Tag Archives: Bruce Lisman

The Barons of Burlington Discover That #vtpoli Is a Cheap Date

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Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas’ brand spanking new campaign finance portal is up and running, and boy howdy, is it an improvement on the old system. Much more information readily available, searchable, downloadable. Too bad nobody in the media, with the occasional exception of VTDigger, pays any attention to campaign finance anymore because (a) the entire idea behind campaign finance law is that sunshine disinfects, but that doesn’t work if the cleanup crews are off the clock, and (b) the new system makes the task much easier.

One huge improvement is the ability to track individual donors. Previously, donor records were extremely difficult to work with. Frequent benefactors would have numerous records, each one bearing a slightly different spelling or punctuation of their name or contact information. If I wanted to track, say, ultraconservative megadonor Lenore Broughton, I’d have to open and review literally dozens of files.

Now all I have to do is click on the “Contributions” button and type Broughton’s name into the “Contributor Name” field, and I can see all her donations to Vermont candidates and organizations in one list. So I can report that so far in 2024, Broughton has shoveled a total of $28,420 into Vermont’s political ecosystem. (This doesn’t include her federal activity; she’s given a whopping $82,700 to federal candidates and organizations in 2024. Including such worthies as Speaker Mike Johnson, Sen. Josh Hawley, unsuccessful Senate hopefuls Eric Hovde of Wisconsin and Kari Lake of Arizona, and an org called Black Americans Political Action Committee, which bears a strong smell of astroturf. She also gave $2,000 to Scary Eagle Man Gerald Malloy. Because he was a federal candidate, that donation was reported to the Federal Elections Commission, not the Vermont Secretary of State.)

The system isn’t perfect. I came across one instance where a donor I think of as an adjutant Baron, Robert Lair, had his name misspelled as “Liar,” so one of his donations didn’t appear with the others. Oh well.

But hey, let’s get to the point, shall we? This being the fifth paragraph already.

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Seven Days Accepts Conservative Cash to Investigate the Democratic Legislature

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This is a terrible idea.

Seven Days publisher Paula Routly used her latest column to trumpet a new journalistic venture. Or should I say “misadventure”?

The basic concept isn’t a bad one. The paper is hiring a reporter to conduct a series called “Ways and Means” examining how effectively the Vermont Legislature is doing its job. That’s a subject worthy of exploration, although it’s also true that legislative bodies are, by their very nature, clunky and inefficient. You want maximum effectiveness? Get yourself a king or a dictator. And the Vermont Legislature is part-time and has virtually no paid staff, so it lacks the resources to be as effective as it could be.

But that’s not the bad part. The bad part is how the project is being funded. Routly describes the money as coming from “two Vermont philanthropists” who are former politicians “from opposite sides of the aisle.”

Their names? Bruce Lisman and Paul Ralston. Close observers of Vermont politics may already be rolling their eyes.

Lisman is a former Wall Street tycoon and dyed-in-the-wool Republican who once ran against Phil Scott in the Republican primary. He is one of the top Republican donors in the state, a prominent member of the unofficial club I call The Barons of Burlington. He and his buddies did their level best to eliminate the Democratic supermajorities last year.

Ralston, founder and owner of the Vermont Coffee Company, did serve two terms in the House as a Democrat but (1) even during his tenure he was known as a renegade centrist who thought he was the smartest guy in the room and (2) he hasn’t identified with the party since he left the Statehouse in 2015. More recently he has been politically independent and deeply critical of the Democratic Legislature. Details will follow. But let’s get this on the record right now: What we have here is two wealthy men who oppose Democratic politicians and policies, buying a series of reports designed to highlight the Democratic Legislature’s flaws and failures. There will be no corresponding examination of the Republican Scott administration.

Lisman and Ralston won’t have editorial input. But they’ve established the playing field and the terms of engagement. They are buying coverage that will almost certainly favor their political beliefs. Routly’s whitewash doesn’t hide the fact that this deal is a gross violation of journalistic standards and a real shocker coming from what used to be Vermont’s alternative newspaper.

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One Neat Trick for Concealing the Reach of Your Political Donations (CORRECTION)

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Correction. I got a crucial detail wrong in this post. Donors do not file information. The donor info is gleaned from candidate filings. Misspellings and carelessness with donor names and addresses is their fault, not the donors’. The broader point remains, that the blizzard of typos makes it extremely difficult to track donor activity, but that’s not the result of their malfeasance, deliberate or otherwise. Also, my apologies for the delay in correcting; I’ve still got Covid and have precious little energy at all.

