Category Archives: Matt Dunne

Tomorrow’s a big day

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March 15 is a crucial day for us Vermont Political Observers, capitalized and otherwise. Not only is it a potential make-or-break for Bernie Sanders, but it’s a deadline day for campaign finance reports from state candidates. And because of Vermont’s relaxed campaign finance law, it’s the first deadline since last July — an eternity in politics, especially in a campaign season that started so darn early.

We will, of course, be watching the primary returns from Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina. I expect Bernie to do better than predicted, as he almost always does; but not well enough to close the delegate gap with Hillary Clinton. The Michigan win, nice as it was, did virtually nothing to close that gap. Hillary’s won a bunch of states by one-sided margins, thanks largely to her yooooge advantage with the black electorate; in order to catch up, Bernie has to not only win a bunch of states — he has to dominate them. That would require some kind of massive unforced error by Clinton, or some kind of unexpected and decisive bad news that would hurt Clinton and help Sanders.

The statistical website FiveThirtyEight has a formula for keeping track of how candidates are faring in the hunt for delegates. It sets a delegate target for each candidate in each state. Right now, it shows Clinton beating her target by nearly a hundred delegates — not including superdelegates. Bernie’s almost a hundred below his target.

Bernie’s Michigan victory netted him a mere seven delegates. He’ll have to pick up that pace substantially and very quickly.

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Protip: If you’re opening a china shop, don’t invite a bull

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I don’t know whose bright idea it was to invite the former Most Hated Man in the Senate to Matt Dunne’s news conference on corporate campaign contributions, but apparently it worked out about as well as you might suspect.

In other words, as Seven Days’ Paul Heintz tells it, Peter Galbraith pretty much hijacked the affair.

Galbraith has been a longtime opponent of corporate contributions, having repeatedly proposed a ban during his time in the Senate. Which always seemed more than a bit disingenuous to me, since Galbraith had the resources to self-fund his own campaigns to his heart’s content. In his first bid for the Senate, he put more than $50,000 into his campaign, which was far, far more than any other candidate could have hoped to raise.

(He was the rare diplomat who returned home a very rich man, thanks to his connections with the Kurds and their oil-funded generosity. Indeed, he’s probably the closest thing Vermont has to an oil magnate.)

Galbraith has been musing about a run for governor. I don’t know if Dunne harbored some faint hope of co-opting him, but it sure didn’t work out that way.

You take your life into your hands when you get between Peter Galbraith and a TV camera. So when you invite him to a press conference, you’d best expect that bull to break a few dishes. Dunne, according to Heintz, wore a “somewhat pained expression” as Galbraith went on at length on his own favorite subject — Himself — and whether Himself would deign to run for governor.

Repeatedly. With barely-concealed barbs for the man who had invited him.

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Endorsement Wars: Backstage with Bernie

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There was some excitement behind the scenes at Bernie Sanders’ Super Tuesday shindig. Sharp elbows, bruised feelings. In the long run, it won’t mean much; but hey, this is a blog about politics, and backstage maneuverings are part of the deal.

Both Democratic candidates for governor spoke from Bernie’s podium — a big opportunity, a very visible platform. Important for both. Well, here’s what happened beforehand according to multiple sources, some on the record and some off.

“[Sanders campaign manager] Jeff Weaver reached out to Matt and asked him to speak before Bernie,” says Matt Dunne’s campaign chief Nick Charyk. “They had a history; Jeff did fundraisng for Matt [in 2010] and endorsed him.

“It was an incredible honor. We had a busy Town Meeting Day schedule, but Matt was jetting up to Burlington when the Sanders campaign contacted us, and told us that Sue Minter had reached out, said she was now endorsing Bernie, and wanted to share the stage.”

Parenthetical: Minter had earlier said she would vote for Bernie in the primary but wasn’t formally endorsing — a rare distinction, but one she chose to make. On Tuesday, with the chance to appear with Bernie in the balance, she changed her tune.

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The VPR Poll: the gubernatorial race

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Big day in Vermont politics. VPR commissioned a wide-ranging poll from the Castleton Polling Institute. During today’s “Vermont Edition,” there was a painstakingly thorough (read: boring) examination of the presidential results, which contained no real surprises*. What I was most interested in is the gubernatorial race: as far as I can tell, this is the first real poll taken since the field took its current shape.

