Category Archives: Campaign finance

The Barons Try to Drag John Rodgers Across the Finish Line

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The last pre-election round of campaign finance reports is in, not that anyone in the media noticed. To me, the single biggest note is that the Barons of Burlington and their allies are continuing to throw big money at John Rodgers, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor and alleged rural populist. In the first half of October, Rodgers raised $20,250; in the second half, he took in an extraordinary $69,259, almost erasing the cash advantage held by incumbent Prog/Dem David Zuckerman throughout the campaign. Not quite, but almost.

Of that $69,259, a full $58,199 was in increments of $1,000 or more.

That’s more than 83% of Rodgers’ total takings between October 16 and 31.

Son of the soil, my Aunt Fanny.

Here’s another way to slice the bologna. During the period, Rodgers took in a scant $2,560 in gifts of $100 or less. That’s a mere 3.7% of his total.

Which is S.O.P. for Rodgers’ campaign as a whole. He’s raised $212,443 so far, but only $8,809 in gifts of $100 or less. That’s only 4.1% of his total.

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It’s Last Call at the Campaign Finance Saloon, and Some of Us Are Already Drunk

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Well, it’s not literally last call, but in practical terms it’s pretty damn late. Thanks to universally accessible mail-in voting, the longer a candidate waits to spend money, the less impactful it will be. As a result, some candidates (whose fundraising perhaps outpaced expectations) seem to be shoveling money out the door as quickly as they can.

First, a note about the calendar. In the home stretch of a campaign, the deadlines come thick and fast. Candidates are required to file on October 1, October 15, and November 1. Also, in the 45 days before an election they’re required to report any mass media expenditures of $500 or more within 24 hours. The rationale, I believe, is to provide as much clarity as possible about late-stage campaign activity. The problem is, gaining clarity would require (a) each voter diligently poring over the reports, or (b) robust media coverage of campaign spending. The former is an impossible ask, and the latter is largely a thing of the past given the tremendously reduced ranks of our political press corps.

Anyway. There’s little earthshaking in the new reports; they only cover two weeks. But there are some items worthy of note, and here they are.

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Kiss of the Five-and-Dime Woman

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You’ve got to give Lenore Broughton credit for persistence. Or maybe slam her for testing that old saying about the definition of insanity. Because she is, in #vtpoli-land, the living embodiment of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Broughton is Vermont’s leading ultraconservative donor. She’s spent $32,620 this year on Vermont political organizations and politicians, and the vast majority are losing causes. (She’s also dropped more than $50,000 so far on the federal level, none of which has gone to Vermont Congressional hopefuls Gerald Malloy or Mark Coester.)

She’s been backing the wrong horses for so long that one might wonder if a candidate might, upon receiving a missive from her, scrawl “Return to Sender” on the envelope and drop it in the nearest mailbox. Problem is, most of ’em can’t afford to. Unlike the candidates backed by the Barons of Burlington, most of the people Broughton supports don’t have any cash to spare.

For those unfamiliar, Broughton is the famously reclusive Burlington resident with a strong aversion to being photographed. (A Seven Days piece from 2012 about a successful attempt to take her picture no longer includes the image, perhaps because the photographer later expressed regret over the whole thing. VTDigger snapped a photo of her at a public meeting, but she was holding a piece of paper over her face.)

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One Neat Trick for Concealing the Reach of Your Political Donations (CORRECTION)

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Correction. I got a crucial detail wrong in this post. Donors do not file information. The donor info is gleaned from candidate filings. Misspellings and carelessness with donor names and addresses is their fault, not the donors’. The broader point remains, that the blizzard of typos makes it extremely difficult to track donor activity, but that’s not the result of their malfeasance, deliberate or otherwise. Also, my apologies for the delay in correcting; I’ve still got Covid and have precious little energy at all.

In what’s generally been an underwhelming primary season to date, one of the biggest developments has been the outpouring of support going from a bunch of Burlington-area business leaders to a relative handful of candidates. Look at the donor lists of the top earners and you see a bunch of the same guys (well, almost entirely guys) giving four-figure checks to the same people: Stewart Ledbetter, Scott Beck, Elizabeth Brown, John Rodgers, Pat Brennan, etc.

It would be highly instructive to track how much each of these minor tycoons is investing in political centrism and where they’re putting down their markers. And it’s almost impossible to do so, thanks to how the Secretary of State’s campaign finance portal processes donor reports and how the donors seem to be taking full advantage of a loophole on offer.

