If you’ve got 30 seconds to spare, why not skip on over to the Scott Milne For Senate campaign website? I’ll wait here.
… You back?
Not much to see, is there? Four stinkin’ pages: Home, Join Our Team, Contact, and Donate.
No “Issues”, no “News”, no “Events”, nothing of substance whatsoever.
It’d be downright weird if it wasn’t (a) Scott Milne we’re talking about, and (b) a perfect match for the campaign he’s run to date.
Which is to say, virtually substance-free.
2014 The gubernatorial campaign of Scott Milne had one distinguishing feature: Scott Milne did what Scott Milne wanted to do and said what he wanted to say. In an odd sort of way, it reminds me of one Donald J. Trump.
Appear grossly unprepared in public forums? Check.
Give long, meandering, stream-of-consciousness answers to questions? Check.
No attempt at all to hew to Republican orthodoxy? Check.
No attempt to open or maintain communication with the VTGOP? Check.
No effort to raise money or build a campaign infrastructure? Check.
His inner circle basically consisting of family members? Check.
Propensity to grind personal axes on the campaign trail? Check.
Donald Trump without the energy and Brut-drenched charisma, you might say. Better hair, tho.
He’s pursuing the same contrarian course in his present challenge to eternal incumbent Sen. Patrick Leahy.
Too-coy-by-half Senatorial candidate Scott Milne has come out firing with both barrels on the EB-5 program, hoping to use it as a wedge issue against perpetual incumbent Pat Leahy. Some of his criticisms are valid; others reveal a profound misunderstanding of Leahy’s role in the program.
Either misunderstanding or rank political opportunism. You make the call.
Milne is on solid ground when he accuses Leahy of being a prominent advocate of EB-5, and for being a vocal cheerleader for Vermont developers taking advantage of the program. Leahy has basked in the glow of ribbon-cuttings and high-profile announcements for years; he deserves his share of the heat from the collapse of Jay Peak and the involvement of his “good friend” Bill Stenger in an alleged fraud scheme.
It’s also fair to criticize Leahy for pushing a program with a fundamentally problematic premise: selling green cards to high rollers.
However, I don’t expect Milne to hit too hard on that point, considering that he himself toyed with the notion of soliciting EB-5 investor funds. Seven Days’ Paul Heintz reports that Milne traveled to China and South Korea in 2009 with Bill Stenger and then-Governor Jim Douglas, and came back an EB-5 enthusiast:
“To me, it is the perfect storm of government policy capturing the best of entrepreneurial spirit,” he told the Valley News a week after returning from Asia. “I was pleased beyond my expectations.”
“Perfect storm,” hahaha. There’s a malapropism that turned out to be horribly apropos.
Milne goes off the rails when he accuses Leahy of “mismanagement,” and lumps the Senator in with Governor Shumlin for “the way the EB-5 program has been structured and managed.”
Astounding Coincidences in Vermont Politics, EB-5 Scandal Edition…
a. Five days before the Bill Stenger/EB-5 scandal broke wide open, the Shumlin administration requests the deletion of archived emails from five former staffers in Shumlin’s office. One of the five is Alex MacLean, who left state government to take a job with Stenger’s massive development project.
b. On the day before the scandal broke, Senator Pat Leahy — until then a staunch supporter of EB-5 and Stenger — adopted a much more skeptical tone toward EB-5, saying that the program needed a major overhaul if it’s going to stay in business. Leahy insists he knew nothing about the imminent collapse of Stenger’s (alleged) pyramid scheme.
You know, call me a cynic, but I don’t believe any of it.
When you’ve got a big development scheme in your state that’s had the enthusiastic backing of The Great and Powerful, what’s the last thing you want to hear?
“Ponzi-like scheme”?
“Systematically looted”?
“… the gamut from false statements to deceptive financial transactions to outright theft”?
“… pilfering tens of millions of dollars in investor money”?
Yep, we’ve got ’em all, as Mount Quiros, the shit volcano, erupts and everybody runs for cover lest their expensive suits get ruined.
You know, it’s not very often that the term “clusterfuck” is an understatement, but here we are.
Ruh-roh. I’ll bet Pat Leahy is quaking in his boots.
Either that, or snickering in his tumbler of single malt. The Valley News via VTDigger:
Milne Travel, the Barre-based travel agency owned by former Vermont GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Milne, has sold a controlling stake in the company to the New York-based travel management giant Altour International Inc.
Milne, who acknowledged he is weighing a run later this year for the U.S. Senate seat held by Patrick Leahy, said the joint venture with Altour places his firm on a solid financial footing “should I get lucky … it gives me the ability to step back for six years.”
That’s right, Senator. Vermont’s own Giant Killer has you squarely in his crosshairs.
Hahaha.
Well, to be fair, Milne’s name recognition should allow him to outpace Len Britton, who earned 31% of the vote in 2010 as Leahy’s most recent Republican opponent. But can Milne repeat his David V. Goliath act against Vermont’s Senior Senator?
Naah.
I suppose I should explain, since I was equally dismissive of Milne’s chances in 2014, when he came within an eyelash of unseating Shumlin. So why am I confident in laughing off his chances this time?
In the aftermath of the Vermont primary, in which Hillary Clinton failed to reach the 15 percent threashold needed to qualify for convention delegates, there’s been more pressure on superdelegates who back Clinton to switch to Bernie Sanders. Because to vote for Clinton, the story goes, would be to ignore the wishes of the electorate.
