Category Archives: Vermont Republican Party

Okay, so that happened.

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Surprise, surprise: Peter Shumlin won’t run for re-election next year.

Many more thoughts to come, but here’s the instant reaction.

— It’s the right move, but I wasn’t sure he was capable of making it. He would have had a very, very tough time winning back the voters next year. If he’d managed to right the ship on Vermont Health Connect, and if this year’s legislation had begun to make a difference, he would have had a shot at winning a fourth term. Even so, it’d be an uphill battle.

I say “I wasn’t sure he was capable of making it” because it’s awfully hard for a politician to leave the game, and it’s hard for a politician as accomplished as Shumlin to leave with the Scott Milne embarrassment as his last electoral act. In stepping aside, Peter Shumlin shows a wisdom and perspective that many didn’t think he had.

— His image was worse than the actual person. This decision shows that there’s an authentic Peter Shumlin that doesn’t measure life by political wins and losses. He has no interest in a political future; he plans to leave his East Montpelier manse and return to Putney. I expect he will do that. And though he’ll certainly continue to have a public life, I think he’ll be true to his word: no more campaigns, no more full-time public service.

— He’s waved the white flag on single payer health care. In his speech, he mentioned health care reform as the one area of failure for his administration. If he thought he could resurrect single payer between now and 2018, he might well have run for re-election.

— This gives the Democratic Party a clean slate. Without Shumlin on the ticket, it could be a very good year for the Democrats; it’s a Presidential year with either Hillary Clinton or (haha) Bernie Sanders atop the ballot, and Pat Leahy presumably running for re-election. We should have a substantial and very Democratic turnout. Sad to say, but Shumlin would have been a net negative.

— This is bad news for the VTGOP. They won’t face a wounded incumbent with a long track record and personal unpopularity; they’ll face a candidate with substantial experience (see below) and with a full 18 months to fundraise and put together a top-notch campaign. And even if there’s a spirited Democratic primary, 2010 has shown that that isn’t a bad thing.

— The Republicans really blew it in 2014. If they’d run a real candidate, they would have won the corner office. If Phil Scott has any real ambitions to be Governor, he’s gotta be kicking himself right now.

— The Democrats have an incredibly deep talent pool. I could name you half a dozen eminently qualified candidates without any trouble. There’s been a logjam at the top for quite a while, what with our extremely senior Congressional delegation and our very capable statewide officeholders (well, Pearce, Hoffer, and Condos anyway — three out of four ain’t bad) and our sclerotic state senate. By contrast, of course, the Republicans’ talent pool is more of a puddle, aside from Phil Scott.

— Early favorite for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination? House Speaker Shap Smith. If he can get the Democratic caucus behind him, he’d have a big advantage at the grassroots level and he’d be very, very tough to beat. And he did a great job during this year’s legislative session of threading a very narrow needle, being an honest broker, and subtly creating a political persona of his own.

More thoughts to come, I’m sure. I welcome your comments below.

Signs of trouble at the VTGOP

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This ought to be a pretty good time for Vermont Republicans, comparatively speaking. They won some notable victories in 2014. The 2015 legislative season began with the Governor abandoning his signature issue, and the legislature facing a big budget deficit and a bunch of tough issues.

The Democratic majority did a pretty good job all told, but they certainly left plenty of room for Republican attacks. The tax increases, the education reform plan, the unresolved problems with Vermont Health Connect, the apparent disconnect between Governor and legislature. Lots of red meat.

Suggested truth-in-advertising logo for the VTGOP.

Suggested truth-in-advertising logo for the VTGOP.

But there are signs that the Vermont Republican Party is still in the doldrums: low on funds, poor on party-building and grassroots organizing, surprisingly passive during a season of opportunity, and suffering from a seemingly intractable rift between the True Believers and the Inclusivists.

Some of this is nothing but rumor. But rumor with a consistent, believable storyline that’s reflected in the cold, hard facts of the VTGOP’s financial reports.

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Apology and retraction re: Sunderland essay

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Over the weekend, I posted a piece noting that VTGOP chair David Sunderland had sent out an opinion piece castigating H.361, the education reform bill, even though it was the result of Democratic/Republican cooperation and enacted with bipartisan support (and opposition).

