By John McElhenny, Associated Press, 07/13/02

BOSTON -- It was 1968, as U.S. soldiers were being shipped off every day to fight the war in Vietnam, when 22-year-old Robert Reich walked into the Oakland military induction center and made the examining sergeant's day.

"Just what we're looking for!" the sergeant said upon sight of the 4-foot-10-inch Reich. "A tunnel rat to flush the Vietcong out from under the rice paddies!"

The sergeant's excitement was short-lived. Reich, then a newly minted Dartmouth graduate, failed the physical because he was too short, earning him a medical deferment that kept him out of the draft.

"I was quite frightened," recalled Reich, 56, who went on to become U.S. Labor Secretary and is now a Democratic candidate for governor. "I suddenly had visions of crawling through these tunnels beneath the rice paddies with hand grenades. It was not an inviting prospect."

Reich, a Democrat, is not unique among the current crop of gubernatorial candidates. In fact, all the draft-eligible candidates were granted student and other deferments to avoid military service in Vietnam, according to an Associated Press review of federal draft records.

In this post-Sept. 11 world, some contend it's more important for the next governor to understand military issues. By law, the governor oversees the 11,000-member Massachusetts National Guard.

Acting Gov. Jane Swift has taken a more active military role since the World Trade Center attacks, calling up 160 Guardsmen to protect the state's airports and another two dozen to guard the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth and the Wachusett Reservoir in central Massachusetts.

But there is now no military experience among the gubernatorial candidates.

Republican Mitt Romney was given a religious deferment while a Mormon missionary in France during the late 1960s and a student deferment while at Stanford and Brigham Young universities.

Tom Birmingham, the Democratic Senate president, received student deferments while at Phillips Exeter and Harvard from 1967 to 1970.

Reich, who participated in anti-war protests while in college and took time off to campaign for anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy in 1968, received a student deferment while at Dartmouth from 1964 to 1968.

After graduation, while working a summer job near Oakland, Reich's failure on the physical rendered him unqualified for military service except during a war or national emergency. Vietnam was never a declared war for the United States, and the Selective Service considered it a "peacetime draft." About 58,000 Americans died during the conflict.

The two other Democratic candidates for governor, Treasurer Shannon O'Brien, 43, and former state Sen. Warren Tolman, 42, were not eligible to be drafted. Women have never been eligible, and Tolman turned 18 in 1977, during a five-year period when the Selective Service was shut down.

The only candidate who had military experience dropped out of the race Friday. Steve Grossman, former chairman of the national Democratic Party, received a student deferment from 1964 to 1968 while at Princeton and then Harvard Business School. He served in the U.S. Army Reserves after his deferment ended.

The draft issue dogged another Massachusetts governor, William Weld, when in 1995 he was reported to have taken unusual measures to avoid the draft, even appealing unsuccessfully to a New York appeals board after he was approved for service in 1969.

The draft board declared Weld delinquent for not responding to orders to report for induction, but he eventually received a medical deferment for his bad back.

In fact, millions of American men received deferments during the Vietnam War. In 1964, for example -- the year Reich first received his student deferment -- 1.2 million men received student deferments, according to the Selective Service.

In 1965 -- the first year of Romney's deferment -- 1.7 million men received student deferments.

Reich and Birmingham said they didn't ask for any special help to earn their deferments, and they said no one intervened with the draft boards on their behalf.

Birmingham 52, said the exemptions given to him and other college students, while many of his neighbors from blue-collar Chelsea were drafted, shows the draft's bias against the working class.

Romney, 55, the former Salt Lake Olympic chief, declined to be interviewed on the subject.

But in 1994, when he was trying to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, Romney denied that his 2.5 year Mormon mission to France was taken to avoid being drafted. He said his father, a three-term Michigan governor and 1968 presidential candidate, never intervened.

Michael DePaulo, 59, a 17-year Navy and Marine veteran from Berkley, said he hopes the next governor -- whoever it is -- understands military issues, whether through personal experience or competent advisers.

"If you're basing your republic or government on the citizen-soldier, you better understand who the citizen-soldier is," DePaulo said.

All the draft-eligible Massachusetts gubernatorial candidates received student deferments during the Vietnam War.

Thomas Birmingham, born Aug. 1949.

-- Nov. 1967: Student deferment. (Phillips Exeter Academy)

-- Oct. 1968: Student deferment. (Harvard University)

-- Oct. 1969: Student deferment. (Harvard University)

-- Nov. 1970: Student deferment. (Harvard University)

Robert Reich, born June 1946.

-- Aug. 1964: Student deferment. (Dartmouth College)

-- Oct. 1965: Student deferment. (Dartmouth College)

-- Nov. 1966: Student deferment. (Dartmouth College)

-- Nov. 1967: Student deferment. (Dartmouth College)

-- July 1968: Failed physical exam. (Too short)

-- Aug. 1968: Qualified to serve only in war or national emergency.

Mitt Romney, born March 1947.

-- April 1965: Student deferment. (Still in high school)

-- October 1965: Student deferment. (Stanford University)

-- July 1966: Minister of religion deferment. (Missionary in France)

-- Feb. 1969: Student deferment. (Brigham Young University)

-- Feb. 1970: Student deferment. (Brigham Young University)

Note: The other two Democratic gubernatorial candidates, Shannon O'Brien and Warren Tolman, were not eligible to be drafted.

Source: Selective Service records, candidate interviews.