Category Archives: 2014 election

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.

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!

I guess I missed the memo: We’re taking Dan Feliciano seriously now?

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This doesn’t add up. Take one Libertarian candidate for Governor; have him launch a write-in campaign for the Republican nomination, complete with the public support of exactly one Republican of any renown — Darcie Johnston, a Republican who’s on the outs with her party — shake it all up; and you have a serious, credible campaign? 

Whaaa? 

Libertarian Dan Feliciano held a news conference today, standing behind a folding table in a public park, to criticize Governor Shumlin’s budget policies. Now, a Libertarian presser usually doesn’t draw flies; but this time, WPTZ’s Stewart Ledbetter and the Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck showed up. I’m not sure why; Feliciano ain’t winning the primary. And on the Libertarian slate, Feliciano ain’t pulling more than a small minority of votes in November.

Boy, with all this media attention, Darcie Johnston must be happy as a pig in its customary environs. 

And Ledbetter’s story brands Feliciano only as a Republican. It doesn’t mention that he’s the Libertarian candidate. Rather, it puts him front and center in the Republican parade: 

Republicans went on the offensive Thursday, a day after Gov. Peter Shumlin and a panel of state legislators agreed on $31 million in adjustments to the new state budget. 

At a Burlington news conference, Dan Feliciano, a write-in candidate for the Republican nomination for governor, characterized Shumlin’s history of budget management a “carnival of incompetence.” 

Ledbetter goes on to quote Feliciano, give space for comment from the Governor, and finally shoehorn House Minority Leader Don Turner into the final paragraph. 

So, “Republicans” is defined as a lot of Feliciano and a skosh of Turner. Only the latter is an actual Republican. 

In her story, Hallenbeck at least points out that Feliciano is, first and foremost, a Libertarian candidate. Still, she gives his presser plenty of space, tossing in a comment from Don Turner for a bit of variety. 

I guess the Freeploid and Channel 5 wanted to run stories about a Republican response to this week’s budget tweaks. But shining the spotlight on Feliciano? Good grief. I wonder how Scott Milne feels about this; he’s had to cut back on campaign activity because HIS MOTHER DIED THIS WEEK. They haven’t even held the funeral yet, and reporters are chasing after Dan Feliciano because, I guess, Scott Milne isn’t returning phone calls?

If this keeps up, maybe Feliciano will be able to get himself an actual lectern. 

Addendum. Lest anyone think I’m unfairly disparaging Mr. Feliciano, my point is this: Usually, a candidate has to show some level of real support before earning the media’s attention. You wouldn’t see TV cameras at an Emily Peyton presser, for example. It’s just strange that WPTZ and the Freeploid chose to give Feliciano this much attention. And anointed him a central figure in Republican politics. That’s the phenomenon I found worthy of comment. 

RecruitForlorn

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Looks like the jig is up for the one-man effort to find Republican candidates for Attorney General, Auditor, Secretary of State and Treasurer. By all appearances, RecruitFour is no more. When you try to open its Facebook page, you get redirected to Facebook’s home page. 

RecruitFour: Born July 2014, died August 2014. Rest In Pieces. 

How fondly I recall those halcyon days of yore when RecruitFour boasted of having identified three candidates for the four offices. Well, “halcyon day” is more like it, since two of the three quickly declined the honor. But even after scrubbing its page of any reference to the refuseniks, RecruitFour continued to insist that the search was still on. 

Well, that didn’t last long. 

Now, maybe there’s a technical glitch and RecruitFour will come storming back like the angry elephant in its logo. But I don’t think so; a quiet, unannounced “Delete” is a fitting end for this ill-starred venture. 

It does have one teeny-tiny accomplishment to its credit: its identified write-in candidate for Attorney General, Shane McCormack, has set up his own campaign website. To which I say, good luck with that. 

My only regret is that we’ll never know the identity of the lone Republican behind RecruitFour. It never gained enough traction to generate media interest (aside from me throwing tomatoes in its direction) and bring the anonymous instigator out of the shadows. And somehow I don’t think he’ll* be stepping forward to take credit for this failure, or list it on his resume for future political employment. 

