Monthly Archives: August 2014

The Artful Roger has a moment of artlessness

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 Oh dear. The Republicrat candidate for State Senate in Windham County, Roger Allbee, put his foot in it last week.

For those just joining us, The Artful Roger is a longtime Republican who served as Agriculture Secretary under Jim Douglas, but he’s now running in the Democratic primary because, well, a Republican can’t possibly win in Windham. Or because of principle, your choice.

Anyway, there he was on August 21 at the American Legion Post 5 in lovely Brattleboro, along with the three actual Democrats in the race: incumbent Jeanette White, plus Becca Balint and Joan Bowman. Fortunately for all of us, the local community access cable folks recorded the event and posted it online. So we can all witness Allbee’s closing statement, which included the following example of acute political tone-deafness:

Whoever is elected represents all the people, whether they’re Democrat, Republican, they’re colored, they have alternative preferences, we represent everyone in the county. Everyone. We represent every citizen.

If you want to hear it for yourself, it’s right at the 108-minute mark.

Wow. How many people did Allbee offend in that brief remark? Well, obviously, “colored” is a longtime no-no. There’s also “alternative preferences,” by which he apparently means LGBT. But as we all know, “preference” is the right-wing code word for “you’ve got a choice, and you chose EVIL.”

Plus there’s the Republican formulation of “Democratic.”

Ugh.

I haven’t had time to go back and listen to the whole forum, but based on this one statement, I have to say I really, really hope that the voters don’t choose this guy as a standard-bearer for the Democratic Party.

Sorry, Rog. I mean “Democrat Party.”

Postscript. In addition to the above, one of my colleagues at Green Mountain Daily tells me that Allbee donated $500 to the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign in 2004. In fairness, he was a Republican at the time; but Bush/Cheney isn’t exactly moderate Republicanism. And his alleged hero, Jim Jeffords, had already exited the GOP because it had no place for him.

I have to say, the Vermont media have done a horrific job on Allbee’s candidacy. They’ve let him self-identify as a Democrat without exploring his political history at all.

The Milne campaign does something smart. Stop laughing, I mean it.

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Do Not Adjust Your Set. It’s True, It’s Damn True.

Scott Milne’s people, a.k.a. Brent Burns, put out a press release listing the names of prominent Republicans who have endorsed his candidacy.

And it’s an impressive list. 42 names of current and former officeholders. It puts to shame the tiny number of dead-enders and no-hopers who’ve opted for Libertarian Dan Feliciano.

It begins with former Governor Jim Douglas, the shining star of contemporary Republicanism. Unlike other people I could name (ahem, Phil Scott), Douglas has come out of his hidey hole and actually campaigned for Milne. His endorsement alone is worth approximately 1,000 Darcie “Hack” Johnstons.

After that, you get most of the VTGOP’s Senate delegation – Bill Doyle, Joe Benning, Norm McAllister, Peg Flory, and Kevin Mullin. From the House, add Kurt Wright, Heidi Scheuermann, Patti Komline, Chuck Pearce, Tom Koch, and Duncan Kilmartin and many more, plus former Rep and current Senate candidate Pat McDonald. A couple of interesting names: former Representative and current Senate candidate Dustin Degree and current Rep. Tony Terenzini, neither of whom are particularly moderate folks.

This primary-eve blast should put to rest any talk of a Feliciano groundswell. A couple of state party officials may have turned their backs on Milne, but the bulk of its officeholders – those with proven appeal to actual voters – are solidly behind him.

 

Vermont conservatives step out onto an invisible bridge

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What do you do if you’re a small frog in a big pond? Well, you can be content with your lot and get along with the bigger frogs; you could move to a smaller pond; or you could drain the big pond until you’re the biggest frog left standing.

The third course is the preferred option of Vermont conservatives. The likes of Mark “Little Snell” Snelling, Brady Toensing, John McClaughry, and Wendy Wilton have seemingly opted out of Lt. Gov. Phil Scott’s party-broadening operation; they’re backing the longshot write-in campaign of Libertarian Dan Feliciano for the VTGOP gubernatorial nomination. They’re likely to end up with egg on their faces and crow on their plates when the votes are counted; Scott Milne is virtually assured of taking the nomination if only because his name is on the ballot and write-ins are hard.

But their strategery does have a certain logic, an internally consistent reading of history. It’s dead wrong, natch, but there is a narrative. It’s like this: over the last 50 years or so, the Republicans have done best when they lean right, even when it means short-term defeat. (This storyline is the subject of Rick Perlstein’s three-volume history of the rise of the right; the just-published third book, “The Invisible Bridge,” chronicles the years between Richard Nixon’s resignation and Ronald Reagan’s national ascendancy.) Nixon killed the Sixties; Reagan established the rise of the right; George W. Bush took it even further. On the other hand, temporizers like Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney proved to be electoral dead ends.