In what’s generally been an underwhelming primary season to date, one of the biggest developments has been the outpouring of support going from a bunch of Burlington-area business leaders to a relative handful of candidates. Look at the donor lists of the top earners and you see a bunch of the same guys (well, almost entirely guys) giving four-figure checks to the same people: Stewart Ledbetter, Scott Beck, Elizabeth Brown, John Rodgers, Pat Brennan, etc.

It would be highly instructive to track how much each of these minor tycoons is investing in political centrism and where they’re putting down their markers. And it’s almost impossible to do so, thanks to how the Secretary of State’s campaign finance portal processes donor reports and how the donors seem to be taking full advantage of a loophole on offer.

What’s happening is that donors submit reports with slightly different iterations of their names and addresses. When you search for donors, each report shows up as if it’s a separate person. For instance, if you search for “Lisman, B,” you get not one, but 30 separate matches. If you search for “Broughton, L,” you get 40.

Forty.

And most of them have few if any donations listed. If you want to find out how much Lenore Broughton has given to whom, you’ll have to open each and every one of those 40 in turn. It’s maddening.

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The Resumé Builder Campaign

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The single most disappointing campaign finance report from the July 1 deadline had to be Esther Charlestin’s. The Democratic candidate for governor reported a measly $12,235 in donations, a total that effectlvely sank whatever long-odds hope she had for beating Gov. Phil Scott.

The second most disappointing may have been Thomas Renner’s filing in his bid for lieutenant governor. Renner did better than Charlestin, but his total of $43,194 is not nearly enough to fuel a successful challenge against Progressive/Democratic Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, who entered the race with an $11,158 surplus and has since raised another $111,089.

That total doesn’t include one of the most charming line items in this round of campaign finance filings: Zuckerman gave an in-kind contribution of $420 to himself in “carrots for hand outs at parades.”

Aww, Farmer Dave strikes again.

Anyway, back to Renner.

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The Best Senator Money Can Buy

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I guess Stewart Ledbetter is serious about this midlife crisis “running for office” thing. Because of all the campaign finance filings submitted by yesterday’s deadline, the former WPTZ anchor slash cromulent host of “Vermont This Week” reported a truly eye-popping $49,189 in donations — the vast majority in increments of more than $100.

And if there was any doubt about his centrist leanings, a perusal of his donor list would drown all uncertainty under a tsunami of conservative and business community cash. The Big Boys want to see Ledbetter in the Senate.

Where do I even begin? How about this: Ledbetter got big-dollar gifts from a total of 51 people. The average donation from each? A smidge under $900. And heck, if you roll in the 50 small donors, the average single donation to Ledbetter for Senate was a hefty $477.12.

He’s rollin’ in it. Can he buy a Senate seat? It remains to be seen, but he’s sure as hell trying.

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Bruce Lisman Plays the Field (UPDATED)

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While we wait for the final September 1 campaign finance reports to trickle in, here’s a little thing I noticed. Bruce Lisman, failed (and self-funded) candidate for governor, founder of Campaign for Vermont, and former Bear Stearns executive who may have been portrayed as a real dummy in the movie version of “The Big Short,” has made a total of three donations* to Vermont candidates so far this year.

*Update! Phil Scott just reported a $1,000 contribution from Lisman. So, four.

Together, they could serve as the dictionary definition of “mixed bag.” Let’s see if you can discern a pattern here.

He gave $500 to Sen. Joe Benning’s campaign for lieutenant governor. Not surprising at all.

He gave $500 to Patricia Preston’s hopeless bid for LG as a sort of centrist.

So far we’ve got what used to be called a mainline Republican and a moderate Democrat. *Plus a putatively moderate Republican.

The third fourth gift? $1,000 to “Farmer” John Klar’s campaign for state senate.

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The Bloated Corpse of Bruce Lisman’s Political Career Emerges From the Stygian Depths, Emits a Gas Bubble, Sinks Back Into the Murk From Whence It Came

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Oh wait, sorry, that’s Swamp Thing

Once upon a time, there was a retired Wall Street executive named Bruce Lisman*. After his investment firm cratered in the Collapse of 2008, he moved to Vermont and turned his attention to politics. (He should have checked with Rich Tarrant or Jack McMullen on how that tends to work out.) First, he launched a putatively nonpartisan advocacy group called Campaign for Vermont Prosperity. It was usually referred to as “Campaign for Vermont” in an apparent effort to camouflage Lisman’s pro-business agenda.