* Bernie’s whompin’ Hillary; Trump has a big lead over Rubio and Kasich, with Cruz in fourth.

The poll also contains some striking findings on issues, which I’ll address in a separate post. Preview: several “hot-button” issues don’t seem to concern the electorate very much.

First, a note on the gubernatorial numbers. All respondents are included in both the Democratic and Republican races. The question is: “Of the two candidates running for the [Democratic/Republican] nomination for Governor, which do you prefer?” Republicans got to weigh in on the Democratic race, and vice versa. So the results may be a little funky — although to be honest, the Dem/Repub/Indy breakdowns aren’t substantially different from the overall numbers. Still, take these results with a small grain of salt.

Topline for the gubernatorial findings: Phil Scott is way out in front, and will be difficult to catch.

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Another nail in Vermont Health Connect’s coffin

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The vultures are circling. The wolves are howling. The diminished corpus of Vermont Health Connect is crawling across a pitiless landscape; every time an oasis appears, it turns out to be a mirage.

Things aren’t lookin’ good.

I’ve been a strong supporter of Governor Shumlin’s health care reform plan — hopefully as a first step toward single payer, or at least universal coverage of some kind. I have bought and consumed every confident reassurance ever issued by the Governor and his minions. I have, unfairly in retrospect, mocked his critics as mindless partisans. I have allowed my hope to be renewed by fresh reassurances, most recently last fall, when the administration announced that VHC had met its performance benchmarks.

Today, not so much. Today I’ve turned a corner. I remain hopeful, but the confidence is gone.

The last straw was yesterday’s article by VTDigger’s Erin Mansfield, which began like this:

An independent expert on health care strategy advised the state to spend as little money as possible on Vermont Health Connect technology in the immediate future and instead use resources to evaluate alternatives to the exchange.

Frank Petrus, a senior managing partner at Connecticut-based Gartner Inc., told lawmakers the state should stop spending money to build new Vermont Health Connect technology, try to leverage investments it has already made, and commission a study that would take three to four months.

Basically, he wants to put VHC into hospice care. Stop trying to fix it, just help it “limp along a little while longer.”

Ugh. Yeesh. Aaaaaarrrrrgh.

This isn’t coming from a free-market ideologue, but a guy with unimpeachable bona fides:

Gartner has consulted for several state health exchanges, including Vermont Health Connect, and has a great deal of experience in public sector human services.

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A bit of an own goal by the Minter campaign

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“So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

— Revelation 3:16

One of the minor sidelights of our state campaign season is the issue of endorsements, especially on the Democratic side. Do you support the hometown favorite, or the party stalwart? The one who wants to be the 44th male president, or the one who wants to be the first female?

You can sense the pressure in the way things filter out. Established officeholders who don’t have to face the electorate? Peter Shumlin and Pat Leahy go for Hillary Clinton. Officeholder who will be on the ballot this year? Peter Welch is studiously neutral.

Non-officeholders contending for top Democratic nominations? Matt Dunne, Dave Zuckerman, and Kesha Ram have all endorsed Bernie.*

*As a correspondent informed me, I made a quick-draw mistake there. Zuckerman and Ram are officeholders, of course. I wrote in haste, and I apologize to Zuckerman and Ram for the attempted impeachments.

And then there’s Sue Minter, who hadn’t said anything publicly about the race until this week, when she half-heartedly indicated a preference in an interview with WCAX’s Kyle Midura. It wasn’t pretty.

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Phil Scott dials back the demagoguery

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Man, I can’t tell you how nice it is to live in a state where xenophobia isn’t a sound political strategy.

It hasn’t been 48 hours since our two Republican gubernatorial hopefuls cracked open a jug of Doctor GOP’s Universal Snake Oil Cure-All, and not only have they not made a dent in Governor Shumlin’s forthright support for allowing Syrian refugees into Vermont, but they have found it necessary to ‘splain themselves. Even worse, a Democratic candidate is firing back with both barrels.

