Category Archives: 2014 election

How to waste $142,000

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Two suggestions:

1. Get yourself 7,100 $20 bills. Scatter them in a big pile. Douse in gasoline, add one lit match.

2. Spend it on Republican advertising in Vermont.

Image from the RSLC ad. Or maybe from a Cialis spot.

Image from the RSLC ad. Or maybe from a Cialis spot.

As first reported by VTDigger, a national organization called the Republican State Leadership Committee has chosen the second course, pouring $142,000 into a TV/radio ad campaign for Republican legislative candidates.

They might have asked Lenore Broughton how this kind of big-money, old-media, carpet-bombing technique works. She spent at least a million bucks in 2012 on a TV/radio/bulk mail blitz attacking the Dems, and failed to move the electoral needle at all.

But the RSLC didn’t ask her. In fact, they didn’t talk to anyone in Vermont. Just ask one of the first guys they should have talked to.

Rep. Don Turner, R-Milton, the House minority leader, said he welcomed the media campaign, but was unaware of it until VTDigger showed him the ad.

So a D.C.-based Republican organization is running generic ads for nameless candidates, and they didn’t even consult the House’s top Republican. Somehow I don’t think the Democrats are too worried about this. Oh wait, here’s a Democrat now:

It’s just like in 2012, when there was a single Republican donor spending approximately $1 million here in Vermont. The VTGOP is just trying to bankroll their way towards relevance. It’s not going to work. Vermonters have already made it clear that the right-wing agenda has no place in our state, and they will make it clear again on November 4th. The RSLC is spending six figures on behalf of VTGOP candidates and that money comes directly from the Koch brothers and other insidious sources.

That’s from Ben Sarle, the VT Dems’ communications director. Now, naturally you’d expect him to say that. But the facts on the ground support his assertions. No matter what RSLC does, the Dems are extremely unlikely to lose more than a handful of legislative seats; it’s even possible that they’ll add a few to their outsized majorities.

But shed no tears for the RSLC. They’ve got money to burn, with a donor list that’s a Who’s Who of corporate America. In 2012 alone, RSLC spent some $39 million in state campaigns. So a lousy $142,000? That’s pocket change.

Oh, for your further entertainment, here’s the RSLC’s Top 20 donors for the year so far, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Screen Shot 2014-10-10 at 12.45.55 AM

Mmmm, delightful. Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Banking, Big Pharma. Big Telecom. Wal-Mart. Gambling. The US Chamber of Commerce. They’re all there.

Inclluding at least a couple of Bigs that have been generous to Governor Shumlin: Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Comcast.

Huh.

Say, Ben, perhaps you’d best tone down that talk about “insidious sources.”

The new polls, part 2: The only thing Shumlin has to fear is Shumlin himself

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(See also part 1, which addressed the Phil Scott/Dean Corren results.)

The latest gubernatorial poll from the Castleton Polling Institute (courtesy of WCAX-TV) is a picture of stagnation, with an electorate disappointed in the incumbent, but finding no acceptable alternatives. The results are right in line with other recent surveys, with the helpful addition of Dan Feliciano clarifying the picture somewhat.

The numbers: Shumlin 47, Milne 35, Feliciano 6, and undecided at 8.

A secondary result, underpinning the above: 45% approve of Governor Shumlin’s performance, 41% disapprove. Bad numbers for an established incumbent, especially for one who was in the 60s at his height.

But while the poll is bad for Shumlin, it’s also bad for his challengers. As WCAX’s dueling analysts put it:

“I don’t think Mr. Milne has given the public a reason to vote for him and that is what Mr. Milne’s challenge is going to be in the next six weeks,” said Mike Smith, Republican political analyst.

How about a shot of 5-Hour Energy?

How about a shot of 5-Hour Energy?

“I think these numbers show that there’s one candidate against Peter Shumlin and that is Peter Shumlin,” said Steve Terry, Democratic political analyst.

Milne is stuck in the mid-30s. And Feliciano, for all the insider buzz about his candidacy, is only taking a small chunk of the conservative vote. Six percent is a lot for a Libertarian, but not much for someone who’d positioned himself as the real alternative to Shumlin. As I wrote before, there’s a whole lot of value in the Republican brand, and a deep loyalty among core Republican voters.

