Demonstrating an apparent dearth of self-awareness, a Vermont-based "super-PAC" whose creation opened the door for super PACs to operate in Vermont released a statement Thursday decrying the influence of an out-of-state super PAC in Tuesday's primary election — and using the situation to justify its own existence.
Got it? Didn't think so. Let me take you back.
Six weeks ago, a liberal advocacy group called Vermont Priorities announced it was launching Vermont's first home-grown super PAC, allowing it to raise and spend unlimited funds on state elections. Why? Because the folks behind it — Vermont Priorities chairman Bob Stannard (pictured) and the group's consultant, KSE's Todd Bailey — were greatly a-feared that big, bad out-of-state super PACs would get all up in Vermont's otherwise pure elections.
By starting their own, way more awesome super PAC, Stannard and Bailey reasoned, they'd be ready to do battle with Karl Rove and the dreaded Koch brothers when those dudes inevitably came to town. Meanwhile, without all those pesky campaign finance restrictions, Vermont Priorities would able to raise and spend as much as they liked to elect their fellow liberals to office!
Click here to continue reading on Off Message, our new politics blog.
After a late-night cliffhanger of a primary, Democratic Attorney General Bill Sorrell on Tuesday launched the next phase of his bid to keep his job: a general election fight against Republican businessman Jack McMullen.
"I do have a tough race and it's going to be so great to not have it be a primary, because there are very real differences between myself and my Republican opponent," Sorrell told a rowdy crowd of Democrats at a party unity rally staged at Burlington's Main Street Landing.
"For one, I'm admitted to the bar and can practice law in the courts of this state and he can't. He's wealthy; I'm not. He thinks we should drop the Vermont Yankee — the Entergy — appeal. There's no way we're going to do that," Sorrell said. "He thinks our food labeling laws are bad for business. I think they're good for consumers, and I'm going to uphold and enforce those laws."
Sorrell's pivot to the general election came just an hour and a half after Democratic challenger T.J. Donovan conceded to Sorrell by phone, admitting that he'd narrowly lost a rare, intra-party fight against the 15-year incumbent.
Click here to continue reading this post on Off Message, our new politics blog.
The attorney general race is getting most of the attention on the morning after Vermont's 2012 primary, but as Paul Heintz wrote about in his Fair Game column on August 8, there were plenty of other interesting races dotting the state's voting landscape. Here's a roundup of some other notable results:
Governor - Progressive
First, the statewide races: Martha Abbott was the only announced candidate for governor in the Progressive Party primary, and it was expected that she would drop out of the race so as not to siphon away too many left-wing votes from Gov. Peter Shumlin. But some of Shumlin's most vehement detractors mounted a write-in campaign to nominate activist Annette Smith for the Progs.
See the rest of the results — with helpful charts and graphs — on Off Message.
Happy primary day, Vermont! Can you smell the democracy in the air?
Per Seven Days tradition, we'll be running a live blog and chat with our reporters and readers tonight, starting at 6 p.m. and going until...late. Paul Heintz and Andy Bromage will be out in the field, and we invite you to stop by and tell them about the big election day news in your town. I'll be back at 7D headquarters gathering the latest updates. We'll post results of the contentious races, including the big Democratic attorney general race, as we get them. Click here to go to our Vermont primary election page.
Haven't voted yet? Polls close at 7 p.m. tonight. Here's a list of polling places from the Secretary of State's office. If you still haven't decided who to vote for, you're not alone. In the Sorrell vs. Donovan battle, check out Andy Bromage's piece on the race, and take another look at their August 15 debate. Paul Heintz spotlighted some of the other big primary races in his Fair Game column a few weeks ago.
We'll see you tonight at 6 p.m. Until then, let us know how turnout is in your town and what your neighbors are talking about in the comments.
Updated below: Donovan racks up another newspaper endorsement.
In the closing days of the race for the Democratic nomination for attorney general, newspaper endorsements are steadily trickling in. And, as with endorsements from politicians not named Howard Dean, Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan appears to be cleaning up.
Last Friday the Stowe Reporter and Waterbury Record, which are both owned by Biddle Duke, weighed in — arguing that Donovan has "innovative ideas... and the leadership skills to put those ideas to work." Sorrell, the papers' editorial board wrote, "has appeared distant and remote — at least until he faced a real challenger."
