Darcie Johnston and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

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Pity the poor Hackster. The spectacularly unsuccessful campaign consultant went down in flames yesterday — not once, but twice.

See, it was primary day in both Vermont and Arizona, and Johnston had a horse in both races. Sickly, hobbled, glue-factory material horses, but horses nonetheless. And both of ’em came up short. Badly.

In the Eastern Time Zone, her man Dan Feliciano barely rounded the first turn before Scott Milne crossed the finish line in the race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Feliciano will still have the Libertarian spot to keep him warm at night, and at least he didn’t spend a dime for the Hack’s volunteer “services” (those Libertarians are smart with their money, neh?), but for Johnston, I fear that her Feliciano-philia may have burned whatever bridges might still have remained with the VTGOP.

Of course, the conservatives she pals around with are shameless enough to continue their ill-considered battle for The Soul Of The VTGOP or whatever. But the Feliciano disaster won’t help their cause or their credibility. They just proved that, while they may have significant support among party old-timers, they have very little pull with the Republican electorate.

Now we move out west, where Johnston client Frank Riggs finished a distant fifth in the race for Arizona’s Republican nomination. The Hack had spent the winter and spring as Riggs’ campaign manager, drawing a surprisingly modest $14,500 in salary for four months’ work. She charged her buddy Randy Brock a hell of a lot more than that, for the honor of helming his campaign straight into the nearest iceberg.

Riggs finished with a measly 4% of the Republican vote, in spite of endorsements from disgraced former State Senate President Russell Pearce and pants-shitting draft-dodger Ted Nugent. The Hack comes through again.

Republicans are infamous for recycling campaign consultants who couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Johnston continues to find employment. But I fully expect that her future clients will be just as disappointed as those in her destructive wake.

 

Countin’ scribbles

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 The hardworkin’ town clerks of Vermont wake up this post-primary morning with an unfun little job ahead of them. They’ll actually have to count those pesky write-in votes, and the results will actually be meaningful.

 In one case, much more meaningful than any primary result involving names on the ballot. It’ll be a few more days before we get the tallies, so sit back, relax, and smoke ’em if you got ’em. (Preferably wacky tobacky; those ciggies’ll kill ya.)

The big unfinished business is the Democratic primary for Lieutenant Governor. No names on the ballot, just a whole bunch of write-ins. As of this writing, 87% of the votes counted, a total of 5,126 write-in votes for Lite-Gov. The unknown: How many were for Progressive Dean Corren (who actively sought the Democratic nod) and how many were for incumbent Republican Phil Scott (whose supporters urged write-ins on the Democratic slate)?

I have to think it’s Corren, because a straight-ahead “Vote for Me” effort is an easier sell than “Vote for My Guy So We Can Screw the Dems and/or He Can Cruise to Re-election.” But we’ll have to wait and see.

Also left hanging are the un-valuable Republican nominations for Attorney General, Auditor, Secretary of State, and Treasurer. The VTGOP failed to identify candidates for any of the offices, although the ill-fated RecruitFour effort did produce one write-in candidate, Shane McCormack for AG, who now has the active backing of the state party. For what that’s worth.

There were far more write-in votes for AG, so I’m suspecting McCormack will be Bill Sorrell’s sacrificial lamb this fall. As for the other three contests, who the hell knows. I’ve been actively hoping for fringe candidates to fill out the ticket, to the lasting embarrassment of the VTGOP. A homegrown Vermin Supreme, or perhaps a one-issue zealot like Annette Smith.

If there were any organized write-in campaigns, they flew under the radar. So it’ll be a few days before Vermont Republicans find out exactly what kind of nutjobs will fill out their 2014 statewide ticket.

 

Shootout at Stooge Creek

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The suspense is killin’ me. I wake up on the day after primary day to find that only 87% of the votes have been counted (some of those hardworkin’ town clerks went home a tad early), and the contest that somehow combined competitiveness with pointlessness is still undecided.

Er, that would be the Republican primary for Congress, the winner receiving an all-expenses-unpaid trip to Planet Smackdown courtesy of incumbent Democrat Peter Welch. The race featured three Tea Party types — two unknowns, plus the guy who got trounced by Welch last time around. In cinematic terms, this contest was Shootout at Stooge Creek. Except there ain’t a Moe, Larry, or Curly in the bunch. Not even a Shemp. These guys are all Curly Joes.

(For non-Stooge fans, let’s just say that’s not a good thing.)

Somehow, the guy with all that 2012 holdover name recognition — Mark Donka — is in a tight battle with Don Russell, little-known gun-rights activist with an awful campaign website straight out of the bad old Angelfire days. The third Stooge, Donald Nolte, is still alive but just barely. As of this writing, Donka has 3,831 votes, Russell 3,737, and Nolte 3,422. In percentages, that’s 32.98% Donka, 32.17 Russell, and 29.46 Nolte.