Which is why so many conservatives truly believe the best course for the Republican Party is to nominate Ted Cruz. And why a small cadre of Vermonters are backing Feliciano.

It’s a coherent, logical view of national political trends. But it doesn’t apply in Vermont and the Northeast. Conservative Republicanism is pretty much dead in New York and New England*; the rare Republican winners are all moderates.

*Maine Governor Paul LePage is a Tea Partier, but an electoral fluke; he won with less than 40% of the vote in a three-way race.

In Vermont, it’s been decades since a true conservative won anything important. Republican winners have all come from the center or center-right: Dick Snelling, Jim Jeffords, Jim Douglas, Bob Stafford. And in the latter days of the Republicans’ Hundred Year Reich, the George Aiken wing led the way.

In short, that long national arc has completely bypassed Vermont – and the Northeast, for that matter. The national conservative ascendancy is based on four factors that have nothing to do with the Northeast: the GOP’s co-optation of southern whites, growing anti-government sentiment in the West and Southwest; Christian conservatism; and the generous support of deep-pocketed One Percenters like the Koch brothers and Foster Friess. None of that applies in Vermont. If anything, the trend in this neck of the woods is to the left. Even in hard-bitten old New Hampshire. To see a growing conservative movement in Vermont is to see dancing cartoon unicorns or pink elephants. There may have been an Invisible Bridge between Nixon and Reagan; but usually when you step onto an invisible bridge, you wind up all wet.  

 

The Milne Insufficiency

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Several days ago, I wrote a highlight-reel glance at this month’s campaign finance reports. Scott Milne’s meager report was mentioned; $22,370 for the past month, and $42,790 for the entire campaign.

That’s bad enough, but when you look more closely, things are… you guessed it… even worse. Milne’s fundraising effort, as unsuccessful as it’s been, is highly dependent on a handful of out-of-state donors who’ve already given the legal maximum of $2,000. Those top-dollar gifts account for $32,000 of Milne’s total. His in-state fundraising is nearly nonexistent, and he hasn’t roused any significant support among the Common Folk.

In my deadline-day post, I noted that $16,000 of Milne’s $42K was thanks to his connection to the Boies family, whose paterfamilias, David Boies, is a high-powered Washington attorney. His son, David Boies III, was a college roommate of Milne’s and is currently his business partner in a real estate development firm.

I was wrong. Let’s make that $20,000 in Boies-related cash. Two of the $2,000 donors on Milne’s reports are Timothy Battin and Rebecca Anderson. They are married, or at least an established couple, and he is a partner in daddy Boies’ law firm.

For those keeping score, that’s almost half of all Milne’s money coming from his Boies connection.

It might be even more. There are some common surnames on Milne’s max-money list, and those are tough to pin down via The Google. Any could have an undiscovered Boies tie. They include: John S. Edwards III and Mark Williams of California and Mark Sutton of Arizona. There’s also a New Jersey corporation, AJI, LLC, which I couldn’t positively identify.

But here’s something about Sutton. He is owner of Meridian Engineering, which also gave $2,000 to Milne for Governor. And here’s a possibly unrelated note from a recent Milne profile by The Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck:

He was living in Arizona in 1987, working as a field engineer for an electronics firm and starting a family, when his parents talked him into returning to Vermont and buying part of their travel agency.

So 18 years ago Milne was working “as a field engineer” in Arizona and now he’s pulled in $4,000 from a guy who owns an engineering firm in Arizona. That’s a stretch, but it makes more sense than “Some random dude gave Scott Milne four G’s.”

There’s reason to believe that Milne has received as much as three-quarters of his money from his well-tended Rolodex. He certainly hasn’t scored in his own home state; he’s raised roughly $10,000 from Vermonters. That’d be a nice total for a State Senate candidate, but it’s downright pathetic for a major-party gubernatorial hopeful. It’s surprising – shocking – to me that he hasn’t done better in-state. Even as a political outsider, an established businessman should have a lot of friends and associates who could be counted on to open their checkbooks. But no, not at all. And it seems obvious that the Republican establishment is giving him the cold shoulder.

As for Milne’s appeal to The Little Guy, he has raised a paltry $1,060 in gifts of under $100 from a whopping total of 24 separate donors. Not exactly evidence of a groundswell-in-the-making.

Maybe this is all part of His Big Plan, as Milne continues to insist. Maybe he turned to his old pals and partners to jumpstart his campaign, and now he’s cranking up the engine on his in-state machine.