What’s happening is that donors submit reports with slightly different iterations of their names and addresses. When you search for donors, each report shows up as if it’s a separate person. For instance, if you search for “Lisman, B,” you get not one, but 30 separate matches. If you search for “Broughton, L,” you get 40.

Forty.

And most of them have few if any donations listed. If you want to find out how much Lenore Broughton has given to whom, you’ll have to open each and every one of those 40 in turn. It’s maddening.

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More Money Than Sense, and Other Notes from the Latest Round of Campaign Finance Reports

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August 1 was another campaign finance deadline, the last before our August 13 state primary. As usual, there was plenty of interesting stuff to be found. And as usual, there was a dearth of coverage in our sadly diminished media ecosystem. VTDigger waited a few days to put together a solid campaign finance database helmed by its longtime (by Digger standards) data reporter Erin Petenko. But any effort, by anyone, to identify trends or develop insights? Haven’t seen any.

Meanwhile, those who follow me on Elon’s Hellscape know why I’m late to the party. After doing a fair bit of spadework around the deadline, I came down with Covid. It was a pretty severe case for a few days and I’m still on the mend, but I feel able to put words on the screen for the first time since last Thursday.

Anyway, got some things to say. Let’s do the toplines first and then get to the details.

  • While the vast majority of candidates have trouble scratching a few bucks together, there are a few who have more money than they know what to do with. The primary’s one week away, early voting as been going on for roughly a month, and they’re sitting on large quantities of unspent cash.
  • Many of these hopefuls have been generously funded by a cadre of Burlington-area business types, who may look at their investments post-primary and despair at the improvidence of their strategery.
  • Two candidates got a rocket strapped to their backs by those business leaders in July. John Rodgers, running for lieutenant governor, and Rep. Pat Brennan, running for state Senate. They went from near zero on July 1 to huge, nigh unspendable hauls on August 1. Congrats, I guess?
  • Gov. Phil Scott’s campaign has far outstripped Democrat Esther Charlestin. Why his people are bothering to beat the bushes, I don’t know. I remain convinced that he’d be better advised to mothball his campaign and start a PAC — or a Super PAC — and spread his influence around.
  • The oddities around Thomas Renner’s campaign for lieutenant governor continue to proliferate. His fundraising slowed to a trickle in July, but he spent very little and has a sizeable unspent reserve. I still don’t know what his campaign is about. Or who’s running it, for that matter.
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One Neat Trick Phil Scott Could Use to Amplify His Influence

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I’ve written ad nauseam about Gov. Phil Scott’s complete withdrawal from the Vermont Republican Party and how it’s inhibited his ability to govern. Absent his influence the VTGOP has drifted far to the right, it’s so bereft of resources it hasn’t had a single paid staffer in years, its recruitment efforts are laughably poor, and its candidates largely consist of unelectable Trumpers. The result: Substantial supermajorities in the House and Senate, and a flood tide of veto overrides.

But really, I can’t say I blame him. It would be a Herculean task to clean out the VTGOP, and both party leadership and the rank-and-file would not be receptive to his approach. It would be a hell of a lot of work, and would be very likely to fail.

However. There is something the governor could do. It wouldn’t involve dirtying his hands in party affairs. Hell, he could even farm out the real work to people in his inner circle. It’s so obvious that (1) I’m surprised it didn’t occur to me sooner and (2) I’d be afraid to suggest it except that there’s no way Team Scott would ever listen to me.

It’s this: Start a political action committee focused on electing centrists and fiscally conservative but socially moderate Republicans. Let’s call it, for the sake of argument, the Phil Scott Leadership PAC. Or if he’s feeling shy, the Common Sense Leadership PAC.

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Who’s Spending: Another Look at Mass Media Filings

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One week ago, I wrote about former senator John Rodgers’ five-figure spend for ads on WDEV radio plus other candidates’ investments in mass media. Several candidates have since reported mass media expenditures; here’s a look at the highlights.

Reminder: The next campaign finance reporting deadline is August 1, but candidates are required to promptly report mass media buys of $500 or more when they occur close to an election.

Let’s start with Rodgers. I noted that if his WDEV buy was part of a broader strategy it could pay off, but by itself it’s a questionable move. It’s a lot of money to spend on a diminished medium and an outlet that only reaches a fraction of Vermont. Well, so far it stands alone: Rodgers has not reported any more mass media spending.

