Category Archives: Phil Scott

The VTGOP’s Super Deluxe Trip to the Bennington Battle Monument

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:UPDATE: I got a crucial bit of information wrong in this post: the mileage for a roundtrip from Burlington to Bennington is twice what I stated below. My point is still valid, however. Please see my next post for the rest of the story.

Vermont Republicans continue to yammer endlessly about an item that wasn’t on the Legislature’s agenda this year and won’t be anytime soon: the notorious, job-killing and family-devastating carbon tax.

(Cue theremin: woooooooo-OOOOOOOO-oooooo)

This, despite the inconvenient fact that none of the Democrats running for governor or lieutenant governor actually supports the thing. (David Zuckerman does, but he’s a Prog flying a flag of convenience.)

But as outlandish as their attacks have been until now, the Republicans have outdone themselves in less than 140 characters. Behold the Tweet From Hell!

Wow. 236 dollars for a trip downstate. That’s really something. That’s…

… wait a minute.

That can’t be right.

And as a matter of fact, it’s not. Not even close.

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Methinks The Donald is overcompensating

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Recently, I made sport of the graphic-design misadventures of the Lisman and Scott campaigns. Well, maybe it’s a Republican thing, because Donald Trump is putting out some truly awful stuff himself.

The Donald’s banner ads have started following me around the Internet. There are several different ones, all featuring Trump doing his best Mussolini pose (except he’s always wearing that damn baseball cap, which makes him much less dignified than Il Duce) with short, bold messages and some sort of vibrant, thrusting visual. Like so.

Trump thrustYeah, that’s the ticket! Noble visage, call to action, stirring image of American ingenuity at work.

Except, hmm, that’s the space shuttle, right? First flew in 1981, now permanently retired from service? Rendered obsolete by the passage of time and its own imperfections? Occasionally subject to catastrophic failure?

Maybe that’s intentional. You know, “Make America Great Again,” like when we had our own rockets penetrating the atmosphere and delivering payloads into space.

Or, more likely, the graphic designers got an order to come up with a picture of a stiff, hard phallic device thrusting upward with explosive force, scattering its fiery power far and wide on the landscape. Liquid hydrogen pearl necklace, you might say.

Good grief. Instead of remaking himself into a more acceptable figure, he’s just getting stranger and stranger. I hope Vermont Republicans are proud of their standard-bearer.

The VPR Poll: Pants On Fire, and other observations

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Rich Clark was worried about inaccurate results. That’s why he didn’t want to survey Vermonters about their preferences in the August primary.

Okay, but when you look at the results of his VPR Poll, you realize that some of those people are lying their asses off. Which kinda makes the whole accuracy concern seem a bit irrelevant.

The biggest whoppers came when respondents were asked how likely they are to vote. 87 percent said they were very or somewhat likely to vote in November. In actual fact, we’ll be lucky to hit 60.

As for the primary, 68 percent claim to be very or somewhat likely to vote. More than half of those people are lying. The biggest primary turnouts in recent years were 23 percent in 2010 and 30 percent in 2000, the year of the Great “Take Back Vermont” freakout.

Which makes me wonder. If that many people are lying about that, why should we believe the rest of their answers?

After the jump: analysis of their possibly truthful answers. 

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A curious duality of nothingness, and a rhetorical faceplant

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Welp, I forced myself to go back and watch last week’s gubernatorial forum on Vermont’s economic future in a time of climate change, as the organizers dubbed it. And I found something fascinating on the Republican side. As in the way a child is fascinated by turning over a rock and watching the critters disperse.

On the one hand, you had a guy who acknowledges the reality of climate change and the human role in it, but doesn’t want to do anything to address it. On the other, you had a guy who questions the scientific consensus on climate change but has a bunch of ideas that are kinda-sorta related to the issue.

Candidate A is Bruce Lisman. Candidate B is Phil Scott.

Most of this essay will concern Scott, because (1) his presentation was an appalling mess, and (2) he’s going to win the primary, so Lisman’s brand of environmental unconcern is of little relevance.

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The Phil Scott auto-reply outrage machine

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,The Scott/Lisman primary contest has taken on a predictable pattern. Bruce Lisman attacks Phil Scott; Scott replies with shocked outrage over Lisman’s negativity. Lather, rinse, repeat. It caused me to pose an existential Tweet:

The latest roundelay began when Lisman accused Scott of calling for “a mileage tax on all who drive.”

Which is a lie. In a Rutland debate Wednesday night, Scott discussed the certainty that, as cars become more efficient and we transition to ever more hybrids and electrics, the gas tax will become insufficient to pay for needed highway repairs. Here’s a portion of Scott’s remarks:

‘We are going to have to think about other ways, nationally, to tax and receive revenue from those who use our highways and byways. … So, we’re going to, in the future, have to look at some kind of a mileage tax.’”