On Wednesday, St. Albans Messenger publisher Emerson Lynn used the "R" word as well to describe the incumbent AG: "Mr. Sorrell's extended tenure has made him more remote, less approachable. He's lost that personal connection that Mr. Donovan would restore." Sorrell's challenger, Lynn wrote, "is capable of communicating at a level that will benefit Vermonters directly. He is one among us and looks at problems at a community level, which is where he lives and works."
Lynn followed up Thursday with another, more pointed editorial — this one arguing that by waging a fight at the U.S. Supreme Court to limit the influence of money in politics and then accepting nearly $200,000 in support from a "super PAC," Sorrell was being a tad inconsistent: "But isn't it hypocritical to argue against the influence of big money in Vermont politics, and then be the beneficiary of such largess without the slightest hint of regret or opposition?"
On Friday, the Burlington Free Press weighed in, giving its kiss of death — ahem, I mean endorsement — to Donovan as well. As Seven Days has snarkily noted over the years, the Freeps' has a nearly spotless record in endorsing the eventual loser of Burlington mayoral races. Since 1981, the city's paper of record has only once picked the winner of a mayor's race: when it chose Progressive Peter Clavelle over Republican Kurt Wright in 1999. You may recall that in March, the Freep's picked Wright over eventual winner Miro Weinberger.
To be fair, the point of an endorsement is not at all to pick a winner. And, anyway, the Freeps' track record of endorsing successful candidates at the statewide level is far better. In 2010, the paper chose Democrat Peter Shumlin over Republican Brian Dubie. And during former Republican governor Jim Douglas' reign, the Freeps stuck with him over his unsuccessful rivals.
Writing on behalf of the Freep's three-member editorial board — which also includes publisher Jim Fogler and executive editor Mike Townsend — editorial page editor Aki Soga argues that Donovan "will bring a new energy" to the AG's office, presenting "an alternative to the comforts of incumbency." Needless to say, the Freeps gives Donovan points for stressing government transparency throughout his campaign.
Will any more Vermont newspapers put their fingers on the scale in the next couple of days? Two that won't are the Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, which are both owned by John Mitchell. Editorial page editor David Moats tells Seven Days that, as the two papers often do, they are sitting out the primary election.
Update — August 27, 12 p.m.
Donovan took home another newspaper endorsement this weekend. The Valley News, which is based in Lebanon, N.H., but which covers Upper Valley towns on both sides of the Connecticut River, wrote Saturday that it supports Donovan for two reasons: The paper believes Donovan would prioritize developing alternatives to incarceration in Vermont and would "more forcefully promote increased openness for police records of all kind."
Photo by Paul Heintz
When word spread Wednesday afternoon that Castleton State College's new-ish polling center would release fresh results on the bitterly contested Democratic primary race for attorney general, reporters drooled.
At least, I did.
After all, we live in one of the least-polled states in the union, leaving political reporters to simply guess what real people are thinking or, worse yet, to dust off the rolodex and query retired Middlebury College professor Eric Davis — Vermont's Pundit Laureate, as Green Mountain Daily's John Walters endearingly calls him — who will readily provide the latest conventional wisdom.
So when Castleton released the first publicly available poll of the AG's race since May — back when the contest was still in its infancy — reporters surely went straight to Castleton Polling Institute director Rich Clark to seek his insight into what his poll tells — and doesn't tell — us about the state of the race. Right?
Uhhh, not exactly. Their speed-dials seemingly frozen on Eric Davis' number, at least three news outlets went straight to the Oracle of Middlebury to see what he thought about a poll he didn't conduct.
In a story titled, "The leader is ... uncertain: Poll results doubtful," the Vermont Press Bureau's Peter Hirschfeld brings in the Pundit Laureate in the fifth graph, before quoting Clark himself saying much the same:
“I have serious doubts about the validity of this poll,” said Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College.
Terri Hallenbeck over at the Burlington Free Press goes so far as to lead her story with Davis' take-down:
A poll released Wednesday suggests incumbent Bill Sorrell leads challenger T.J. Donovan in the Democratic primary race for attorney general, but one political scientist argued the poll has little validity.
VTDigger's Taylor Dobbs, meanwhile, doesn't even bother bringing Clark into the story, instead devoting most of his piece to Davis' critique:
“I have very, very serious doubts about the validity of a poll that says it has that many people who are likely to vote in a primary,” Davis said. “I think this Castleton survey over-reports likely voting in the primary by three, perhaps as many as four times.”