As for the independents and undecideds, they’re stuck. Given the 41% Milne/Feliciano total, I infer that Milne has gained a small number of centrists simply by Not Being Shumlin, while he’s lost a few percentage points to Feliciano among the True Believers. Overall it’s a wash, and not nearly enough to win. And the Governor is the only candidate with the resources to get his message out between now and Election Day. Although the big headline was that Shumlin is under the 50% mark, he still stands a solid chance of not only gaining a pure majority, but getting up into the mid-50s. That’d be a decent, if not overwhelming, mandate.

So, in a solidly blue state, why are Shumlin’s numbers so mediocre? The experts point to the obvious: Vermont Health Connect, the human services troubles, and the Jeremy Dodge land deal.

The first two I buy. The last, nope. I don’t think anybody outside the political media remembers that deal. After initial missteps, Shumlin dealt with it wisely and effectively. Remember “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup”? Well, in the Dodge deal, there was no coverup. There was a fast and fair resolution.

All right, so now I have to offer my own explanation. In two words:

The doldrums.

Which is partly the VHC and human services problems. But more than that, it’s the lack of real, tangible, landmark achievements.

Which is reflected in Shumlin’s third campaign commercial, focusing on the GMO bill. Now, nice as that bill was, it was a sideshow in this year’s legislative session. And, as Paul Heintz pointed out, it’s a stretch to give the Governor much credit:

For years, Shumlin said he backed GMO labeling in concept, but believed that mandating it was legally perilous. He argued that any such attempt would suffer the same fate as Vermont’s 1994 law requiring dairy products produced with recombinant bovine growth hormone to be labeled as such. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals struck it down in 1996 and awarded damages.

But leave that aside for the moment. The bigger question: Is the GMO bill really the Governor’s signature accomplishment for 2014?

I guess it is. Given the size of the Democratic majority and the big issues facing Vermont, that’s a little bit underwhelming. And I think the voters are underwhelmed. One of Scott Milne’s best lines in yesterday’s WCAX debate concerned school funding: “The Governor had huge approval ratings and big majorities, and he didn’t do anything.”

Shumlin’s signature issue, single-payer health care, is still a mystery shrouded in an enigma. He can’t brag about it, because he hasn’t done it yet. Or even offered a plan. That’s not exactly motivational.

There are solid reasons to defend the Governor’s record. He’s dealt with the aftermath of the 2008 recession and Tropical Storm Irene. He’s had to pull rabbits out of his hat to keep the state budget under control as the federal stimulus funds ebbed away. He’s also taken some good, incremental steps in areas like human services and college affordability. The minimum wage hike was nice. He’s done a lot on renewable energy. His opioid initiative holds great promise, but has yet to bear fruit.

Those are not accomplishments to be sneezed at. They are strong indications of substantial administrative competence. That’s important. But it’s not inspirational.

I think that, more than anything else, Vermont voters are uninspired. When Shumlin launched his active campaign in early September, his challenge was to light a fire in his supporters — and perhaps even in himself. So far, he hasn’t really done it.

IF he does it between now and Election Day, he’ll get into the mid-50s. If he doesn’t, he’ll limp across the finish line in the 50-52% range.

Bit by bit, ever so slowly, Scott Milne is turning himself into a candidate

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It’s way too late, of course. As I’ve said before, Milne is now doing the kind of stuff he should have done six months to a year ago: traveling the back roads of Vermont, meetin’ folks. Getting his name out there. Learning the ropes of a brand-new trade: running for statewide office. Becoming a halfway competent debater.

Fundraising.

That kind of stuff.

Shumlin/Milne at WCAX debateAnd if you squint a little bit and look closely at last night’s debate performance on WCAX-TV, you can get a glimpse of a real live candidate emerging from the primordial ooze.

It’s way too late, of course. But I’ll give him credit: Milne was a lot less twitchy and erratic than he was a few weeks ago. He was reasonably calm most of the time. When he wasn’t speaking, he held his face practically motionless. Which was a good thing, because WCAX used a split screen much of the time. He scratched his nose a couple times, but he didn’t pick it.