Which fails to consider the disenfranchisement of the 13.6 percent who voted for Clinton. I’m not making that complaint; I have said the parties have the right to determine rules for choosing a presidential candidate, and I stick by that. I’m just pointing out the hypocrisy, that’s all. Both candidates benefit, and lose, in different ways that roughly cancel out.
What I am here to say is there are very good reasons for Pat Leahy and Peter Shumlin and Billi Gosh to support Hillary. They may believe she’s the stronger general-election candidate. They might value her long and loyal service to the Democratic Party, contrasted with Bernie-come-lately who has been harshly critical of the party but has also benefited, throughout his political career, from his arm’s-length affiliation with the Democrats.
And here’s another one, a big one, courtesy of the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank:
Hillary Clinton has raised $26 million for the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties so far this campaign. And Sanders? $1,000.
That’s no typo. Clinton is doing more to boost the party’s 2016 prospects than Sanders by the proportion of 26,000 to 1.
… Clinton has pledged to rebuild the party and has begun to make good on that promise. Sanders, by contrast, has shown little concern for the very real crisis the party faces beneath the presidential level.
Let me pause here and state, clearly, that I don’t blame Bernie for making this strategic choice. He has a revolution to build, and that costs money. His first priority is fully funding a presidential campaign, which is a very costly undertaking. He is doing what he needs to do.
However, as Milbank documents, the Democratic Party structure is in critical condition.
Curious item landed in my inbox this morning: an email from Scott Milne.
Well, not a personal email — it was a blast message to his mailing list, entitled:
Scott Milne challenges Pat Leahy to get money out of politics.
The message slams Leahy for holding a fundraising event over the weekend, at which attendees were (according to Milne) charged “$5,000 for face time with Vermont’s senior Senator.” Milne compares this unfavorably with Leahy’s predecessor, St. George Aiken, who “spent $17.09 on his entire last campaign for the Senate in 1968 [and] spent a total $4,423.03 for all six of his U.S. Senate campaigns combined.”
Well, in 1968 Aiken occupied both the Republican and Democratic slots on the ballot, and managed to win re-election with, ahem, 99.9 percent of the vote, which makes me think he wasted seventeen bucks. The bulk of his career took place when the GOP absolutely ruled the roost in Vermont. But I can just hear Milne say, “Leahy is as bulletproof as Aiken; why raise money at all?” To which Leahy would reasonably reply, “In politics, you never know.” Especially since conservative groups have begun to spend money on Vermont elections. It’s only prudent for Leahy to build up a warchest.
But the biggest question raised by Milne’s email is simply, Why? Why is he attacking Pat Leahy?
If this were any politician not named Scott Milne, the answer would be obvious: he’s going to run for U.S. Senate. In Milne’s case, it might simply mean he got out of bed this morning and decided to write a letter.
He’s had better days.
Let’s do the latter first. Late last month, Leahy’s office issued two press releases touting either $6.7 million (July 28) or $6.8 million (July 25) in Homeland Security Preparedness Grants, take your pick. But hey, what’s $100,000 when you’re getting it from Uncle Sam’s sofa cushions?
Both releases brag about Leahy’s role in creating “a formula… that protects smaller states like Vermont” and expands on the point:
Leahy has long championed all-state minimum funding formulas for homeland security grants to ensure that smaller, rural states like Vermont are included and supported by federal resources to thwart and deal with terrorism. Since 2001, Leahy’s all-state minimum has brought Vermont more than $115 million in federal funding to help first responders upgrade equipment, modernize radio systems and offer new training opportunities.
I remember the Congressional debate over this formula. At the time, many thought it was a bad idea. And even though Vermont has benefited, I question its wisdom.
So the news comes by way of VPR’s Bob Kinzel that Patrick Leahy will seek re-election in 2016. It’s not too much of a surprise, although if (hahaha, when) he wins an eighth term in office, he will be closing in on 77 years old. But he’s in good health, and I’m sure he sees the opportunity for the Democrats to regain the majority in the Senate; Republicans will be defending seats won in the Tea Party sweep of 2010, and will be hard-pressed to repeat that success in a Presidential year. If the Dems win back the Senate, Leahy gets back his beloved Judiciary Committee chairmanship.
On balance, Leahy’s continued presence in the Senate is a good thing. He’s reliably one of the more liberal members of the Senate, for one. Also, his seniority means influence, and he does bring home the bacon on a regular basis. (The most recent example: generous federal funding for the Lake Champlain cleanup.)
But, as universally beloved as St. Patrick is in Vermont liberal circles, I see some downside to his announcement.
First, he’s been in the Senate for 41 years, and he sometimes shows a dismaying loyalty to the clubby mores of our most hidebound deliberative body. When he chaired the Judiciary Committee, he made it harder for President Obama to get judicial nominees confirmed because of his adherence to the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition, which allows a single Senator to sideline a nomination.
Second, his continued presence will exacerbate the logjam in the upper reaches of liberal politics, and keep the glass ceiling pressed firmly on the aspirations of liberal women. We’ve never sent a woman to Congress, which is downright shameful. And it doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon; there are a lot of experienced, connected, talented men at the front of the line, waiting for their shot at higher office.
Finally, there’s the generation gap: add up the ages of our three members of Congress, and you get 215 years. That’s an average age of just under 72. Not that there’s anything wrong with being old; I myself aspire to a long and active elderhood. Still, I’m vaguely bothered by the lack of diversity in our admittedly small group: all men, all white, all senior citizens.
On balance, I’m happy with our Congressional delegation. Individually, they’re all fine. Collectively, though, they’re too old and homogeneous. Leahy’s announcement means it’ll take that much longer to get some new blood into Congress.
The Vermont Political Observer. 