I’m frankly baffled by the results. Donka should have had the edge, simply because he was the Republican candidate in 2012. It’s looking like he’ll snag the nom again this year, but only by the skin of his teeth.

My sense is that Republican primary voters entered the booth, were faced with three unfamiliar names, and played a little game of Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock with themselves. Thus, the apparently random distribution of the votes.

Makes for a tiny bit of post-primary suspense. But in the end, it don’t mean a thing, ‘cuz Peter Welch got that swing.

 

Okay, so Dan Feliciano is doing a little better than I thought.

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But he’s still losing in a landslide.

The Libertarian gubernatorial candidate’s write-in bid for the Republican nom went absolutely nowhere. With about 80% of the votes counted, Scott Milne has 72% of the vote; Steve Berry and Emily Peyton are both at about 7%, and almost 15% of the votes were write-ins.

All we’re getting tonight is a total write-in tally. It’ll take a few days to determine whether all of those 15% were Feliciano scribbles or if some of them were for Daffy Duck or Bullwinkle T. Moose.

Safe to conclude that Feliciano will manage to edge out Berry and Peyton. And he might try to paint a double-digit write-in finish as a moral victory of sorts. But still, it’s got to be embarrassing to the prominent Republicans who abandoned Milne and supported this doomed effort.

Except that we’re talking about people with an extremely high embarrassment threshold.

Question: Will top Republicans like Mark “Little Snell” Snelling and Brady Toensing now endorse Scott Milne? Or will they just hold their breath until they turn blue, like the statesmen they are?

Also, on the Democratic side, Governor Shumlin now has 77% to H. Brooke Paige’s 16%. Good God, are there really 2,557 voters willing to elect the Obama birther as our Governor? Sheesh.

The other news is the recently-launched and unofficial effort to get write-in votes for the recently cashiered Doug Racine. Write-ins accounted for 6% of the Democratic tally, so I guess he got a few.

 

Looks like Windham County has dodged a Republicrat bullet.

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Might be jumping the gun, but as of this writing, with 20 of 24 precincts reporting, “The Artful Roger” Allbee is trailing in his bid to snatch one of Windham County’s two Democratic State Senate nominations.

Currently, incumbent Jeanette White has a substantial lead, with 40% of the vote. Safe to say she’s carried through. Democrat Becca Balint is second with 28%, and the longtime Republican Allbee, he of the unfortunate references to “colored” folks and those with “alternative preferences,” has 22%. Joan Bowman is trailing badly, with less than 9%.

It’d take a dramatic reversal for Allbee to edge out Balint. In an extremely low-turnout election, she has 1251 votes to Allbee’s 1020. To win, he’d have to substantially outpace Balint in the few remaining precincts. (Townshend, where he lives, has already reported, so no help there.

So, at the risk of premature blogulation, allow me to bid a fond farewell to The Artful Roger’s attempt to be a kinda-sorta Democrat. And congratulations to the voters of Windham County for choosing two real, actual Democrats for State Senate.

Oh, and allow me to send a big fat “HA HA!” to The Slummin’ Solon, Peter Galbraith, who tried to handpick Allbee as his successor. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, Petey.

 

Well, that was quick.

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In just about the same amount of time it took Governor Shumlin to fend off a “challenge” from Obama birther H. Brooke Paige, Scott Milne took home the Republican gubernatorial nomination. In an authentic landslide: at last report, he had 85% of the primary vote. And, as of that report, Milne had done better against his three opponents than Shumlin had against Paige. Stunning.

I guess the alleged Dan Feliciano boomlet was more like a wet fart.

And I guess this is just one more defeat in a long series for Darcie “Hack” Johnston, who came back from managing Frank Riggs’ no-hope gubernatorial campaign in Arizona in time to serve as unpaid spearhead in Feliciano’s bid for Republican write-in votes.

It would also, I hope, inspire some second thoughts on the part of other Republicans who backed Feliciano. Especially two of the party’s four state officers, Brady Toensing and Mark “Little Snell” Snelling. Could they, perhaps, finally realize that they represent a tiny sliver of the Vermont electorate? Might they come to terms with Phil Scott’s party-broadening project as the best hope for returning the VTGOP to a semblance of relevance?

No, I’m not getting my hopes up either.

It’ll take a few days before we learn exactly how badly Feliciano did, since his votes are all write-ins. Tonight’s tally includes an overall write-in total, but the actual counting of individual votes will take a few days. I’m kinda hoping he finishes dead last. It’d serve his arrogant Republican supporters right.

