A Case of Sour Sugar

Until only recently, Maine's Democrats readily acknowledged their friendship with Fred Vahlsing Jr. Though he considered himself a Republican, the rough-edged chief of a New Jersey-based food-products operation regularly purchased tables at Democratic fund-raising affairs, entertained politicians at his hotel suite and occasionally flew them around in one of his Aero Commanders. Equally important, Freddie sought to boost the state's shaky economy by opening Maine's first sugar refinery, enabling farmers to take advantage of a much-prized 33,000-acre federal sugar-beet quota.

Now Democrats--and particularly Senator Edmund Muskie--find Freddie a liability. Maine's sugar-beet business is verging on collapse. Vahlsing's Maine Sugar Industries (M.S.I.) lost $2.7 million in the first nine months of 1969, owes more than $300,000 in back taxes and has yet to pay some Aroostook County farmers for their beets. Worse, M.S.I, is in danger of defaulting on an $8 million state-guaranteed bank loan, a situation that could force Maine to assume the payments of $80,000 a month for the next 14 years.

Open Sewer. First as Governor, then Senator, Muskie has sought to improve Maine's economy. He claimed much of the credit for wangling the original sugar-beet quota from the Department of Agriculture in 1964. When other potential sugar-beet processors became unavailable for the project, Muskie helped bring in Vahlsing, who already operated a potato-processing plant in Easton, Me., to build a sugar refinery there. Now Muskie, who opened doors in Washington for Vahlsing and helped him obtain financing, must absorb some of the blame for the mess.

Nor can the Senator, known as a champion of conservation, escape at least partial responsibility for the pollution of Prestile Stream, which runs past Vahlsing's plant across the Canadian border. When the backers of the refinery project requested that the stream be reclassified for industrial use, Muskie approved the downgrading as a temporary measure. As a result, Vahlsing's potato plant was allowed to continue to discharge more waste into the once-pure trout stream.

The state's problems have proved an unexpected asset for Maine's Republicans. G.O.P. legislators last month authorized a patently political investigation of M.S.I., and hope to pin the disaster on the Democrats. This will not be too easy. Until the sugar-beet business turned sour, Republicans were just as eager as Democrats to promote the operation, and it was the then Republican Governor, John Reed, who appealed to the legislature to reclassify the Prestile Stream. Even the state's potato farmers, whose votes the Republicans hope to win, must accept some blame for the failure of Vahlsing's venture. Exercising typical New England caution, they planted only a fraction of the allotted acreage with sugar beets, thus denying Vahlsing the raw material he needed. Muskie's personal integrity is not under attack. Still, his judgment in dealing with Vahlsing, a campaign contributor, seems to have lapsed.

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