N.D. Delegation Wants Fargo List Investigation
By Mary Jo Almquist
The Forum

March 31st, 2005

North Dakota’s congressional delegation wants to get to the bottom of a list that barred more than 40 people from President Bush’s speech last month in Fargo.

Rep. Earl Pomeroy said Wednesday his concern stems from a similar incident in Denver, where three people were removed from Bush’s March 21 town hall meeting on Social Security.
Pomeroy said the Denver incident raises disturbing questions given what also happened in Fargo. He said he’ll evaluate what must be done to launch an inquiry.

“We need to find out whether this was part of the official planning,” he said.

Sen. Kent Conrad and Sen. Byron Dorgan echoed the concern.

“We believe the black lists ought to be investigated,” Dorgan and Conrad said in a joint statement. “Holding public events in public buildings and developing black lists to keep members of the public out is wrong.”

In Colorado, Rep. Mark Udall, a Democrat, already has asked for more information on the matter there.

Udall’s press secretary, Lawrence Pacheco, told The Forum that Udall wrote a letter of inquiry to the Secret Service, hoping to clarify the events leading up to and occurring on the day of the Bush event.

The Secret Service has said it had nothing to do with removing Alec Young, Karen Bauer and Leslie Weise from Bush’s speech in Denver.

Udall’s office has not yet received a formal response to its inquiry, Pacheco said.

Young, Bauer and Weise were apparently rejected from the Denver event for having bumper stickers that read: “No More Blood For Oil.” The self-proclaimed “Denver Three” are considering filing a lawsuit, according to the Associated Press.

All are members of Denver Progressives, a political activist group.

But the Bush administration made no apologies for the Denver situation on Wednesday.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to a similar event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that those who may disrupt an event would be asked to leave.

Still, he attributed the Denver incident to the work of a volunteer, much like what the White House said took place in Fargo on Feb. 3.

“My understanding is that it was a volunteer involved in that matter (Denver). My sense is that the volunteer thought that these individuals, these three individuals were coming to the event to disrupt it. And those individuals - I think if you look at some of the early news reports even said something to that effect,” McClellan said.

“Now, we welcome a diversity of views at events, but if people are coming to the event to disrupt it, that’s another matter. If they want to disrupt the event, then I think that, obviously, they’re going to be asked to leave the event. There is plenty of opportunity for them to express their views outside of events; there are protest areas.”

Thirty three of the 42 people whose names appeared on Fargo’s do-not-admit list also were traced to a local progressive group, Democracy For America.

The list, leaked to The Forum a day before Bush arrived in Fargo, contained the names of people not to be given tickets to the Social Security speech at the Bison Sports Arena on the North Dakota State University campus.

Volunteers who distributed free tickets were given copies of the list and were told to alert a representative from the governor’s office if someone from the list tried to get a ticket.

The governor’s office and state Republican Party denied involvement, but indicated the list came from the White House advance team. That explanation came a day after the White House blamed the list on “an overzealous volunteer.”

At the time, White House spokesman Jim Morrell confirmed the volunteer could “very well be” someone from the advance team, but didn’t know specifically who it was.

The White House wasn’t aware the list was being created and regretted that it happened, said Morrell, who added that the White House was taking steps to ensure nothing like this happened again.

But Pomeroy, who said he didn’t act sooner on the Fargo do-not-admit list because he thought it was an isolated incident, said someone is not telling the truth.

Pomeroy said he’s not suggesting federal laws have been broken, but said he’s troubled that this now appears to be standard operating procedure.

“I had been inclined to view the North Dakota incident as a fluke not to be repeated,” he said. “The fact that this happened in Denver shows they didn’t learn any lessons.”

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