Norman's No Nobody

Being a lone wolf doesn't discourage Norman Sommer. The ardent Liberal Is On a Misson, if not to change the course of history at least to reshape the public debate;

By Margo Harakas, Staff Writer: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Dec 10, 2003.

The first thing Norman Sommer says is he's never been involved in political parties, never been active in political campaigns. Not since 1948, anyway. But this Aventura retiree is what many consider all too rare these days, a politically aware and informed member of the citizenry.

He spends hours each day watching C-SPAN, CNN and various political talk shows. He voraciously reads anything he can find on politics and legislation and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering in Washington, D.C.

While others scream in frustration at their morning paper and TV, he mails letters to newspapers, columnists and celebrity liberals such as Ed Asner and Norman Lear, warning, with Code Blue urgency, of what he sees as a takeover of America by right-wing ideologues.

"It's not simply outrageous," he contends, "but downright frightening." And he's trying (with limited finances and mobility) to fight back.

He's even gambling 600 all-too-precious dollars -- put down on a conference room at a Miami-Dade hotel -- that there are others like himself, maybe thousands, willing to unite in an election year to correct the out-of-control course he sees the ship of state taking.

"At 78, I'm not worried about myself," he says, "but about the future of our country."

Sommer is emblematic of a disheartened, disenfranchised, dissatisfied undercurrent that some say will tip the scales in next year's elections, or, at the very least, help shape the national debates.

"He's very pro-American, very much for justice," says Seymour Kaufman, Sommer's friend of 10 years.

Sommer, a son of the Depression and a World War II veteran, avoids all party labels when talking about his cause. (There's a clue, however, in the fact he was a delegate for the 1948 Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace.)

"I want this movement to be neutral and apolitical," he explains. "I don't want it to be stigmatized as Democrat or liberal. I can see moderate Republicans and independents joining me.

"I'm convinced that the people, informed and concerned people, are anti- or non-right. They are not a part of what they see in Congress, the Congress of Tom DeLay and those like him. They are not in favor of where these people are taking this country. They are as frustrated as I am."

Maybe.

Sommer knows it takes a lot of door-pounding to elicit a response. Especially when the person knocking is, as he puts it, "a nobody like me."

He, after all, was the source of the leak five years ago, at the height of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, on Congressman Henry Hyde's long-ago extra-marital affair. It took him eight months to set that record straight, eight months of contacting 57 news organizations and dozens of talk show pundits. And Sommer had had it with the self- righteous Hyde, then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which was deciding whether to impeach Clinton for his sexual misbehavior with Monica Lewinsky. Not until Salon picked up the story did anyone else show interest, Sommer says.

But this, his latest mission, is far more crucial, he says. "I'm most concerned with the drift the country has taken in the last 20 years. We're drifting toward a one-party government. If that continues, we'll slide into an American-style fascism."

So Norman Sommer, retired sales manager, is standing (albeit with the assist of a walker) to be counted. He's mailed out more than 3,000 letters in the past several months hoping to fire up a movement. Pete Seeger, Janet Reno, Ed Asner and Noam Chomsky all replied, he says.

Few others did. "I was ready to throw in the towel," he says. Then Alan Bisbort, a columnist for the Hartford (Connecticut) Advocate, wrote about Sommer's efforts under the headline Nobody Is a Nobody, Norman.

"I was deluged," says Sommer. By his estimate, about 100 letters, phone calls and e-mails arrived at his apartment. A few letters even included unsolicited donations.

"Someone has to pay for the stamps," he says, grateful for the contributions.

Despite some coyness, Sommer's political leanings are not hard to guess. After much prodding he tells you, "I am a stark-raving liberal, unapologetic and unreconstructed and devout." He then defines liberal as "one who is concerned and acts for social, political and economic justice for all."

To spread the word and keep abreast of the latest political shenanigans, Sommer is up at 4 or 5 listening to the morning news, and he's still online at 2 in the morning. Much of what he hears alarms him. But not content to simply complain, Sommer has put together what he calls a "Plan of Action to Take Back Our Country."

First step is uniting with others who think wealthy special interests have replaced public interests in the hearts and minds of Washington, D.C., politicos. Hence the organizational meeting he's called for March 16 at the Marco Polo Ramada Plaza Beach Resort in Aventura.

On that day, he hopes a viable movement will be born, one so vast that an executive director will be hired and an office opened. It's not a job he's angling for. "I'm not the right age, and my health is not good," he says.

He envisions funding for such an endeavor coming from $100 a year membership dues.

The aim of the organization will be "to create a level playing field, to turn the tide, to meet the right head on."

To achieve that goal, Sommer proposes recruiting like-minded individuals to run for public office and start think tanks, educating the public not only on current affairs but on the influence of special interests, and replacing what he considers the current "climate of fear" with one of healthy democratic debate.

"There's very little debate on the floor of the House these days and they vote as a bloc and if anyone votes against them, they are punished," says Sommer, who finds the recent filibusters no substitution for ongoing vigorous floor debate.

To keep in fighting shape, Sommer, who is beset with a variety of health problems and was for many months in a wheelchair, works out daily in the condo gym and swims laps in the pool.

There's a price paid for political activism. For Sommer, a Social Security pensioner, fighting the good fight means having less money for the non-essentials in life. And receiving subtle reminders, prior to family or social gatherings, that politics is not a welcome topic of conversation.

So be it. When the party's over, he'll mount his soapbox again.

In his defense, his friend Kaufman notes that while Sommer is passionate, he is never obnoxious or overbearing.

In espousing his theme, Sommer summons the thoughts of everyone from Edmund Burke, Sinclair Lewis and James Baldwin as well as lyrics from That's Life and The Impossible Dream.

He may lament that "most Americans today get their news from Jay Leno and David Letterman," but he hasn't given up on his fellow Americans.

Some would say Sommer's approach is all too simplistic and that he willfully ignores that if the right or ultra-right holds sway, it's only because the electorate has willed it.

"If they knew what was happening," he says earnestly, "they would make the right decision."

Meanwhile, he'll continue to sound the alarm, knowing full well "it's a long shot."

"I might fail," he says gloomily, "but it's not the worst thing in the world to fail."

If the cause is right, there is honor in the battle.

"I'm doing this for my progeny [two daughters and one granddaughter]," he says. "I don't have any worldly things to leave behind. So whatever happens with this is my legacy."

Margo Harakas can be reached at mharakas@sun-sentinel.com or 954- 356-4728.

© 2003 by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
reprinted from The Sun-Sentinel