His message remains a mess. He recycles the same handful of tired attacks on Governor Shumlin (how many times did he say “reckless experiment”?). He works in snide little comments at every opportunity. (He responded to a viewer question about his vision for Vermont’s future by saying, ungrammatically, “My vision is a governor that doesn’t make promises that end up broken.” Cute, but not at all visionary.)

He also made a royal botch of his opportunity to ask Shumlin a direct question. His opening was so rambly that co-moderator Kristin Kelly had to interrupt, “Do you have a question for the Governor?” After which he meandered slowly through the firing of Doug Racine as head of Human Services, and Racine’s statement that he hadn’t met with Shumlin in over a year, Shumlin’s out-of-state travel… and at the end, his actual question was a batting-practice fastball down the middle of the plate: “Can you look in the monitor and tell them you’ll be a better Governor in the next two years?” Which gave Shumlin the opening to turn the question immediately back to his agenda.

Stupid.

And most of all, Milne still has nothing like a coherent plan for his hypothetical governorship. He has little or nothing to offer on health care, the state budget, school funding and governance, social services, or the economy. He preaches caution on all fronts; he says he will “listen before I act.” On multiple occasions, he said he would sign specific bills that he disagrees with — apparently signaling that he would frequently defer to the Legislature. As Shumlin pointed out, that’s an odd definition of leadership.

And once in a while, just when you least expect it, he slips out a scrap of a policy idea. Answering a question about improving the economy, he tossed off a passing reference to “tax incentives.” No details, no elaboration. Just a couple of quick words, and then onward.

This is how you roll out a major policy proposal? Really?

I’ll say this. Scott Milne has improved — from an F to maybe a C minus. Give him another 18 months or so, he might turn himself into a credible contender for the governorship.

Wait a minute… checking the calendar here… nope, sorry, he doesn’t have 18 months. He has less than four weeks.

Like I said: it’s way too late, of course.

@bfp_fail: We interrupt this debate to bring you a picture of Peter Diamondstone nodding off

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Well, I tried to watch it.

The Burlington Free Press hosted a gubernatorial debate at noon today, and livestreamed it online.

Or tried to.

The first half hour was fine. After that, it kept freezing and crashing. I spent most of the ensuing half hour waiting for isolated bits of audio. Which, as Darcie Johnston pointed out on Twitter, always seemed to happen when Peter Diamondstone was talking. And the frozen image on the screen was usually Diamondstone with his eyes closed. Around 1:00, I gave up.

The Freeploid can’t blame its failure on too many viewers, either. There was a counter onscreen that tracked the number of viewers, and the highest it hit was 74. That’s not enough to crash a livestream.

Well, it shouldn’t be, anyway.

Of course, since the Freeploid only yesterday announced a corporate “reset” that includes forcing newsroom staff to reapply for their jobs, this disaster may have been an inside job. Whatever the cause, it’s a dismal performance.

Speaking of dismal performances, Scott Milne continued to hammer on the shortfalls, real and imagined, of the Shumlin Administration without offering any plans of his own.

Single-payer? Let’s wait six years.

How to cut the budget? Get rid of the governor’s SUV and out-of-state travel.

When asked for specific cuts, he tried to make a joke, talked about bringing in smart people from outside who’d be willing to take pay cuts to work in his administration, made a half-hearted call-out to the long-discredited Challenges for Change, and concluded by saying “I don’t know.”

School funding? He slammed Shumlin for failing to make tough choices, but offered nothing of his own.

And, according to the Freeploid’s Twitter feed (I’d stopped watching the unwatchable livestream by then), MIlne actually said he’d unveil a Lake Champlain cleanup plan by Election Day. 

Sheesh.

At one point, he briefly paused his attacks on Shumlin to day “It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. I’m talking about the future.” And then he resumed the attacks.

Milne has managed to dribble out a few ideas, inadequate and half-assed though they are: a two-year statewide property tax freeze, Challenges for Change, maybe a regional health care exchange. But with less than four weeks until Election Day, he remains the Man Without a Plan, with apologies to Fred Tuttle.

