Tag Archives: Brian Dubie

Story Time, 2010 Primary Edition: in honor of Deb Markowitz

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Well, the briefest of gubernatorial trial balloons has settled to the floor, like the birthday balloon that got a half-shot of helium. Deb Markowitz, Agency of Natural Resources Secretary throughout the Shumlin administration, has taken her name out of the running. In an email to Seven Days’ Paul Heintz, she wrote:

“I will not be running for Governor this time around. I want to be able to continue to fully focus on the important work of the agency to address the important environmental, energy and economic issues facing Vermont.”

Fair enough. It kinda seemed like she was a token woman on everybody’s list rather than a real top tier contender. Which is a shame, because she could very easily have been Governor instead of Peter Shumlin. And the way his administration has turned out, we might have been better off with Markowitz.

We’ll never know, of course. But let’s take a stroll down Memory Lane, just to show how close we came to that particular alternate reality. And how a possible bit of trickeration (the Nixon folks called it ratf*cking) might have kept her out of the corner office.

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We have our answer: Don Turner is a hypocritical opportunist

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Or “opportunistic hypocrite,” take your choice.

To reset the stage, House Minority Leader Don Turner yesterday said he would vote for Scott Milne for Governor if the race goes to the legislature, in spite of a century and a half of precedent that lawmakers ought to opt for the top vote-getter instead of, as the Burlington Free Press charitably put it, being “free to vote their consciences.”

"Let me tell you about my unique personal definition of 'conscience.'"

“Let me tell you about my unique personal definition of ‘conscience.'”

To which I can only say, if their consciences lead them to any other conclusion than Peter Shumlin, then either they’re not listening closely enough to that still small voice, or their consciences are on the fritz.

Anyway, I speculated on how Mr. Turner had voted the last time this very question was before the legislature. Well, the answer comes to us courtesy of Terri Hallenbeck, soon to be late of the Burlington Free Press.

Turner acknowledged that’s a different stance than after the 2010 election, when the Legislature ratified Shumlin’s election over Republican Brian Dubie after Shumlin had a plurality but less than 50 percent of the public vote. That year, lawmakers also ratified the results of Republican Phil Scott, who received the most votes but less than 50 percent of the total for lieutenant governor.

Which means that virtually every lawmaker (including Don Turner) presumably voted against his/her political interests, and in favor of established precedent, at least once. Republicans ratified a Democrat, and Democrats ratified a Republican. It’s worked both ways over time. But now, Turner is pulling a brand-new rationalization out of his butt because it suits him politically.

Gee, I thought Republicans were the guardians of traditional Vermont values.

Or, as somebody who was on the short end of this Vermont tradition put it:

Doug Racine, a Democrat who lost the 2002 governor’s race to Republican Jim Douglas in a campaign that was also decided by the Legislature, said Democratic legislators told him at the time they felt compelled to vote for Douglas, who received the most votes in the election. “For a lot of legislators and for Vermonters it became about fair play,” Racine said.

Perhaps “fair play” is out the window for Republicans who suddenly see an unexpected opportunity to grab the biggest prize. In other words, they’re a whole bunch of Gollums.

p.s. We’re starting to get a glimpse at the future of a clickbait-oriented, post-Remsen-and-Hallenbeck Freeploid. Its coverage of Friday’s important developments consisted of two short articles from the Associated Press. Plus, those stories were pretty much buried on the Freeploid’s website, while more pressing matters — the LL Bean grand opening, a ladybug-infested house, a moose shooting — were given due prominence.

And the crudification of the Burlington Free Press is only just beginning.

Foto Follies with Corry Bliss

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Here’s a dispatch from the heartland, where longtime Republican Senator Pat Roberts is in the fight of his political life against independent Greg Orman, even though Kansas is just about the reddest of red states.

The national Republicans, seeing an unexpected threat, “cleaned out the Roberts campaign and started over with their own people,” and pumping a lotta cash money into the race.

This photo appears in the dictionary next to the definition of "douchenozzle."

This photo appears in the dictionary next to the definition of “douchenozzle.”

Those “people” included Corry Bliss, best known in these parts for driving Brian Dubie’s gubernatorial candidacy over a cliff with streetfight tactics that dented Dubie’s dubious image as a Jim Douglas-style conciliator. It was business as usual for Bliss, who somehow manages to keep getting campaign gigs in spite of the fact that he’s never, ever, not even once, been on the winning side.

Upon parachuting into Kansas, Bliss and Co. immediately turned Roberts to the right:

Roberts… has raised the specter of “national socialism” on the campaign trail and stumped with tea party stalwarts like Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), as well as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

So far, it’s worked: recent polls indicate that Roberts has shored up support among hard-core conservatives. So maybe Bliss will finally break into the win column.

But not if he does stupid shit like this: 

The national website Buzzfeed has revealed that the Pat Roberts for Senate campaign has been using stock photos of sunflowers from the Ukraine, not Kansas, for its public-relations materials.

