Fred Tuttle was a film star with a thick Vermont accent, whose 1998 run for Senate made him a grass-roots sensation. Despite being new to politics, he managed to win 54 percent of the vote in a primary for the U.S. Senate in 1998. He was a retired dairy farmer before he starred in a movie that depicted a character named Fred Tuttle running for Congress. In an effort to publicize the movie, Tuttle ran for real. NPR's Michele Norris talks to Vermont filmmaker John O'Brien about Fred Tuttle, who died Saturday at age 84.
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