His excuse is that he doesn’t “have a background” in government. Well, sure. But is that a positive asset for filling our top executive position? What if an applicant came to Milne Travel and said “I don’t have a background in the travel business, but you’re doing a terrible job and you should hire me”?

And even if you put a value on bringing in a fresh perspective, why can’t Milne consult with some of his “expert advisers” and come up with a few specifics? He doesn’t need years of government experience to do that.

I’ll say it again: I had some hopes for Scott Milne when his campaign began. And there’s plenty of room for an informed critique of the Shumlin Administration. But he’s just been a disaster.

Postscript. I’d slam the Freeploid for its inexplicable decision to invite Peter Diamondstone and not Dan Feliciano, except that it led to the most entertaining moment of the debate. Diamondstone wasn’t there at noon; he appeared at about 12:10, panting furiously. And continued to pant for a couple of minutes, directly into his microphone, while Milne was trying to answer a question.

The new polls, pt. 1: Vote for Bud

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Yesterday brought new polls in the races for Governor and Lieutenant Governor. I’ll get to the Shumlin/Milne numbers later. This post will address the easy one: Phil Scott 58%, Dean Corren 24%.

Yeah, that race is over. Commence victory lap.

Corren’s 24% is bad enough, but the worse news is Scott’s 58. Corren would not only have to sweep the undecideds to make this competitive, he’d have to unconvince almost 10% of Scott voters. That ain’t happening.

The poll is credible, coming from the Castleton Polling Institute (and commissioned by WCAX-TV). The 4% margin of error is a drop in Phil Scott’s bucket.

Corren’s response, of course, is defensive optimism, per VPR:

“It was done… before our ads started to kick in. And we’re going to be doing a lot more ads,” Corren says. So I think it’s mostly a name recognition thing.”

Which raises a question about Corren’s campaign strategy. As of October 1, he’d spent about one-fourth of his $200,000 publicly-financed warchest. He waited an awfully long time to amp up a race between a basically unknown challenger and an extremely well-known incumbent.

Maybe he was misled by the success of his drive for public financing, or the outcome of his write-in bid for the Democratic nomination. Corren’s got an enthusiastic core following, but that doesn’t help him in the general campaign. In the language of beer, Dean Corren is Heady Topper: a tremendous niche-market success.

Phil Scott is Budweiser. Uninspiring, bland, perennial best seller.

You can see the contrast in these words from Corren, meant to support his candidacy but actually outlining the reasons Phil Scott will win:

“You have an incumbent who has spent four years doing things that make everybody in the state feel like he’s a nice guy and not hold him to account on any particular issues, and really know where he stands on issues, because he’s done a really good job of ducking that.”

Yeah, exactly. Everybody in the state thinks “he’s a nice guy.” And he’s running for the ultimate nice-guy office. Also, being a nice guy makes him the perfect token Republican: he’s not going to aggressively challenge the status quo.

Now, there’s no way the final result is going to be anything like 58-24. I expect Corren to gain 15-20 percentage points. He’ll almost certainly do better than Cass Gekas’ 40% two years ago. But not nearly enough to matter.

Heady Topper’s great. But it’ll never challenge Bud.

Dear Shumlin Administration: Please heed the words of Uncle Barack

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President Obama got in a brief tick of turmoil a while back when his approach to foreign policy was summarized as “Don’t do stupid shit.” Which, as the political equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath, makes a world of sense to me.

And I wish our leaders in Montpelier would frame it and hang it over their desks, because it sure would come in handy when dealing with Vermont Health Connect. The latest, ICYMI:

Thousands of Vermont Health Connect customers who signed up to pay health care premiums online recently received email notices directing them to pay through a website that is offline.

Vermont took down its health exchange Web portal Sept. 14…  But the state and its contractors apparently forgot during the intervening three weeks to cancel an automated email blast that directed roughly 6,500 people who signed up to make payments online. Those people, about 20 percent of the website’s commercial customers, were directed to visit vermonthealthconnect.gov to view their premium invoice.

(ahem.)

NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! 

Stop it! Just stop it!

Stop doing stupid shit!