That’s not “calling for” or “proposing” a mileage tax. It’s a self-evident observation on our changing transportation system. Scott is right to complain of an inaccurate attack from Lisman.

However…

Need I point out that this line of attack is standard operating procedure for Republicans, including Scott himself?

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The VTGOP is pretty much flat broke

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I have occasionally chronicled the Vermont Republican Party’s perennially dire financial condition, but never have I seen the situation as bad as it is right now. Because heading into the heart of a campaign season, the state GOP is virtually out of funds.

Explanatory note: the VTGOP and Vermont Democratic Party file both state and federal reports. Because of the way federal law is written, the bulk of their activity is considered “federal” even though they are state parties.

In this case, it hardly matters; we’re talking peanuts wherever we turn. Its latest state filing listed less than $1,000 in cash on hand; its latest federal filing reported $1.104 in the bank.

(By contrast, the Vermont Dems filed a state report indicating it raised more than $100,000 in June and spent a little more than half that. Its federal filing indicates $120,000 cash on hand. The VDP’s fundraising and spending are in a completely different league than its Republican counterpart.)

Even on the VTGOP’s bare-bones budget, that’s less than two days’ worth of operating expenses. They’re tapped out, just when they need to kick things into high gear.

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Adventures in bad banner design

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You know how online advertising works. You shop for something on the Internet — socks, refrigerators, hotels — and you get a torrent of related banner ads wherever you browse.

So me, politics. I’m getting a load of banner ads from candidates. Ironically, mostly Republicans. (The tracking software doesn’t detect sarcasm.) And, given the relative rate of spending, mostly about Bruce Lisman.

My conclusion: whatever he’s spending all that money on, he’s getting screwed on graphics. Just look at this.

Lisman banner ad from Politico

Ugh. Looks like a quick cut-and-paste job by a hyperactive five-year-old with a rudimentary grasp of Photoshop. Cluttered, random, doesn’t stand out, doesn’t guide the eye, too many messages. And then there’s that terrible photo crammed into the middle: why would you want to show your candidate squinting?

More bad banners… after the jump.

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Minter outraises Dunne: the Democratic filings

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I’ve already written my take on the Republican gubernatorial campaign finance reports; now it’s the Democrats’ turn.

Topline: A great three months for Sue Minter; a slower pace for the Matt Dunne gravy train; and Peter Galbraith Is His Own Best Friend.

Minter raised almost $400,000 between March 15 and July 15. On the other hand, she spent an even healthier $437,000 for the period, leaving her with about $300K in cash on hand.

Dunne raised $250,000 for the quarter, which would be pretty damn good if not for Minter’s total and the fact that he used to have a substantial lead in campaign cash. That lead is gone. He’s got about $200K left in the till.

Galbraith, meanwhile, has raised a total of $320,000 (he hadn’t begun to fundraise at the March filing deadline), of which $185,000 came from his own pocket. He’s spent all but $35,000, so if he should pull a stunning upset in the primary, he’ll be hard up for the fall campaign.

Except, of course, that thanks to his oil wealth he can write himself virtually unlimited checks.

Anyway, let’s move on to details and such.

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Skeleton hunt

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Here’s a tidbit from Friday’s campaign finance filing deadline, first uncovered by April Burbank of the Burlington Free Press.

The Republican Governors Association gave $50,000 to a political action committee called “A Stronger Vermont,” which used the money exclusively for research at Old Dominion Research Group in Alexandria, Virginia.

Old Dominion Research Group promises on its website to provide “hard-hitting, precise intelligence based on the records of Democrat office holders and seekers.”

Technical detail: the RGA gave “A Stronger Vermont” $50,000; ASV spent $44K on Old Dominion Research Group, and still has the remainder.

But there’s a wakeup. 44 G’s on opposition research against Democratic (no, it’s not ’Democrat”) candidates.

Burbank pretty much left it there, but I did some additional Googling and turned up some fascinating information.

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Bruce’s Worst Investment, and Other Gleanings from Campaign Finance Day

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So, finally, we get our second window into the money game behind the primary campaigns. A few toplines:

— Bruce Lisman is spending gobs of cash and getting bupkis in return

— Phil Scott’s chugging along; will have to pick up the pace after the primary

— Sue Minter pulls ahead in the Democratic fundraising game

— Matt Dunne’s early momentum slows a bit

— Peter Galbraith is keeping his own campaign alive. Barely

And now, the details.

Wall Street millionaire Bruce Lisman has put $1.6 million of his own money into his campaign, raised precious little money from others, and has been spending at a blistering pace. He’s raised more than $1.8 million, but he has less than $200,000 cash on hand.

Well, he can always write more checks.

But let’s stop for a moment and savor the fact that Bruce Lisman has already spent more money than any gubernatorial candidate in Vermont history — and the primary is still three and a half weeks away. And he places dismally in the available polls.

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