• consistent opposition to every proposal to protect the rights of private property owners from government confiscation
• increasing Federal invasion of our rights to keep and bear arms
• radical abortion rights, including opposition to a ban on partial birth abortion that even Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy voted for
• opposition to protection of the American flag
• blocking parental choice, at the bidding of the National Education Association, for poor black kids trying to get out of the District of Columbia's failing public school system
• almost invariable support for higher taxes
• being the only "Republican" to sponsor Hillary Clinton's socialized medicine plan,
• expanding federal control over our local public schools
• chief sponsor of a Federal gay rights act, and support for Vermont's civil unions law

I wish Vermonters could look at the Republican candidate and see that he was upholding the principles and beliefs of average Vermonters. I wish that we could look to James Jeffords to uphold the principle that the government exists to protect our rights - not to provide us with such rights as the government may see fit. I wish James Jeffords had worked to strengthen the principle of personal responsibility, where an individual or married couple could strike out in life with confidence that government existed to protect their rights and their opportunity to seek happiness - not take their earnings and control their lives.

But James Jeffords long ago adopted the liberal belief that the common man or woman is incapable of providing for himself - the belief that a costly, all-powerful government should run a nanny state where everybody is dependent on the government.

The two Democrats in this race, Edward Flanagan and Jan Backus, are daily scrambling ever further to the Left to get the support they need to win the September Democrat primary. It is noteworthy - and it is tremendously disappointing - that James Jeffords can find no disagreements of substance with either of them. On the issues that count, there's not a dime's worth of difference among the Left Wing Three.

This leaves a great gap to the middle and the right . And it leaves no one to speak for many thousands of Independents, libertarians, constitutionalists, conservatives and just plain middle of the road Vermonters who reject Jeffords-Backus-Flanagan big government liberalism.

I am running for the United States Senate because those Vermonters need and want a candidate to vote for who stands for what they believe in.

I am the only candidate for this office who will faithfully support the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, especially our First Amendment right to free speech, our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and our Fifth and 14th Amendment right to own and make peaceable use of our private property.

I am the only candidate for this office who will work to limit government, lower taxes, advance small business, defend traditional marriage, protect the rights of unborn children, and restore morality and common sense to public life.

I am asking all Vermonters who share these views NOT to vote for the lesser of two evils. I am asking them to vote for a candidate who stands where they stand, will fight for what they believe in, and will do his best to restore honor and trust to high public office.

Charlie Russell can not boast 31 years occupying a series of public offices. I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend to help me get elected. I won't have the support of the Republican Party establishment. But today I ask for the votes of concerned, moderate and conservative Vermonters who do not care to endorse with their votes those who have abandoned the people's rights, ignored their constitution, turned their backs on innocent unborn children, taken their earnings to finance an overgrown nanny state, and made the once noble profession of public service into a sordid scramble for power to take our money and run our lives.