“Apparently forgot,” eh? Maybe some of you should come to work tomorrow and find that your keys no longer work because your bosses “apparently forgot” to let you know about your change in employment status.

This bout of apparent forgetfulness happened under the new contractor, Optum, and under the revamped administrative team of Harry Chen and Lawrence Miller, so we can’t blame this on the dearly departed (CGI, Doug Racine) and the recently rendered invisible (Mark Larson).

I’m a strong supporter of the current iteration of health care reform, and I have high hopes for single-payer. As a result, I’ve too readily accepted Administration assurances that they’ve learned their lessons, they’re working hard, they’ve got a handle on it, and they’ll fix it.

This time, as Bullwinkle T. Moose used to say, for sure.

But I am getting tired of defending the Governor and getting the ground cut out from under me. Maybe that’s why a new poll shows him with a 45% favorable rating against 41% unfavorable. In spite of the fact that he’s running for re-election against the legendary comedy team of Mr. Blandy and Mr. Fringey.

So, Shumlin team, please tell me there won’t be any more screwups, revelations of past blunders, delays, or embarrassing emails to the very constituents who (a) were in line to benefit from Vermont Health Connect and would love to see it work, and (b) now have every reason to be royally pissed off at the authors of this reform.

A protest vote for Doug Racine is startin’ to look awfully tempting.

Health care reform: the election issue with no teeth?

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Interesting thing happened last week. Vermont CURE, an advocacy group for single-payer health care reform, cut ties with Tess Taylor, the former House Assistant Majority Leader who resigned from the Legislature to sign on with CURE only about six months ago. In the middle of the 2014 legislative session.

Taylor had been brought on board in the expectation that there’d be some heavy lifting to do in the 2014 campaign, and her political chops would come in handy. Seemed like a good bet at the time, and an even better one after a spring and summer full of trouble for Vermont Health Connect. Surely, went the conventional thinking, the failures of VHC would mean trouble for Governor Shumlin.

Well, maybe not. Bram Kleppner, chairman of the V-CURE board, speaking with VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld: 

“We were expecting a strong candidate to oppose Gov. Shumlin. We were expecting a wave of strong  candidates coming in to run against supporters of (single-payer). So we brought Tess on, obviously because of her deep expertise in the Vermont political process,” Kleppner says. “But it became clear to us after the primaries that that political and legislative opposition that we were expecting really just hadn’t materialized.”

So, rather than a campaigning challenge, V-CURE will focus on a PR effort to convince the general public that single-payer is the best way forward. Taylor’s experience is less germane to that.

This ties in with an email chat I recently had with fellow blogger (and former Burlington City Councilor) Ed Adrian. He wanted to know how my blogposts about health care reform were doing in terms of readership. He’d noticed that anytime he wrote about health care reform, his numbers were “dismal.”

So I checked my numbers and found that, for whatever it’s worth, the same is true for theVPO. Health care stories just don’t attract many pageviews.

Now, theVPO’s audience is a very select, and self-selected, slice of the general public: those with a strong interest in Vermont politics. You can’t safely generalize from them to the entire electorate.

But you’d think that, if anything, my readers would be more interested in health care than everybody else.

Ed pointed out that a sizable majority of Vermonters have never had to interact with Vermont Health Connect because they get their health insurance elsewhere. For them, VHC’s failings are basically an abstract concern.

I wouldn’t have placed much value in the pageviews of a couple of blogs. But combine it with V-CURE’s move, and i have to wonder: is health care reform a lot more sizzle than steak? Is it mainly of interest to insiders and the political media?

It’s hard to tell from the course of the campaign to date. Scott MIlne hasn’t made a dent in Governor Shumlin’s armor with his attacks on VHC incompetence; but is that because of the issue, or because of his terrible campaign?

Then there’s Dan Feliciano, who’s gotten a lot of insider buzz with his devout opposition to single-payer. But his fundraising has been terrible and his 48-hour fundraising blitz came and went without any news — which has to mean it was a complete failure. Is he getting anywhere with a frontal attack on single-payer? It’s impossible to tell, since he hasn’t been included in recent polls. But his fundraising numbers certainly don’t reveal any groundswell of support.