Maybe. But I doubt it. And if that is, indeed, his plan, then it’s far too little and way too late.

 

It can’t get any worse, can it? …Yes, it can.

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Just a note from the Ship Of Doom, a.k.a. the Vermont Republican Party. Honestly, being a Vermont Political Observer these days is like watching a budget remake of Das Boot — bad shit keeps happening and you know they’re not gonna make it back home, you just never know when the deathblow will actually come.

So anyway, the latest dispatch comes to us from the Twitter feed of Brady Toensing, the Vice Chair of the VTGOP. He Tweeted the news that he’d cast an absentee ballot in the gubernatorial primary.

For Dan Feliciano, the Libertarian.

Welp, that makes two of the Republican Party’s four top officers who’ve abandoned Scott Milne, the Party’s chosen candidate. The other, of course, was Mark “Little Snell” Snelling. Their endorsements came in spite of Party Chair “Super Dave” Sunderland’s strongly-worded letter warning fellow Republicans not to go Libertarian.  

This is not just bad news for the Milne campaign, but for the all-new Vermont Republican Party. Last fall, Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott promoted a slate of party officers in an effort to broaden the party’s appeal. Snelling and Toensing were holdovers from the Jack Lindley VTGOP.

And now they’ve turned their backs on Milne and Sunderland… and, implicitly, on Scott’s efforts to broaden the party. 

Best of luck to Victory Campaign Director Jeff Bartley. He’s got a hell of a job in front of him.  

 

That and a buck will buy you a gubernatorial campaign

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Scott Milne’s unconventional campaign for governor continues to be a rousing success.

Well, it does if being unconventional is your goal. Otherwise, not so much. In fact, the time has come for one of my Bold Predictions: the Milne candidacy is a Dead Man Walking. He’ll (probably) survive the primary, but not only will he lose to Governor Shumlin, he’ll lose in a landslide of epic proportions.

I’d feel sorry for a guy who volunteered to take one for the team that couldn’t find a candidate of its own, and a guy who lost his mother and business partner in mid-campaign. But he’s done himself no favors. He’s been surprisingly inarticulate with the media and singularly unappealing in person. He’s shedding potential supporters at an alarming rate, and he’s had virtually no success at in-state fundraising.

Milne’s decision to pull out of a debate sponsored by the Essex Republicans had one predictable effect: it pissed off the Essex Republicans who, per VTDigger, voted 97% for Libertarian Dan Feliciano in a straw poll.

Not that I’m buying into the low-level media narrative of a Feliciano groundswell; he’s not going to win the Republican primary, simply because it’s so hard for a write-in to beat someone whose name is on the ballot. And when VTDigger bruited the notion that “Feliciano has started to gain traction among [VTGOP] stalwarts,” the only names it could name were Darcie “Hack” Johnston and El Jefe General John McClaughry. That’s a start, I guess, but not a very impressive one. Johnston’s a proven loser with no electoral appeal, and McClaughry’s a crank. A personable fellow, but a crank.

But I can see why the narrative exists; Milne’s making such a dog’s breakfast of his campaign that, if not for Feliciano, there’d be precious little to report. But it’s not that Feliciano is surging; it’s that Milne continues to diminish like the tide at Fundy, leaving a thin film of sludge on the beach behind him.

But tonight’s the beginning of Milne’s second life: a “tele-town hall,” in which some number of Vermonters will presumably give up 90 minutes of their time to hear a brief address by Milne and maybe, possibly ask a question – if they pass muster with the event’s moderator, Milne’s two children. Cozy!

The event was preceded by a mass robo-call to 30,000 households inviting their participation. Event and robo-call presumably arranged by the good folks at Colorado-based Telephone TownHall Meeting, “Maximizing Results With Personalized Services” according to its website. Those services include tele-town halls and the preceding robo-calls, as they cheerfully describe:

As with our teletownhalls, we manage the details so you don’t have to. From script-writing to execution – TTHM produces a quality voice broadcast every time.  We edit your robocall audio for quality & clarity, and will even make the recording for you if you prefer.

No muss, no fuss. Which befits the off-the-rack style of the Milne effort. As the saying goes, there’s fast, cheap, and good. You can have any two you want, but you can’t get all three. Well, the Milne campaign has opted for fast and cheap. In addition to the prefab Town Hall, there’s the candidate’s first TV ad – consisting entirely of footage from his campaign launch event at Barre’s Aldrich Public Library.

The ready-madeness of the effort is understandable, considering the meager resources at campaign manager Brent Burns’ disposal. (Resources made even more meager once Burns pays himself his own consulting fees.) But not exactly the way to build a mass movement in a matter of months.

