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Schiavo blasts Musgrave

Activist supports congresswoman's Democratic rival

Joe Garner, Rocky Mountain News

Published July 13, 2006 at midnight

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Michael Schiavo bashed U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave at a campaign event Wednesday for inserting herself in the wrenching national debate over the prolonged death of his wife, Terri Schiavo.

Appearing alongside state Rep. Angie Paccione, D-Fort Collins, who is challenging Musgrave in the 4th Congressional District, Schiavo accused Musgrave of overstepping her bounds by intruding in the prolonged right-to-die case that engulfed the courts, Congress and the White House, and divided the country.

"Who gave her the right to speak about Terri?" Schiavo asked rhetorically, lambasting the two-term conservative Republican congresswoman for "injecting herself and her values into the private lives of Americans."

Musgrave responded in a single-sentence statement issued by her Washington office: "I have only compassion for Michael and Terri's family, and all those who have lost a loved one."

Guy Short, Musgrave's chief of staff, said she declined to be interviewed and would have no other comment on the issue.

At the Denver news conference, Schiavo vented his outrage that the government became involved in what he considered a family matter, although Terri Schiavo's fate was the subject of sermons and radio talk shows.

"Why do they think they need to stick their noses into our personal lives?" Schiavo said.

Terri Schiavo died March 31, 2005, from dehydration after her feeding tube was disconnected.

She had been in a persistent vegetative state after collapsing about 15 years earlier, probably due to the effects of an eating disorder.

President Bush, her parents and some state and federal lawmakers led efforts to keep her alive.

Michael Schiavo fought to have the tube disconnected, saying his wife would not have wanted to be kept alive artificially.

The feud has persisted, with Michael Schiavo and Terri Schiavo's parents writing books and making dueling TV appearances since her death.

Michael Schiavo said his campaign appearance for Paccione represented his new political identity, financed by the political action committee that carries his late wife's name.

He has since remarried.

"I will go as far as I need to go," Schiavo said, adding that he will support candidates, Democratic or Republican, who share his sense of privacy.

Schiavo said he would make campaign appearances in several states this election season and likely would have a role as well in the 2008 presidential race.

In a letter to Musgrave, Schiavo said her "outspoken and misguided attempts to have Congress overrule the legal courts and overturn the private medical decisions made by my family and my wife, Terri, were entirely inappropriate."

Paccione said Schiavo's invitation to the news media to follow him to Musgrave's Loveland office to deliver the letter, knowing that she would not be there, was "an appropriate action," not a staged event.

"Michael puts a human face on the invasion of privacy," Paccione said.

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