There’s reason to believe that the failures of VHC may not be that politically harmful to Shumlin. I suspect that property taxes would have been a better issue for the Republicans. They still wouldn’t have beaten the Governor; but only a small portion of Vermonters have interacted with VHC, while pretty much everybody pays property taxes, either directly or indirectly.

It’s worth pondering, anyway.

The for-profit gulag

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Need some reasons why Vermont should end its dependency on out-of-state, for-profit prisons?

Y’know, aside from the fact that it’s wrong, that sending people two thousand miles away is arguably cruel and unusual punishment, and that it may well make rehabilitation more difficult because the inmates are isolated from everyone they know?

Yes, aside from all that.

And aside from the fact that prison contractor Corrections Corporation of America is a particularly scummy operation that’s gotten into trouble for inadequate medical care leading to inmate deaths, overbilling government clients, persistently understaffing prisons so that violence and drug abuse become widespread, providing “substandard food and medical conditions,” and aggressively lobbying for tougher detention and sentencing laws so they can fill their prisons, specifically backing Arizona’s notorious SB 1070, which turned every law enforcement official in the state into a de facto immigration enforcer?

Yes, even aside from all that. A couple of recent stories about Vermont’s dealings with the prison industry ought to give fresh impetus to the movement to bring our inmates home.

First, Vermont’s four-year contract with CCA expires next summer. But, as VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld reported this week, “the process isn’t likely to dramatically improve conditions” for Vermont’s out-of-state inmates:

[Corrections Commissioner Andy] Pallito says Vermont won’t bring a strong hand into its negotiations.

“There’s something like 100,000 beds in the out-of-state market,” Pallito said. “We’re only looking at 400 or 500 or 600 beds in total, and so we’re a pretty small consumer.”

… “Because we’re such a small consumer in this market, we’re kind of not in a position where we can dictate a lot of the contract particulars,” Pallito said. “And so we’re a little bit at the mercy of the bidders.”

“Kind of,” “a little bit.” What deft understatement.

So we’re pretty much at the mercy of whichever prison operator deigns to bother with our penny-ante contract. Or is desperate enough to fill vacant beds that it’ll go after the Vermont business. But they’re unlikely to cut us any slack.

The Florence Correctional Center, where 28 Vermont inmates are subject to CCA's tender mercies.

The Florence Correctional Center, where 28 Vermont inmates are subject to CCA’s tender mercies.

And second, an August 22 “disturbance” among a relative handful of Vermont inmates warehoused in Arizona resulted in 13 of them going into solitary confinement for over a month. The incident went unreported in Vermont until late September, when the Department of Corrections confirmed it to Seven Days’ Mark Davis.

This is troubling because, as outgoing State Rep. Suzy Wizowaty, head of Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, noted, “If this had happened in Vermont, we would have heard about it.” And if CCA had its way, we won’t hear anything more:

In a written statement, CCA confirmed the incident and the inmates’ subsequent punishment, but did not provide additional details.

It’s unclear when CCA got around to informing the state of Vermont, but it wasn’t until September 10 — nineteen days after the incident — that DOC sent an investigative team to the Arizona prison where they “found no problems… and took no action.”

Meanwhile, as far as we know, the 13 inmates are still held in solitary, “confined to individual cells for 23 hours a day.” And according to Richard Byrne, the DOC’s out-of-state unit supervisor,

… it is unclear how long the punishment will last — CCA, not Vermont DOC, is in charge.

Great.

If you’d like to read more about the for-profit entity who’s “in charge” of our inmates, try reading “The Dirty Thirty: Nothing to Celebrate About 30 years of Corrections Corporation of America,” published in 2013 by Grassroots Leadership.

I say “try reading,” because you might just want to stop after a few pages and wonder why your Vermont tax dollars are going into the coffers of this corporate gang.

Hey, Bill Sorrell. I understand you’re running for re-election. Again. If you’re looking for a handy cause to burnish your fading reputation have a real, strong, positive impact, how about pushing for some serious sentencing reform? Maybe even a thorough review of Vermont’s inmate population, to see which ones could be released without endangering public safety? Given the number of nonviolent and elderly inmates (second highest percentage of inmates over 55 of any state), maybe we could get away without signing another contract with CCA.