The biggest mass media report from the past week comes not from a candidate, but from the Child Care Victory Fund, a political action committee affiliated with Let’s Grow Kids Vermont. The Fund is apparently trying to protect incumbent lawmakers who supported Act 76, the 2023 bill that made a “quantum leap” in child care investments, and now face primary opposition.

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Sooooo Many Campaign Finance Reports

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Well, I didn’t really want to wade through all the campaign finance reports filed by House candidates on July 1. But there were questions I wanted to answer, so wade through them I did.

Actually, not all. I didn’t pay much attention to incumbents. I was mainly interested in new candidates. What follows is a daunting amount of detail, so let me give you some topline findings right away.

  • A lot of candidates, both new and incumbent, are having trouble complying with campaign finance law. Fortunately for them, the penalties for noncompliance are minimal to nonexistent.
  • There’s been a lot of talk about centrists running as Democrats with financial backing from rich folks and business leaders. What I found, to my mild surprise, is that there aren’t really that many of ’em. Hardly enough to qualify as a trend. But it is worth focusing attention on those trying to poach Democratic seats.
  • The Republican field of new House candidates is pretty much a financial wasteland. With a few exceptions. Emphasis on “few.”
  • One of the most successful funders of Republican House candidates is the Rutland GOPAC. But they operate on a modest scale, and aren’t likely to move the needle appreciably.

Okay, on to the details, whether you want them or not. But hey, this is a place for political sickos, so on we go.

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John Rodgers Has Money Now?, and Other Notes on Mass Media Filings

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Well, well, well. Former Democratic state senator John Rodgers, now running for lieutenant governor as a Republican, seems to have searched for loose change in the sofa cushions and maybe the console of his (guessing here) pickup truck. Because after reporting no campaign activity whatsoever on July 1, he has now gone and spent a cool $10,400 on advertising with Radio Vermont, a.k.a. WDEV Radio.

We won’t know where the money came from until August 1, the next campaign finance deadline, but candidates are required to promptly report mass media expenditures of $500 or more when they occur close to an election. Rodgers filed his mass media report on July 11.

There are some other mass media filings of note, but let’s stick with Rodgers for the moment. I have to think — in a perverse way, I hope — he’s got some serious money behind him and that this big expenditure is part of a broader plan, because spending $10K on radio ads in central Vermont, by itself, is kind of a headscratcher. And I say that as a veteran radio guy whose brain still conjures up the radio version of the naked-in-public nightmare. (Which basically involves every possible interruption or technical problem sabotaging a live broadcast while I’m sitting at the microphone. Yep, radio in the blood.)

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So the VTGOP’s Big Plan Is… Try to Take Jane Kitchel’s Senate Seat? Is That It?

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Previously we looked at the dire financial straits of Esther Charlestin’s candidacy for governor, where she barely cleared $12,000 in a race that calls for, by Howard Dean’s reckoning, at least 164 times that much money. Now it’s time to look at the Republican side of the ledger, where pretty much everybody can rightly cry poverty.

With one notable exception.

That would be state Rep. Scott Beck, running for the Northeast Kingdom Senate seat currently occupied by retiring Democrat Jane Kitchel. Beck has raised a rather stunning $35,565. (His likely Democratic opponent, Amanda Cochrane, has raised a respectable $7,165 and enjoys Kitchel’s active support.) Beck appears to be the only Republican candidate who has raised more than enough money to run a respectable race. Besides, of course, Gov. Phil Scott, The Exception To Every Republican Rule,

More to the point, Beck and the governor are about the only two Republicans who aren’t complete embarrassments when it comes to fundraising. Which shows you just how desperate the party’s situation is.

The VTGOP ought to be in a position for a nice little comeback in the Legislature, threatening to end the Dem/Prog supermajorities that imperil every single one of Scott’s many, many, many vetoes. And they’re not.

Instead, the wistful eyes of the donor class have largely turned to putative Democrat Stewart Ledbetter’s bid to wrest away a Senate seat from liberal Democrat Martine Gulick or Progressive firebrand Tanya Vyhovsky. Ledbetter has amassed the largest campaign kitty of any Statehouse candidate thanks primarily to Burlington-area business leaders. You know, the very people who would historically be bankrolling Republicans.

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