*Who may or may not have been thoroughly skewered in the movie “The Big Short.”

CFV accomplished little besides spending a goodly portion of Lisman’s fortune. It put out the occasional paper, held sparsely-attended policy forums, did a bit of lobbying, and paid some college students to show the CFV flag at public events. (I dubbed them “Lisketeers.”) There was precious little grass in CFV’s roots.

A few years later, Lisman made the seemingly inevitable run for governor. He spent heavily on his campaign but ran into a buzzsaw named Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, who beat him in the Republican primary by 21 percentage points.

That was the end of Lisman’s political aspirations. He stopped bankrolling CFV, which somehow continued to exist as a center-right, pro-business advocacy group. Some well-meaning people are involved in CFV, but honestly, itbarely makes a ripple in Vermont politics. Whenever CFV does something, I find myself asking “Oh, are you still here?”

CFV’s website is laden with position papers and press releases dated from 2014 and 2015. It does occasionally burp out some new content, as it did last week with a “New Report on Pension Issues.” And though I run the risk of killing a gnat with an elephant gun, I feel compelled to expose this piece of half-assed propaganda. You know, just in case someone takes it seriously.

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I’m sure David Zuckerman is shaking in his boots

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Hey, everybody! Meet Meg Hansen, writer, consultant, low-budget TV show host, and now a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor.

Hansen is a bright young woman with a compelling backstory who you might recall as a communications staffer for the Vermont House Republican caucus in 2016-17. After that, she spent about a year as head of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, the right-wing advocacy group that’s had no discernible influence on the health care debate. Otherwise, Hansen’s public activities are largely confined to the off-hours of community access television.

She is a devout conservative who believes in the power of unfettered capitalism to float everybody’s boat. Her vision would remake Vermont along the lines of America’s reddest states.

“The American Dream is alive and well in states like Texas and North Carolina but not in Vermont,” she writes on her campaign website. At the risk of being churlish, I’d ask if she sees the American Dream doing well in states like Mississippi and Kansas, which have low taxes and little regulation but are economically stagnant.

She’s opposed to Obamacare and other health care reform efforts; her solution is to let the free market do its magic — giving all Vermonters the chance to buy overpriced, crappy, exception-laden insurance policies. She’s not a fan of fighting climate change or climate activists, who “use the specter of climate catastrophe to demonize us as polluters-parasites on earth,” and whose proposed solutions are “immoral.”

She also favors the “freedom to vape,” which, okay then.

You get the idea. It’s precisely the kind of hard-core conservative platform that’s been a consistent, lopsided loser in Vermont.

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More tax-baiting from your VTGOP

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Any day now, I expect Phil Scott to disavow the dishonest campaign tactics of his own Vermont Republican ParBWAHAHAHAHAHA Sorry, I thought I could get through that with a straight face.

At issue is VTGOP Executive Director Jeff Bartley’s continuing attacks on Sue Minter’s allegedly tax-happy ways. Problem: to make his case, he has to resort to fearmongering, gross exaggeration, and outright falsehood. So yeah, if Phil Scott were serious about negative campaigning, he’d clean up his own house first.

But I’m not holding my breah.

Bartley presents a two-fer in his latest press release, attacking Minter incorrectly for supporting a Vermont carbon tax (she doesn’t) and for pondering an expansion of the sales tax to include services (she’s considering it). The argument is taken further in this Tweet from @VTGOP.

Awww. Mean old lady wants to tax cute little boy’s haircut.

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Phil Scott needs a refresher course in “Leadership”

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The Man Who Would Be Governor Of All Vermonters had his first chance to display some authentic leadership, and he blew it big-time.

In the wake of the Orlando tragedy, which struck at the hearts of thousands of Vermonters, Phil Scott did the absolute minimum. He issued a paragraph of generic condolences and kept to his schedule of content-free glad-handing.

While somewhere between 1,000 (Burlington Free Press) and 2,000 (VTDigger, so let’s call it 2,000) people gathered for a vigil in Burlington, including numerous political leaders, Phil Scott was… um…

… which followed earlier appearances at the Equinox Valley Nursery, Wilcox Ice Cream, and Miles Lumber and Fuels. Because as far as his campaign was concerned, it was just another Monday in Vermont and there was no reason to postpone a single feel-good photo opportunity.

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