in 2002 not only with 82 percent of the vote, but with the second-highest number of votes cast that year for any California member of Congress, Halterman noted.
Lee, Bermudez and Libertarian James Eyer of Oakland all are unopposed for their parties' nominations, so they're already looking toward their showdown in November's general election.
Bermudez is co-founder and CEO of Alameda-based SeniorJobShop.com, the first commercial online job service exclusively for people over 50. A relative newcomer to GOP activism, she cut her teeth on Arnold Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial campaign and said she's now meeting with local citizens -- especially in the Latino community -- to hear their priorities.
"For me, of course, with the port and all the bridges we have all around us, security is No. 1," she said. "Then you look at the district itself and you see the schools are failing ... I want to look into that."
She also voiced concern about high costs and overregulation driving small businesses out of the Bay Area and California, as well as about the nation's health care crisis. She said she doesn't have detailed plans yet for how to mitigate these problems; she plans to develop them while taking input along the campaign trail.
Called energetic, bright
Alameda County Republican Central Committee chairman Jim Hartman called Bermudez "very energetic, bright and prepared to actively contest in the 9th Congressional district.
"I think she can paint a sharp contrast with Barbara Lee, whose record needs to be exposed," Hartman added. "I earnestly believe that many, many centrist Democrats -- even liberal Democrats -- if they became fully conversant with Barbara Lee's record would be prepared to support an alternative candidate."
As for Bermudez' history, he said, "I think seeing communists up close may give her a perspective that others may not have here," Hartman said. "He may be romanticized in coffee salons in Berkeley, but maybe people who know first-hand what (Sandinista president) Daniel Ortega was all about have a valuable message to send here."
The Somoza regime that had controlled Nicaragua since 1933 was toppled by the Sandinistas in 1979. Enrique Bermudez, a Somoza military officer, emerged as military commander of the Contra movement seeking to oust the Sandinistas; the Reagan administration began funding them in 1981.
Congress banned this in 1982, but the Reagan administration kept funding the Contras anyway, in part with money raised by covert arms sales to Iran. A special prosecutor's investigation of the Iran-Contra affair led to charges and convictions against several Reagan administration officials, all of whom were pardoned in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush.
The Sandinistas and the Contras signed a cease-fire pact in 1988, and a moderate U.S.-supported candidate beat Ortega in 1990's elections. Enrique Bermudez was assassinated in February 1991 in a Managua parking lot. Claudia Bermudez said the Sandinista-dominated legal system in Nicaragua hasn't sought justice for her father, but she remains hopeful that will change someday.
Nicaragua's current president, Enrique Bolanos, enjoys U.S. support; Bermudez's campaign Web site contains a photo of her with Bolanos.
Claudia with Contras, Nicaragua
Claudia with Larry Elder
Claudia with the Governator
I'll bet she breaks 20%, though.
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