Money doesn’t buy everything, it’s true; and Milne supporters keep pointing to the stunning loss by Eric Cantor as proof. But Cantor was both rich and clueless, which Governor Shumlin is not; and Cantor’s opponent tapped into an existing reservoir of appeal, which Milne doesn’t have. And by appearances, he wouldn’t know how to tap if he had the chance.

So, done. Over. Finito.

Again, I feel bad for saying so; Scott Milne is a good businessman who’s grown his family business in tough times. But he’s turned out to be an appalling politician. I would have expected somewhat better, even for a near-novice, because he’s done well in a service profession. He must have some ability to communicate. But he hasn’t shown it since he entered politics.

And time, never his ally to begin with, has run out.

Hypocrisy in the debate debate

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Aww. Scott Milne pulled out of a Republican gubernatorial debate again today.

Can’t say I blame him, since the other three candidates aren’t really seriously competitive, and it might diminish his standing to share a stage with them.

Except, of course, that he’s been doing such a bang-up job of diminishing his own standing with no outside help. Besides, his decision to basically ignore the Republican primary stands in stark contrast to (1) his constant complaining that Governor Shumlin won’t start officially campaigning until after Labor Day, and (2) VTGOP Chair David Sunderland’s constant complaining that VT Dem chair Dottie Deans won’t accept his asinine debate proposal publicity stunt.

Besides, given the state of Milne’s campaign, he could use all the free media he can get. If he had shown up, the event would have probably drawn a lot more coverage.

Also, frankly, Milne could use a little live-fire practice. He’s been depressingly tongue-tied on the campaign trail. He could maybe sharpen his skills a bit in a low-stakes debate where he ought to be able to clean the clocks of his small-timey challengers. He’d better damn well up his game before he gets into the ring with Peter Shumlin, that’s for sure.

I feel bad, being so negative about a guy whose mother died a week ago. But time and political campaigns wait for no man, and he put himself behind this chronological eight-ball by waiting until June to begin his candidacy. I am, literally, the least of his worries.

Oh, so THAT’S where all our gunk is going

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The recent blue-green algae bloom that caused a shutdown of the public water system in Toledo, Ohio has brought overdue public attention to our own algae troubles in Lake Champlain. (With an undertone of sneering about the industrial Midwest’s environmental stewardship.) Various media outlets have asked the musical question, “Could it happen here?” And they’ve dutifully reported the bland reassurances of local officials and the warning cries from advocacy groups.

But one media outlet took a unique step, and discovered that hell yes, it’s already happening here.

Or near here, anyway. In last week’s edition of Seven Days, Kathryn Flagg surveyed the landscape for traces of blue-green… and her search took her to the upper end of the lake – over the border in Quebec.

Though drinking water from Lake Champlain on this side of the border has never tested positive for the toxins associated with blue-green algae, some Québec residents routinely receive notices that their water is not safe to drink.

… “I’ve lived in Bedford since 2004, and it happens every summer,” said Aleksandra Drizo, a research fellow at the University of Vermont…

Wow, I thought to myself. That’s really bad. A lot worse than Toledo, right?

And then I thought, Wait a minute. Doesn’t Lake Champlain flow north?

Flagg’s article didn’t say, but another story in Seven Days confirmed my thought.

So… our gunk is poisoning their water.

Which ought to make us clean, natural and green Vermonters ashamed and embarrassed. We’re exporting our environmental damage. And because our gunk is (at least partly) flowing northward, we don’t suffer the consequences.

That’s appalling. And it’s one more sign that Vermont’s pure-green reputation isn’t nearly as deserved as we like to think.

Yes, it got worse for Vermont Republicans. Except Phil.

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Notes and musings from the August 18 campaign finance report filings…

— Governor Shumlin is in cruise control. His campaign raised another $67,000 this time, and spent only $11,000. He has almost $1.13 million in the bank.

— Scott Milne continues to falter. He raised $22,370 this time, compared to $20,000 last time. That pace won’t get him anywhere near his stated goal of $200,000. And his total was again buoyed considerably by the Boies family: $2K from a Christopher Boies, $2K from daddy Boies’ law firm, and $2K from an LLC whose address is the same as the daddy Boies law firm. For those keeping track, the collective Boieses have donated $16,000 of Milne’s total of $42K. He also raised $2K from Altour International, a high-end travel agency based in New York. His biggest in-state donor was the Wayside Restaurant, which donated $2K. That’s a lot of ham and eggs.

Milne spent $28,000 in the past month, of which more than $18K went to campaign manager Brent Burns’ consulting firm.