 

The Artful Roger has a moment of artlessness

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 Oh dear. The Republicrat candidate for State Senate in Windham County, Roger Allbee, put his foot in it last week.

For those just joining us, The Artful Roger is a longtime Republican who served as Agriculture Secretary under Jim Douglas, but he’s now running in the Democratic primary because, well, a Republican can’t possibly win in Windham. Or because of principle, your choice.

Anyway, there he was on August 21 at the American Legion Post 5 in lovely Brattleboro, along with the three actual Democrats in the race: incumbent Jeanette White, plus Becca Balint and Joan Bowman. Fortunately for all of us, the local community access cable folks recorded the event and posted it online. So we can all witness Allbee’s closing statement, which included the following example of acute political tone-deafness:

Whoever is elected represents all the people, whether they’re Democrat, Republican, they’re colored, they have alternative preferences, we represent everyone in the county. Everyone. We represent every citizen.

If you want to hear it for yourself, it’s right at the 108-minute mark.

Wow. How many people did Allbee offend in that brief remark? Well, obviously, “colored” is a longtime no-no. There’s also “alternative preferences,” by which he apparently means LGBT. But as we all know, “preference” is the right-wing code word for “you’ve got a choice, and you chose EVIL.”

Plus there’s the Republican formulation of “Democratic.”

Ugh.

I haven’t had time to go back and listen to the whole forum, but based on this one statement, I have to say I really, really hope that the voters don’t choose this guy as a standard-bearer for the Democratic Party.

Sorry, Rog. I mean “Democrat Party.”

Postscript. In addition to the above, one of my colleagues at Green Mountain Daily tells me that Allbee donated $500 to the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign in 2004. In fairness, he was a Republican at the time; but Bush/Cheney isn’t exactly moderate Republicanism. And his alleged hero, Jim Jeffords, had already exited the GOP because it had no place for him.

I have to say, the Vermont media have done a horrific job on Allbee’s candidacy. They’ve let him self-identify as a Democrat without exploring his political history at all.

The Milne campaign does something smart. Stop laughing, I mean it.

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Do Not Adjust Your Set. It’s True, It’s Damn True.

Scott Milne’s people, a.k.a. Brent Burns, put out a press release listing the names of prominent Republicans who have endorsed his candidacy.

And it’s an impressive list. 42 names of current and former officeholders. It puts to shame the tiny number of dead-enders and no-hopers who’ve opted for Libertarian Dan Feliciano.

It begins with former Governor Jim Douglas, the shining star of contemporary Republicanism. Unlike other people I could name (ahem, Phil Scott), Douglas has come out of his hidey hole and actually campaigned for Milne. His endorsement alone is worth approximately 1,000 Darcie “Hack” Johnstons.

After that, you get most of the VTGOP’s Senate delegation – Bill Doyle, Joe Benning, Norm McAllister, Peg Flory, and Kevin Mullin. From the House, add Kurt Wright, Heidi Scheuermann, Patti Komline, Chuck Pearce, Tom Koch, and Duncan Kilmartin and many more, plus former Rep and current Senate candidate Pat McDonald. A couple of interesting names: former Representative and current Senate candidate Dustin Degree and current Rep. Tony Terenzini, neither of whom are particularly moderate folks.

This primary-eve blast should put to rest any talk of a Feliciano groundswell. A couple of state party officials may have turned their backs on Milne, but the bulk of its officeholders – those with proven appeal to actual voters – are solidly behind him.

 

Vermont conservatives step out onto an invisible bridge

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What do you do if you’re a small frog in a big pond? Well, you can be content with your lot and get along with the bigger frogs; you could move to a smaller pond; or you could drain the big pond until you’re the biggest frog left standing.

The third course is the preferred option of Vermont conservatives. The likes of Mark “Little Snell” Snelling, Brady Toensing, John McClaughry, and Wendy Wilton have seemingly opted out of Lt. Gov. Phil Scott’s party-broadening operation; they’re backing the longshot write-in campaign of Libertarian Dan Feliciano for the VTGOP gubernatorial nomination. They’re likely to end up with egg on their faces and crow on their plates when the votes are counted; Scott Milne is virtually assured of taking the nomination if only because his name is on the ballot and write-ins are hard.

But their strategery does have a certain logic, an internally consistent reading of history. It’s dead wrong, natch, but there is a narrative. It’s like this: over the last 50 years or so, the Republicans have done best when they lean right, even when it means short-term defeat. (This storyline is the subject of Rick Perlstein’s three-volume history of the rise of the right; the just-published third book, “The Invisible Bridge,” chronicles the years between Richard Nixon’s resignation and Ronald Reagan’s national ascendancy.) Nixon killed the Sixties; Reagan established the rise of the right; George W. Bush took it even further. On the other hand, temporizers like Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney proved to be electoral dead ends.