My mistake, and my apologies to Sunderland and to VPO readers. He did not write the essay in question — although he did send it out to the VTGOP’s email list. That’s a little surprising given broad Republican support for the bill, but it’s not nearly as strange as it would have been if he’d written the piece.

The essay was actually an Editorial that appeared in the May 27 Times Argus. I first saw it in the VTGOP email blast, and jumped to a conclusion. My fault.

I’m updating the original post with a link to this retraction. I don’t want to delete the post because that would be, IMO, dishonest.

Thanks to Robert Maynard of True North Reports for pointing out my mistake. Sorry I didn’t believe you the first time, Robert.

Lookin’ for love in at least one wrong place

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Update: Looks like he’s done a bit of spring cleaning. “Simple Pickup” has been removed from Fiske’s Facebook page. Let it never be said that theVPO doesn’t have influence!

Update II: Rep. Fiske has responded in the Comments. I’ve attached his response to the end of this post.

Just like all hip and with-it 21st Century Vermonters, State Rep. Larry Fiske has a Facebook page. The Franklin County Republican has posted 22 “Likes” on his page. Most of them are just what you’d expect from a Republican, if you’ll excuse the stereotype: sports teams, fellow Republicans, local businesses. Ethan Allen Institute, natch. Former local news anchor Bridget Shanahan.

And whoa, what’s this?

“Simple Pickup.”

That’s odd. Let’s see what we’ve got here.

Simple Pickup proclaims itself “the foremost company in the world teaching on dating and relationships.”

Our mission is to ensure that all people — men and women — achieve their romantic goals.

“Men and women.” How equitable. Unfortunately, their method for ensuring that “all people… achieve their romantic goals” is to teach young men how to be pickup artists.

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VTGOP chair throws his own people under the bus

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UPDATE: I was mistaken when I wrote this post. The opinion piece was not written by Sunderland; it was a Times Argus editorial. See this new post for details.

Vermont Republican Party chair David Sunderland, having been eerily quiet during the bulk of this year’s legislative session, is now throwing around boilerplate press releases and opinion pieces like there’s no tomorrow.

A recent missive, published in the May 27 Times Argus, castigates H.361, the education reform bill, as “a mess of a bill,” a “coercive regime,” the result of a “panicked” legislature. He claims the bill “will raise property taxes” (nonsense) and introduce inequity to what he called the “painstaking and thorough quest” that resulted in the adoption of Act 60 in 1997.

Which is funny in itself, because Republicans have been loudly beating the drum for repeal of Act 60 and its 2003 amendment, Act 68. Sunderland may be too young to recall that Act 68 was adopted because of severe problems with Act 60. But hey, if he views the halcyon days of Act 60 through rose-colored glasses, that’s his right. Of course, he may be completely alone in his nostalgia.

But that’s not the real story here. The most significant, nay stunning, aspect of his essay is that H.361 was a bipartisan bill. It was a cooperative effort of Democrats and Republicans in the House Education Committee, and it passed the Legislature with substantial Republican support. In the House, 23 Republicans — almost half the caucus — voted for H.361, including House Minority Leader Don Turner and Assistant Leader Brian Savage.

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The political significance of the state [bleep] chair

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First it was Seven Days, and now it’s VTDigger, reporting on State Rep. Bob Helm’s hidden-camera appearance in a TV report about the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is the organization that spreads conservative policy ideas and provides sample legislation to Republican lawmakers nationwide.

Helm was attending an ALEC conference when he was buttonholed by someone he didn’t know was a TV reporter. He told her he was “the state [bleep], the state chair of ALEC,” and acknowledged that lobbyists had helped pay the freight for him and numerous other lawmakers.

The reporting raises questions of ethics and influence-peddling; but to this Political Observer, the most interesting aspect is the growing influence of ALEC in Vermont Republican circles.

Helm boasted to VTDigger that “he has ‘revved up’ the ALEC chapter in Vermont and has boosted the number of members to 20, up from four just a few years ago.”

I’d love to see that membership list. I’ve heard, for instance, that Burlington Rep. Kurt Wright, who tries very hard to position himself as a moderate, is an ALEC member. That may or may not be true, but Wright did push very hard in this year’s session for a bill banning teacher strikes — an idea that’s been promoted by ALEC in other states.