The photos, traced back to Ukrainian photographer Mykola Velychko, appear at the top of Roberts’ campaign Web page, his Facebook page and campaign news releases.

Kansas is, ICYMI, the Sunflower State. This is like a Vermont candidate pouring Mrs. Butterworth’s on his pancakes.

Bliss, naturally, “sought to downplay the ‘oops’ factor.”

“Is this a joke?” Bliss told Buzzfeed. “It’s obviously a stock image used by our digital firm to reflect that Kansas is the Sunflower State. But given the many serious issues facing our country right now, I doubt voters care about this silly line of attack by Greg Orman and his liberal allies.”

To be fair, Bliss has a point. The use of stock photos is almost universal, and there’s no evidence that the voters care about it. But… Corry Bliss himself does, when it’s convenient:

Managing Republican Senate hopeful Linda McMahon in Connecticut two years ago, Bliss made political hay of a similar mistake by opponent Chris Murphy, who used pictures of a Norwegian submarine in a campaign ad instead of one from a shipyard in Groton.

In the 2012 flap, Bliss told Hearst media: “Our campaign received several phone calls from both workers at Electric Boat and veterans who served on submarines, both of which were amazed that Congressman Murphy would feature a Norwegian sub in a television ad claiming it was from Groton.”

I’ll bet he wishes the Internet had never been invented. Because thanks to The Google, it’s quite simple to follow the trail of wreckage that Corry Bliss leaves in his wake.

A familiar face is sent to the rescue in Kansas

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In case you haven’t been following the Pat Roberts saga… he’s a longtime Republican U.S. Senator from the deeply red state of Kansas, whose re-election bid is, amazingly, in serious trouble. This week, the Democratic challenger Chad Taylor withdrew from the race in favor of popular Independent Greg Orman. 

In response, Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach identified a legal technicality for keeping Taylor on the ballot in hopes that a three-way race will save Roberts’ bacon. 

But just in case that bit of legalistic chicanery isn’t enough, a well-known campaign consultant has been parachuted in by the national GOP to take the reins of Roberts’ troubled campaign. 

And the name of Pat Roberts’ would-be hero, according to Politico.com? 

Corry Bliss. corrybliss1edt

Corry freakin’ Bliss. 

Good God in Heaven. 

Bliss, for those with short memories, is widely credited with bringing the Jim Douglas era to a crashing halt by piloting Brian Dubie’s gubernatorial campaign straight into the ground. He’s a prime example of a Republican campaign consultant who loses every time but somehow continues to get new gigs. And I mean every time: Bliss’ record is a stunning 0 wins, 7 losses. 

A brief recap of Bliss’ appalling career: He graduated from law school in 2006, and managed the re-election bid of a Virginia congresswoman into defeat. In 2010 he came to Vermont and took control of the Dubie campaign. Refresh my memory; how did that turn out? 

“Corry Bliss took a candidate that was up 20 points and turned him into a loser by election day,” said Bradford Broyles, a Republican activist from Mendon, a town in the central part of the state, near Killington. “We’re still repairing the damage to the Republican party.”

Bliss ended his Vermont tenure by writing a court-ordered letter of apology to settle a libel suit. 

After that, Bliss returned to his native Virginia where he took a State Senate candidate with a nice-guy image, trashed said image with negative campaign tactics, and — you guessed it — lost the race. Sound familiar, Brian?

He then failed upward to pro-wrestling magnate Linda McMahon’s very expensive and unsuccessful 2012 bid to win a U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut, earning fresh criticism for devious campaign tactics: 

Doorhangers call on voters to cast their ballots for President Obama as well as McMahon, promising the pair “will fight for us.” T-shirts mimicking the election gear worn by members of the Service Employees International Union are being donned by pro-McMahon forces at polling places, again tying McMahon to Obama. They read “I Support Obama & McMahon November 6th.” And “sample ballots” bearing McMahon’s campaign bug are being handed out at some urban polling places with just two names on them: McMahon and Obama.

 

Nowhere does any of this material say McMahon is a Republican or is herself voting for Mitt Romney.

Good times. In spite of Bliss’ Super Genius skulduggery, McMahon lost the race by 12 percentage points. 

But that didn’t stop Corry Bliss, no sirree. He hightailed it back to Virginia, where he signed onto the re-election bid of five-term incumbent lawmaker Joe May, who, yes indeedy, had a reputation as a good guy. May lost in the Republican primary, and Bliss’ “nasty, vicious, dark” tactics took the blame. 

This year, Bliss signed on to the Senatorial bid of former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel*. Whoops; she came in third in a five-way primary. 

*Handel, by the way, was fresh off a disastrous turn as a top executive at Susan G. Komen for the Cure. She was the one behind the decision to cut ties with Planned Parenthood that nearly sank one of America’s most popular charities. 

And now, after compiling an 0-7 record as a campaign manager, Corry Bliss is Pat Roberts’ designated savior. 

All I can say is, good luck, Mr. Roberts.