Which is why so many conservatives truly believe the best course for the Republican Party is to nominate Ted Cruz. And why a small cadre of Vermonters are backing Feliciano.

It’s a coherent, logical view of national political trends. But it doesn’t apply in Vermont and the Northeast. Conservative Republicanism is pretty much dead in New York and New England*; the rare Republican winners are all moderates.

*Maine Governor Paul LePage is a Tea Partier, but an electoral fluke; he won with less than 40% of the vote in a three-way race.

In Vermont, it’s been decades since a true conservative won anything important. Republican winners have all come from the center or center-right: Dick Snelling, Jim Jeffords, Jim Douglas, Bob Stafford. And in the latter days of the Republicans’ Hundred Year Reich, the George Aiken wing led the way.

In short, that long national arc has completely bypassed Vermont – and the Northeast, for that matter. The national conservative ascendancy is based on four factors that have nothing to do with the Northeast: the GOP’s co-optation of southern whites, growing anti-government sentiment in the West and Southwest; Christian conservatism; and the generous support of deep-pocketed One Percenters like the Koch brothers and Foster Friess. None of that applies in Vermont. If anything, the trend in this neck of the woods is to the left. Even in hard-bitten old New Hampshire. To see a growing conservative movement in Vermont is to see dancing cartoon unicorns or pink elephants. There may have been an Invisible Bridge between Nixon and Reagan; but usually when you step onto an invisible bridge, you wind up all wet.  

 

The Milne Insufficiency

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Several days ago, I wrote a highlight-reel glance at this month’s campaign finance reports. Scott Milne’s meager report was mentioned; $22,370 for the past month, and $42,790 for the entire campaign.

That’s bad enough, but when you look more closely, things are… you guessed it… even worse. Milne’s fundraising effort, as unsuccessful as it’s been, is highly dependent on a handful of out-of-state donors who’ve already given the legal maximum of $2,000. Those top-dollar gifts account for $32,000 of Milne’s total. His in-state fundraising is nearly nonexistent, and he hasn’t roused any significant support among the Common Folk.

In my deadline-day post, I noted that $16,000 of Milne’s $42K was thanks to his connection to the Boies family, whose paterfamilias, David Boies, is a high-powered Washington attorney. His son, David Boies III, was a college roommate of Milne’s and is currently his business partner in a real estate development firm.

I was wrong. Let’s make that $20,000 in Boies-related cash. Two of the $2,000 donors on Milne’s reports are Timothy Battin and Rebecca Anderson. They are married, or at least an established couple, and he is a partner in daddy Boies’ law firm.

For those keeping score, that’s almost half of all Milne’s money coming from his Boies connection.

It might be even more. There are some common surnames on Milne’s max-money list, and those are tough to pin down via The Google. Any could have an undiscovered Boies tie. They include: John S. Edwards III and Mark Williams of California and Mark Sutton of Arizona. There’s also a New Jersey corporation, AJI, LLC, which I couldn’t positively identify.

But here’s something about Sutton. He is owner of Meridian Engineering, which also gave $2,000 to Milne for Governor. And here’s a possibly unrelated note from a recent Milne profile by The Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck:

He was living in Arizona in 1987, working as a field engineer for an electronics firm and starting a family, when his parents talked him into returning to Vermont and buying part of their travel agency.

So 18 years ago Milne was working “as a field engineer” in Arizona and now he’s pulled in $4,000 from a guy who owns an engineering firm in Arizona. That’s a stretch, but it makes more sense than “Some random dude gave Scott Milne four G’s.”

There’s reason to believe that Milne has received as much as three-quarters of his money from his well-tended Rolodex. He certainly hasn’t scored in his own home state; he’s raised roughly $10,000 from Vermonters. That’d be a nice total for a State Senate candidate, but it’s downright pathetic for a major-party gubernatorial hopeful. It’s surprising – shocking – to me that he hasn’t done better in-state. Even as a political outsider, an established businessman should have a lot of friends and associates who could be counted on to open their checkbooks. But no, not at all. And it seems obvious that the Republican establishment is giving him the cold shoulder.

As for Milne’s appeal to The Little Guy, he has raised a paltry $1,060 in gifts of under $100 from a whopping total of 24 separate donors. Not exactly evidence of a groundswell-in-the-making.

Maybe this is all part of His Big Plan, as Milne continues to insist. Maybe he turned to his old pals and partners to jumpstart his campaign, and now he’s cranking up the engine on his in-state machine.

Maybe. But I doubt it. And if that is, indeed, his plan, then it’s far too little and way too late.