*It’s almost gotta be a man, right? Only a man would publicly promote the ersatz candidacies of two women without asking their permission.

Oh well. Sorry to see you go, RecruitFour, but there’s still plenty of comedy in Vermont politics. 

RetreatFour

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Concerning the further misadventures of RecruitFour, the one-man Facebook page attempting to identify write-in candidates for the four statewide vacancies on the VTGOP ballot — Attorney General, Auditor, Secretary of State, and Treasurer. 

When last we visited that sorry precinct, RF had put forward nominees for three of the four slots, only to have two of them decline the “honor.” Turned out, RF was promoting people without asking them first. Which would seem to be, y’know, a prerequisite. 

Anyway, the RecruitFour guy has scrubbed the page of all its references to the two decliners. Congrats on a belated burst of common sense, RF Guy. 

The third prospective write-in candidate, however, has stepped forward and accepted the honor. Burlington attorney Shane McCormack has launched a campaign for the Republican AG nomination. He’s got himself a nice basic WordPress site with minimal content, as befits a minimal candidate. 

Not that this will make any difference to incumbent Dem Bill Sorrell, but it’s nice to see that RecruitFour’s “efforts” haven’t been entirely misdirected. Its page still promises to identify write-in candidates for Auditor, Secretary of State and Treasurer; presumably, if RF Guy picks a name out of the phone book or whatever, he’ll have the decency to contact the potential candidate before putting him/her out in public view.

Marion Milne 1935-2014

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I’m saddened to hear of the death of Marion Milne, pioneering lawmaker, businessperson, and mother of gubernatorial candidate Scott Milne. VTDigger reports that she “died unexpectedly Monday morning at her home in Washington.”

I saw her in person for the first time at Milne’s campaign launch last month, and now I’m sorry I didn’t try to meet her and express my respect.

Marion Milne founded the family travel agency in 1975 shortly after graduating from Goddard College. That agency has grown and thrived under her leadership and Scott’s, during very challenging times for the travel agency field.

Of course, her most significant public moment came in 2000, when she was one of a handful of Republicans to vote in favor of Vermont’s groundbreaking civil unions law — the first step on the road to marriage equality. For her courage, she was voted out of office that fall after serving three terms in the State House. From a post-election account: 

Milne knew her vote could lead to the end of her career, as did others. State Rep. John Edwards, who represents two towns along the Canadian border, also got the boot in what became a single-issue race. Edwards, a former state trooper, said he started to get that sinking feeling while standing at a polling place Tuesday. He noticed the averted gazes, the voters who had never turned out before, the thumbs-up signs directed at the other two candidates.

… Edwards said he has lost longtime friends. Milne has endured slurs like “queer lover” aimed at her and her 13-year-old grandson and watched her travel agency lose business.

“There are a lot of people angry with me,” she said from her home, shaking her head.

She had endured a bitter campaign, often encountering hostility while going door-to-door and finding herself alienated from former supporters and friends. She was on the right side of history, but that must have been cold comfort at the time.

Marion Milne was a hard worker till the end, as reflected in this word from the Milne family: “On the day she died, Marion had an appointment to have her hair done, planned to work at her desk in the travel agency, and attend a board meeting for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.”

I’ve written plenty about Scott Milne’s campaign, but now is not the time for partisanship. It’s a time for respect, love, and family. My best wishes to the entire Milne family and the agency, and to Scott, now faced with carrying on a long-odds campaign shadowed by the loss of his mother and business partner.

Godspeed, Marion Milne.

Everybody loves good ol’ Phil

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I think I’ve identified the source of Lake Champlain’s outbreak of blue-green algae: last week’s party in Senator Dick Mazza’s Corvette-laden “garage” on behalf of Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott. Enough horseshit was generated to feed an algae bloom for months.

I’m sorry I missed it. Guess my invitation got lost in the mail. Fortunately, the Freeploid’s Nancy Remsen was there, and made the Mazza Tov the centerpiece of her Phil Scott profile in the Sunday paper. From her account, I extract a few gems…

The Republican lieutenant governor glad-handed Republicans, Democrats, lobbyists and business leaders…

I guess Good Ol’ Phil won’t be a supporter of VPIRG’s campaign finance reform agenda. Just a guess.