But the bigger point is, 20 may not seem like a lot, but it’s a substantial fraction of the Republican legislative caucus.

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Nobody’s figured out how to make this economy work

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Vermont Republicans are fond of slamming the Shumlin Economy, cherrypicking statistics that make the Governor’s record look bad. They criticize his policies as crippling to economic growth and middle-class prosperity. (And now that Bernie Sanders is running for President, they try to blame all the ills of the last three decades on him, even though he hasn’t been running the place and would clearly have adopted very different policies if he had been. Protip to Republicans: correlation is not causation.)

And yes, in spite of very low unemployment, it’s inarguable that the recovery has been slow and spotty for most Vermonters. Their purchasing power has remained stagnant. But this isn’t just a Vermont phenomenon, and if you look at other states with conservative governments, they’re failing at least as badly as we are.

Last Friday, Talking Points Memo posted a piece about how four Republican governors are seeing their presidential aspirations undercut by severe budget problems back home — problems attributable to the failure of their policies to hotwire their economies.

The basic concept is as cartoonish as when it was first sketched on a napkin by Arthur Laffer: cut taxes and the economy will flourish. Revenues will rise, as government takes a smaller slice of a growing pie. Business, freed of its public-sector shackles, will lead us into a prosperous future.

Trouble is, it doesn’t work. In Louisiana, WIsconsin, Ohio and New Jersey, Republican tax-cutting policies have failed: all four states have sluggish economies and huge budget shortfalls. It’s worse on both sides than anything Peter Shumlin has inflicted on the state of Vermont.

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The Indiana thing — Updated with response from top Republican

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I think it’s time to hold Vermont Republicans’ feet to the fire on Indiana’s new “legalize discrimination” law. Usually, I’d give the VTGOP a break with regard to the massive insanity in their national party; our own Republicans are a feisty bunch, but they hardly ever* cross the line into sheer stupididity.

*Well, there was that time when party chair Dave Sunderland outed himself as a climate-change denier. 

STATE.SERVESBut the time has come. I realized this last night, when Rachel Maddow noted that every major Republican candidate for President has made statements in support of the Indiana law — in spite of its repudiation in national polls and by the normally GOP-friendly business community. (Even the notoriously politics-averse sports world has had to acknowledge the situation.)

I’m not just talking Ted Cruz and Rand Paul here. Endorsements of the Indiana law have also come from the likes of Scott Walker and Jeb Bush, who allegedly represent the “moderate” wing of the GOP.

And that makes it relevant to the Vermont party. What are we to think of the Republican brand, when every one of its potential presidential candidates has come out in support of legalizing discrimination?

Vermont Republicans like to claim that they are different than the national party. But when the national GOP has no room for a mainstream view on such a fundamental — and simple — issue, it’s time to ask exactly how Vermont Republicans are different.

At the very least, they should unambiguously declare their opposition to laws like this one.

This has become the issue of the moment on a national stage. It appears to be a turning point that finds the Republican Party on the wrong side of history. And on the wrong side of “right and wrong” itself.

So what say you, Dave Sunderland? Jeff Bartley?

Phil Scott?

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Update. I’ve received a comment from Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning; it can be seen below, but I’m also adding it to the body of this blogpost:

It was (is) a stupid law, drafted by people who either didn’t understand the ramifications or who had an agenda that America should not be following. If they were the former, they need better legislative council; if the latter, I’m surprised to see that element in Indiana.

But that’s just MY opinion.

Thank you for your direct, plainspoken response, Senator.

Stupid Tax and Budget Tricks

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The Republicans often (constantly) accuse Gov. Shumlin and the Democrats of irresponsible governance — of taxing and spending without regard for the long term.

Well, pot, meet kettle.

Consideration of the tax and budget bills in the House has been marked by Republican gimmickry and short-term thinking. And it looks like we’re in for more next week.

A few examples.

First, House Minority Leader Don Turner’s deal with Speaker Shap Smith, delivering ten Republican votes in exchange for more money for Emergency 911 call centers and the Vermont Veterans’ Home. Thus ensuring the passage of a budget he claims to oppose, and fattening it by more than a million dollars.