You’d be a hero to your liberal base, Bill. Think about it.

Failure to detonate

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Well, the “money bombs” have come and gone for two Vermont conservatives… and both, apparently, fizzled out.

Gubernatorial hopeful Dan the Libertarian Man, whose fundraising has fallen far short of his perceived appeal, put out a Tweet on Wednesday calling for $100,000 “in the next 48 hours.” He also posted the plea on his campaign website. Which was, shall we charitably say, “optimistic” for a campaign that had only managed to raise about $17,000 to date. (I sense the Hack’s fine Italian hand behind this maneuver.)

I guess Feliciano thought better of it, though, because after a couple more Tweets (“We don’t have much time”) he withdrew from the Twitterverse and has yet to update his webpage or otherwise unveil his total haul.

Profiles in Courage, Dan?

Speaking of courage, at least the other guy owned up to his failure. Mark Donka, candidate for Congress, had sought $25,000 in the 24 hours of Friday, October 3. He posted it on his website, his Facebook page, and on Twitter, and he ran updates on Facebook.

He fell way short, of course. According to the last update on his FB page, he took in about $3,000. But at least he had the stones to see it through, and acknowledge the outcome:

Yeah, I know, “money bob.” But I’m not even going to make fun of his typo. Not when one of his “supporters” bailed on him with this sad little FB post:

Screen Shot 2014-10-04 at 4.36.04 PM

That’s just pathetic. Look, Mr. Baker, no matter how rapacious you think “Governor Pinnocio” (sic) may be, he’s not stealing your wallet, confiscating your bank account, and rummaging through your sofa cushions. And let’s just leave alone the gratuitous, proto-racist “Dumbo” reference. (Big ears, African, hahaha.)

I’ll believe that you can’t spare $20 for your man “Marc” if you can show me that you’re living on peanut butter and Spaghetti-O’s and you canceled your cable to pay the rent. Otherwise, you’re a paper patriot.

And so are the thousands of other people who plan to vote for Mark Donka, but couldn’t part with a measly Jackson on his behalf. Look, I disagree with Donka on just about every issue, but at least he has the guts to get out there and fight. He’s taken on a hopeless job — challenging Peter Welch in liberal old Vermont — not once, but twice. He deserves credit for that. And he deserves better from his ideological compadres, who believe this country is going to Hell in a handbasket but can’t rouse themselves to do anything about it beyond watching Fox News and posting illiterate Facebook messages.

And one more thing: If Dan Feliciano comes out of the woodwork and posts a total for his $100,000 money blitz, I’ll be glad to report it in this space.

The saddest political advertisement I’ve seen in a very long time

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No, it didn’t come from Scott Milne’s campaign. Nor Hempily Peyton’s.

No, it came from a Democrat. And a Democrat with a strong track record who happens to represent my county.

Without further ado, here is the saddest political ad I’ve seen in maybe forever.

Ann Cummings print ad

Ecccch.

The quality’s a bit degraded because it appeared in a local free newspaper. But still: this is the best Ann Cummings could do? Cheesy, slipshod graphics? A grim, dark, uninviting photo? Lots of wasted space?

This is bad, very bad.

I hope it’s not an indication of the Cummings effort. She’s one of three incumbent state Senators from Washington County — along with eternal Republican Bill “Survey Says” Doyle and Prog/Dem Anthony Pollina. She’s running for a fifth term, and was the district’s top vote-getter in each of the last three races. fourth term; she’s been a strong candidate in her first three races, finishing first once (2010) and second twice (to then-Sen. Phil Scott in2008 and to Doyle in 2012).

So maybe she thinks she doesn’t have to try. But the Republicans have themselves a solid candidate in Pat McDonald this time. She’s a former state representative and state GOP chair, and she held administrative positions under Governors Snelling, Dean, and Douglas. Republicans have high hopes that she can turn a second Washington County seat to the GOP.

If past results are anything to go by, McDonald is a bigger threat to Pollina than to Cummings. But this ad doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.