“It is great to see such a bipartisan crowd,” [former Governor Jim] Douglas observed. He wasn’t surprised, he said, noting, “Phil Scott is the kind of Vermonter who doesn’t worry about someone’s party label.”

Immediately thereafter, Douglas revealed himself to be the kind of Vermonter who DOES worry about party labels:

Douglas urged the crowd to help re-elect Scott to “make sure we don’t have lopsided government.”

As I have observed before, should we be electing people based on affirmative action? Or should the onus be on Republicans to craft a message that actually resonates with the Vermont electorate?

Oh wait, here comes Senate Penitent Pro Tem John Campbell, who was on hand to offer his almost-not-quite-nudge-nudge-wink-wink non-endorsement.

“I’m here to support a friend,” Senate President Pro Tempore John Campbell, D-Windsor, said as he stood near Scott in the Corvette showroom. Campbell qualified his support, saying, “I’m not raising funds for Phil.”

Isn’t that nice. I guess I shouldn’t think of this as treason.

No, I guess not, because as Campbell says, he’d support a real actual Democrat for Lieutenant Governor, but he won’t support Progressive Dean Corren even if he wins the Democratic nomination. Campbell just can’t overlook Corren’s long-ago “bashing” of Democrats, even though today’s Corren has definitively foresworn any and all Dem-bashing, promises to work hand-in-hand with Democrats, and is much more politically aligned with Governor Shumlin than is Phil Scott. But I guess Campbell, like Jim Douglas, is unfortunately obsessed with party labels.

Also on hand, making excuses for their Phil-anthropy, were State Senator Dick McCormack and Burlington Democrat Ed Adrian. McCormack “acknowledged that his views on many issues are probably closer to Corren’s, ‘but what I’ve done with Phil really counts for a lot.'”

Awwwww, how thweet. As for Adrian, well, he offered his own variation on the VTGOP’s affirmative action theme: keep Phil around as the token Republican.

If Democrats occupy every position of power, they are just going to fight among themselves. What is wrong with having a moderate, token Republican who would frankly be considered a Democrat elsewhere in the country?

Sorry, Ed, color me unconvinced. What’s wrong with having a “token Republican” in the Lieutenant Governor’s office is that, as a member of the Senate Rules Committee and the tiebreaking vote on legislation, he could become a significant roadblock in the push for single-payer health care and campaign finance reform. And I am unmoved by the fact that Scott would be considered a Democrat in West Virginia or Nebraska. It’s like Roger Allbee running for a Democratic Senate seat in Windham County: he may be a liberal Republican and he might make a really good Senator from, oh, Rutland County or the Northeast Kingdom, but he’s too centrist for the Windham electorate. Same with Scott: he’d be a fine Lite-Gov if it were entirely a ceremonial position, and he’d be a breath of fresh air in Montana or Wyoming, but as Lieutenant Governor of Vermont he’s a potential obstacle to Governor Shumlin’s top priority. Which is why Shumlin has all but endorsed Dean Corren.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never had the chance to fall under the up-close-and-personal spell of Phil Scott’s charms*, but I don’t get the Scott fetishism among so many of our Democratic officeholders. It’s reminding me quite a bit of the Vince Illuzzi fetishism of two years ago. Nobody gave Doug Hoffer much of a chance because he was a Progressive, and a rather abrasive one at that, while Everybody Loved Vince.

*Maybe it’s his private-label cologne, a bi-attractant blend of pleasing moderation with rich, manly undertones of racing fuel and asphalt. 

Except when it came Election Day, it turned out that the inside-the-Dome crowd didn’t represent the electorate as a whole. I’m hoping the same thing happens with Corren, for the sake of single-payer’s prospects in the Senate, and in order to drive another stake into the heart of the old-boys’ network, go-along-get-along atmosphere that beclouds our Most Stagnant Deliberative Body.