Let’s see if Bruce Lisman is getting his money’s worth out of his social media team.
Well, here’s the latest in a series of Tweets entitled “Why are you voting for Bruce?”
Wow. Gee whiz.
“… may have some solid ideas”?
“… could be the guy to right this ship of state”?
Methinks Mr. Lisman is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Endorsements don’t generally move the needle much. They’re mainly of note to the political media, good for a quick space-filler on a slow newsday, quickly forgotten.
Labor unions are an exception to some extent, because if the endorsement rings true with the rank and file, the union can deliver a batch of votes — especially important in a low-turnout primary.
But when one politico endorses another, it’s not much of a deal.
(It’s a bigger deal when one politico fails to deliver an expected endorsement, as in numerous Republicans not backing Trump. As commenter David Ellenbogen pointed out, Bernie Sanders has not endorsed David Zuckerman for lieutenant governor. Bernie’s open support for Chris Pearson was a financial windfall for Pearson’s Senate campaign. But no love for Zuckerman. Interesting.)
A limited exception to the no-big-deal rule can be found in the case of Sue Minter’s announcement yesterday that she has the backing of dozens of current and former state lawmakers, including many key players in the Legislature.
I was wondering when a candidate would dip his hand into the EB-5 cookie jar. It’s easy pickin’s if you want to criticize Democratic leadership of state government. And here we go, Phil Scott’s dug in for some sweet treats.
After positing his support for EB-5 “with proper oversight,” he laid into the Shumlin administration on a specific point:
I was disappointed to learn… that the Shumlin Administration enabled the owners of the EB-5 projects in the Northeast Kingdom… to continue to solicit investors for months after the SEC had suspended that permission for Jay Peak. … By the Administration’s own admission, it was a ‘calculated risk.’ Yet, they’ve not yet explained why they took this risk or why they allowed the problem to continue to grow.
Now, here’s the problem.
The Shumlin administration made that decision in the spring of 2015. (More on that in a moment.) In June of that year, VTDigger’s Anne Galloway broke the news that federal authorities were investigating Jay Peak.
For months after that, Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott expressed his wholehearted support for Jay Peak. Indeed, in November he criticized the administration for inserting itself into the process, thus delaying payments to contractors.
Despite the issues at Q Burke, Scott says he still supports Vermont’s EB-5 program. He added that he sympathizes with [Jay Peak contractor] PeakCM, as he owns his own construction company.
So, hypocrite. But wait, there’s more.
The Vermont Political Observer. 