— The alleged Republican upstart, Libertarian Dan Feliciano, reported raising $13,000. Sounds decent, but $10K of that came from Dan himself. He had only a handful of other donors — notably getting $200 from Republican Treasurer Mark “Little Snell” Snelling. There’s no sign of a Feliciano bandwagon to be found in his finance report.

— The Vermont Republican Party is still in the doldrums, raising $2,420 in the past month.

— The only Republican doing really well is Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott who, challenged by Progressive Dean Corren’s public financing, put his fundraising operation into high gear and pulled in $52,000 in the past month. He didn’t spend a whole lot, and has $120,000 in cash on hand. He got plenty of cash from construction firms (his line of work) and from some of his turncoat friends in the Senate Democratic majority — a total of $2500 from Dick and Dorothy Mazza, and $200 from “Bobby Star,” who I believe is actually State Sen. Bobby Starr.

Scott’s doing well for himself, but to judge from the latest reports, he ain’t lifting a finger for his beloved VTGOP.

— Vermonters First, which spent a million Broughton Bucks in 2012, is still in hibernation. Raised zero, spent $25 for a bank account.

— Lenore Broughton did open her checkbook for a few Republican candidates and gave $2K to the Common Sense Leadership PAC. Said PAC didn’t raise any other money but managed to spend $3500 on consultants. Namely $2K to Shayne Spence, a staffer at the Ethan Allen Institute, and $1500 to Elizabeth Metraux who is apparently the PR person for Vermont PBS.

— Republicrat Senate hopeful Roger Allbee pulled in a decent $4760 this time around for a grand total of $6K. His total take included a nice $1,000 donation from soon-to-be-ex-Senator Peter Galbraith. The Slummin’ Solon, who has publicly endorsed Allbee, was nonetheless chosen to moderate one of the four Windham County Democratic Senatorial candidate forums, a curious move to be sure. (During that debate, he reportedly got into an argument with fellow Senator Jeanette White. Not very statesmanlike or diplomatic, Petey.)

— Celebrity tidbit: The aforementioned Senator White can brag of a $100 donation from Mr. Tom Bodett. Leavin’ the light on for ya!

On Jim Jeffords

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I don’t have much to add to the outpouring of words, messages, and comments on the death of former Senator Jim Jeffords. I didn’t move to Vermont until his very last year in office; and by then, he had largely withdrawn from the public sphere. But, for what it’s worth, here’s my two cents.

Jim Jeffords was a rare politician: one willing to vote his conscience even if it offended his colleagues. As a liberal, I cheered his decision to go independent in 2001 and tip the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. I could well understand why he did so: the Bush Administration was clearly intent on pushing the country far to the right. W’s definition of “bipartisanship” was “my way or the highway.” Not to mention that Bush was a terrible President, and the more power he had, the worse it was for the nation and the world.

 That said, I can understand why Jeffords was a villain to so many Republicans: after putting up with the Reagan years and the anti-Clinton madness of the 90s, he chooses to leave the Republican Party just when it hurt the most – when it tipped the balance of power in the Senate. It’s not unlike how Virginia Democrats feel about ex-Senator Philip Puckett, who resigned after being offered a cushy job. His departure and replacement by a Republican tipped the balance in the Virginia Senate.

 The two cases are not the same, obviously; Jeffords wasn’t offered a cushy job. But the impact was the same.

 And while Jeffords honestly felt he had no place in the modern-day GOP, his departure was the death knell for moderate Republicanism in Vermont. He served as a powerful example to other moderate Republicans, that the party had nothing to offer them. And for conservative Vermonters, I’m sure he became a symbol of moderate perfidy. I imagine that the antipathy toward Phil Scott’s moderate movement expressed by the likes of Darcie Johnston and Jack Lindley is largely engendered by Jim Jeffords’ apostasy. Honestly, if I were a conservative, looking at Phil Scott (or another moderate) in light of my experience with Jeffords, would I trust him to uphold the values of the GOP as I see them? Might I fairly view Scott as another potential turncoat? There’s certainly been speculation aplenty that Scott might someday run for Governor as an independent.

 I’m not saying that any of this is Jim Jeffords’ fault. He had abundant reason to believe that he was already an outcast in the Bush-era Republican Party. He didn’t cause the death of New England moderate Republicanism; he was just the last and loudest one to go. For that, he will always be a hero to liberals, and a turncoat to conservatives.

It would be fascinating to see an alternative timeline where Jeffords stuck it out as a Republican, and remained healthy and vibrant after his retirement. Could he have been an effective “leader emeritus” of a more moderate — or at least more inclusive — Vermont Republican Party? We’ll never know, but things might have turned out very differently for the VTGOP.