Second, Rep. Paul Dame’s unaccountable vote for restoring full LIHEAP funding, in spite of the fact that he opposes all tax increases and wants even deeper spending cuts  — conveniently unspecified — than the Democrats proposed. Which means if we restored LIHEAP, we’d have to cut the money somewhere else — almost certainly in other human-services programs, since that’s the lion’s share of General Fund spending.

Third, Rep. Job Tate, a House freshman who was previously noted for handing out Life-Savers in honor of the Emergency 911 call center staffers whose positions he sought to maintain even while insisting on No New Taxes and More Cuts Elsewhere. Today he resorted to an old chestnut of Budget Theater: proposing a pay cut for lawmakers.

Who, as it is, make a mere pittance for their work. And because their pay is so minimal, the cut would have been minuscule compared to the budget gap. But hey, it would have sent a message, right? Share the pain, right? Yeah, thanks for participating, Mr. Tate.

And then we have Paul Dame, he of the pandering and hypocritical LIHEAP vote, proposing another cynical amendment. The tax bill includes a cap on itemized deductions equal to 2.5 times the standard deduction. Well, Mr. Dame touted an amendment to allow unlimited itemizations for people with incomes under $60,000 a year.

Never mind that pretty much everyone who earns less than $60,000 is taking the standard deduction. It’s virtually impossible to have an income that low and rack up enough deductions to make itemizing worthwhile. It’s an empty gesture aimed at positioning Dame as a friend of the little guy, even as he would force massive cuts in human services programs if he had his way on taxation and budget-writing.

As for next week, one of the big items on the House agenda is the water bill, aimed at sparking cleanup efforts in Lake Champlain and other Vermont waters. The Republicans, natch, oppose any new taxes even while paying lip service to clean water. Indeed, they apparently favor new programs (not that they have any choice, since the EPA would come down on us hard like a criminal if we didn’t act), but want to get the funding from existing sources. Like, oh, maybe scraping the gold off the Statehouse dome and selling it to Cash4Gold.com, or searching the seat cushions for spare change.

Or, in Don Turner’s case, scrounging a little money from existing sources and using it “to leverage bonds.”

Bonds?

Oh, you mean debt?

I see. So Mr. Fiscal Responsibility wants Vermont to assume a pile of new debt — adding to our long-term fiscal issues — for the sake of avoiding any new taxes right now.

You know, during the House debate we’d occasionally hear a blast of honest, hard-core conservatism. One Representative basically said all those poors should get off their asses and go to work. At least that’s honest, if it’s also ignorant and mean-spirited. But Republicans trying to have it both ways? That’s just sickening.

Further reform initiatives for Vermont Republicans

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On Monday, a diverse group of seven white male Republicans in blue suitcoats convened a news conference to announce their alternative budget plan, as previously discussed in this space.

Beyond their immediate, largely unworkable ideas for budget-cutting, they also promised a longer-term reform effort dubbed the “Plan for Prosperity,” in which working groups would come up with ways to lower the cost of government without reducing programs or services.

Isn’t that always the way. And yet somehow, when Republicans do get their hands on the levers of power, they never manage to identify those evanescent efficiencies.  They usually resort to meat cleaver tactics like the ever-popular across-the-board cut.

Indeed, the “Plan for Prosperity” is strongly reminiscent of the last Republican Governor’s big idea — Challenges for Change. Which ended in abject failure, with elected officials from both parties concluding that it wouldn’t generate much in the way of savings.

Yeah, “Plan for Prosperity”… “Challenges for Change.” Meet the new plan, same as the old plan?

Well, assuming that sooner or later the Republicans will abandon — or quietly deep-six — their new initiative, I have some suggestions for future iterations of the Same Old Song.

— Action for Achievement

— Surge for Success

— Effort for Efficacy

— Crusade for Cornucopia

Okay, let’s think outside the box a little bit.

— Mission for Milk and Honey

Too wimpy? How about…

— Blueprint for BOOM

Yeah, that’s the stuff. But my favorite, which manages to capture both the spirit and caliber of Republican reform efforts:

— Kwest for Kwality.

There you go, guys. That oughta hold you through the year 2030 or so. Maybe by then you’ll be able to scare up a woman or two for your news conferences.