Lt. Gov. Phil Scott went so far as to fire off an opinion piece which (a) blamed the media for distorting his views, natch, and (b) set forth a new position that’s either carefully nuanced or tortuous, depending on how you look at it. His basic point: he wants a brief “pause” in the refugee program so all Americans can be fully informed, and become fully confident, in its absolute integrity. Which is bullshit, because no amount of information will convince, for instance, the roughly 30% of Americans who still believe President Obama is a Muslim. There is no reasoning with those people.

So if we wait for the “information” to convince every American, then we will never, ever, ever admit another refugee. Ever.

But let’s hear more from Phil “I Am Not A Xenophobe” Scott:

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In the best possible way for the worst possible reason

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If anyone doubted that there was a deep well of humanity inside the flinty-eyed vote-counter, today’s announcement removed all doubt.

House Speaker Shap Smith has left the gubernatorial race, citing his wife Melissa Volansky’s continuing battle with breast cancer. He chose family over ambition, despite Volansky herself urging him to stay in the race.

His announcement was concise, graceful, heartfelt, and noble. It speaks volumes about Shap’s character and priorities, and it makes me hope that he can return to politics someday.

For now, no. He rejected any talk of re-entering the race even if circumstances permit, and he announced he will not seek re-election to the House next year. And if this does turn out to be his last act in politics, then (a) it’s one hell of an exit, and (b) Vermont will be the poorer for it.

And now, since this is a political blog, we don the green eyeshade and consider the political impact.

To put it bluntly, Sue Minter may have just won the Democratic nomination.

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A curious endorsement

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So last Friday, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Dunne endorsed Bernie Sanders for President. Which struck me as an interesting, nay curious, move — partly due to policy, and partly due to timing.

Above all, and pardon me if my blogger cynicism is showing, it struck me as less a heartfelt choice for President and more a positioning maneuver in the Democratic primary. It seems designed to reinforce Dunne’s claim as the outsider in the race, since many current Dem officeholders have opted for Hillary Clinton. Policy-wise, I’d expect Dunne to have more common ground with a centrist than a Democratic Socialist. Indeed, in his endorsement Dunne tried to paper over the potential differences between himself and Sanders by emphasizing what “Bernie has been talking about” over the solutions Bernie proposes.

All along, Bernie has been talking about issues of critical importance at this moment in time: the loss of our middle class, addressing global climate change, fixing our broken healthcare system, providing needed support for our veterans and seniors, and giving the next generation the opportunity to graduate from college debt free.

Take the last one, for example: Sanders and Dunne both want to give students “the opportunity to graduate… debt free.” But I don’t think Dunne would back Bernie’s call for free tuition or anything like it.

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Brainstormin’ with Mr. Google

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The candidate works the room.

The candidate works the room.

Matt Dunne, former state senator, current Google exec and Democratic candidate for governor, is slow-rolling his campaign unveil with a series of Community Forums around the state. On Tuesday night, he made a stop in downtown Montpelier; about 20 people gathered in the upstairs offices of Local 64, a coworking space. (Appropriately trendy location, yes?) Some nibbly snacks were on offer, as well as appropriately local beer. (Your Reporter contented himself with an excellent iced tea purchased at the North Branch Cafe downstairs.)

The takeaway: ehh, it was a perfectly cromulent way to low-key a campaign launch. Nothing wrong with the idea. But I have to admit, I take these kinds of events with a massive grain of salt.

First, it’s not exactly a new concept. Bruce Lisman reintroduced himself to Vermonters with a Listening Tour, and Phil Scott spent a few nights last winter holding Economy Pitches. If Matt Dunne is trying to present himself as a different kind of candidate, borrowing chapters from the Phil Scott Playbook isn’t the best way to make that case. (Nothing against Phil, he’s just not a cutting-edge kind of guy.)

Second, when I walk into a room containing oversized pads of white paper on easels and a goodly supply of Sharpies, something inside me shrivels up a little. I guess it’s all those idea sessions I sat through in my previous working lives. The assembled are addressed with great earnestness, we offer ideas, they get written down on the white pads, the full pages get taped to the walls, everybody leaves, and — in my experience — nothing much comes of it.

Dunne promised otherwise. “The whole list will be posted online,” he said at the event’s conclusion. After seeking further input, he said, the ideas gathered at the forums “will be incorporated into our platform.”

I kinda hope not. But we’ll get to that later.

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