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Edward KocheEdward Koche
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Session:         Page of 617

that I won with 51% of the vote, in the last election, as I told you, I won with 76.7% of the vote.

Now, why did that happen? I have established a reputation. I have to speak candidly without some hypocritical modesty, if this is to mean anything. People are convinced of my intellectual and fiscal honesty. And there are a lot of people that think they are smarter than I am, but I'm pretty smart. I'm no genius, but I know how to employ the services of geniuses. And even those who think they're smarter than I am came to a conclusion which was that I have a superb gut reaction to issues, that I have been able either to in a prescient way foretell what would become an issue, or when the issue presented itself, to know what was right even if controversial and even if at the time people would say, “It's bad news for a public officeholder; don't get involved -- it's controversial.” And I like to say to people that at one time or another in my district everybody was been angry with me on an issue that they were involved in. But when they look at all the issues I'm involved in, they find that overwhelmingly they are in accord.

The issue that provided the most fear from my supporters when I got into it was that of amnesty for the draft resister. I am the only member of Congress up to the present time to have gone to Canada and talked to the draft resisters. And I did that in December of 1969 when I went to Canada -- Ottawa,





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