[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 14269]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        RECOGNIZING THE EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY OF GOVERNOR PHIL HOFF

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 25, 2004

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, it is a very great personal pleasure to 
extend best wishes on his eightieth birthday to Governor Philip H. Hoff 
of Vermont.
  During my own years of service to Vermont, I have found no finer 
example, no better counselor, no more steadfast friend, than Phil Hoff, 
the Governor of Vermont from 1962 to 1969.
  Educated at Williams College and Cornell University, Phil Hoff ran 
for Governor of Vermont in 1962. His was an uphill battle: Although 
Democrat William Meyer had been elected to one term in the U.S. House 
in 1958, no Democrat had won the governorship in the state of Vermont 
since before the Civil War. Vermont was steadfastly, resolutely, a one-
party state, even resisting national plebiscites for Democratic 
candidates, standing alone with Utah in voting for William Taft in the 
Woodrow Wilson victory in 1912, alone with Maine in the Franklin Delano 
Roosevelt landslide in 1936.
  With energy, vision and a great personal warmth that touched voters 
deeply, Phil Hoff boldly took a simple message to Vermont's citizens: 
It was time for a change. And people listened, and agreed. Phil Hoff 
was elected Governor of Vermont in 1962 by defeating the incumbent 
chief executive, F. Ray Keyser Jr. His vigor was put in service of his 
dual linked commitments, to social justice and to making those changes 
that would bring it about. During the next six years, everything in 
Vermont was changed, opened up, made more responsive to the people, 
reshaped in the visionary spirit of those exciting times of growth and 
renewed democracy. With Phil Hoff as governor, it seemed anything was 
possible: Stale tradition, entrenched power, historical limitations, 
all gave way to the bold vision and active involvement of this 
remarkable human being.
  While we have many differences, many different points of view, in our 
state, for many years Vermont has been to people all over America a 
beacon for what politics can be. Here, ideological conservatism does 
not rule, nor narrow self-interest, nor recriminations of one group 
against another. Our political figures far more often than not speak 
out on the side of justice and fairness. That is the legacy of Phil 
Hoff, who not only governed our state but left a legacy that ever 
afterwards politics would be about inclusion and not exclusion, about 
moving confidently into the future rather than cowering in the shadow 
of the past.
  Phil Hoff kept up an active life in the public sector, serving in 
more recent years as a Vermont State Senator, as a Trustee and 
President of Vermont Law School, as Chairperson of Vermont Advisory 
Committee of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. His greatest honors have 
come not from institutions, corporations, bureaucracies, but from the 
place held for him in the hearts of his fellow citizens. Deeply honored 
and revered by all in Vermont, Phil Hoff remains accessible and warm, a 
good neighbor, a good friend, a model citizen, to thousands and 
thousands of Vermonters.
  On my own behalf and on behalf of the entire state of Vermont, Let me 
conclude by wishing Phil Hoff, our finest public citizen, our model of 
what a human being can and should be, a very, very happy eightieth 
birthday. Phil, the nation, as well as Vermont, is proud of you.

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