Does Davis have a point? Does a survey that relies upon respondents to self-identify whether they'll vote in a snoozer of a late August primary they probably won't actually vote in paint an incomplete portrait? Totes. As I argued back in May — and as Clark himself readily admits in a summary of his results —over-reporting intent to vote is a chronic problem in public opinion polls and is exacerbated when turnout is especially low.
Would a poll of those who've actually voted in the past couple of Democratic primaries be more accurate? Sure. Would a larger sample size have reduced the poll's 7 percent margin-of-error? Mos' def. Would a pair of questions gauging the candidates' name recognition be informative? No doubt.
But do these failings render the Castleton poll invalid? Hardly. Polls rarely pin down precisely where an uncertain primary electorate stands, nor are they terribly good at predicting the outcome of races that have little in the way of precedent. Keep in mind that next Tuesday's election is only the second since the Legislature voted to move primary day three weeks earlier — into the summer — and the first such election without a blockbuster gubernatorial primary at the top of the ballot.
What this poll does provide is a second, time-stamped look at the preferences of a particular slice of the electorate — dudes who claim they're going to vote in the primary — three months after a similar group was surveyed by the same pollster. By establishing a baseline in May of where Vermonters stood on the AG race before it had truly begun — and relying upon a similar number of respondents — Castleton's latest poll tells us two important things:
Am I headed to Intrade to bet my last paycheck on Clark's results mirroring next Tuesday's outcome? No way. But in a poll-starved state like this, I say more information — in the appropriate context — is always better than less.
Without it, dear reader, you're left listening to blowhards like me — informed by guesswork, campaign spin and occasional interaction with the outside world. Or, even worse, drivel like this:
"If the primary had been held three weeks ago when the early voting period began, I believe Donovan would have won. Sorrell has made it a tighter race over the last couple of weeks."
And this:
"I would say at this point, I would give Donovan about a 55 to 60 percent probability of winning the primary. But at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if Bill Sorrell were able to pull out a narrow victory at the very end."
Both of those predictions came last weekend from Eric Davis himself, speaking with VPR's Peter Biello Saturday morning.
Leaving aside for the moment the Pundit Laureate's characteristic equivocation, what I would like to know is precisely what methodology the Oracle of Middlebury used to determine a great shift in the mood of the electorate these past three weeks. More importantly, just how is he able to pin down Donovan's probability of winning to between 55 and 60 percent? That is mighty precise.
The answers of 223 randomly-sampled, self-identified Democratic primary voters may not tell us everything we want to know about what's going to happen next Tuesday. But they tell us a lot more than the guesstimates of a sample of one: a retired professor reading his newspapers in Middlebury, waiting for the next reporter to call.
Photo of Rich Clark provided by Castleton State College.
Former governor Howard Dean slammed attorney general candidate T.J. Donovan Wednesday for insinuating that opponent Bill Sorrell's campaign illegally coordinated an ad campaign with an independent super PAC.
During a brutally negative Burlington Free Press debate Tuesday, Donovan — the Chittenden County state's attorney — said he had heard "numerous complaints" of such coordination, but declined to provide any evidence. He did issue a stark warning to Sorrell, saying the incumbent attorney general "should be very careful about any alleged coordination that may have occurred" between Sorrell's campaign and the Committee for Justice and Fairness, noting that Sorrell's office has sought to prosecute other political candidates for similar crimes.
Funded principally by the Democratic Attorneys General Association, the Committee for Justice and Fairness super PAC has spent at least $184,000 on television ads and direct mail supporting Sorrell's reelection fight.
Asked Wednesday to elaborate on his boss' charge, Donovan campaign manager Ryan Emerson admitted the campaign has "no evidence to suggest that's true," but implied that Dean may have served as an "intermediary" between Sorrell's campaign and the super PAC. Dean, who appointed Sorrell to the attorney general post in 1997 and remains his highest-profile supporter, narrated the television ad produced by the Committee for Justice and Fairness.
"What we do know is two things. Number one, Howard Dean has been very active in [Sorrell's] campaign, to the point where I think it's fair to say he's a campaign consultant," Emerson said. "Number two, he's the person who was doing the voiceover for the ad, so clearly he was involved with the Committee for Justice and Fairness in creating the ad."
While super PACs are free to spend as much as they like on electioneering efforts supporting or opposing candidates, they are barred from directly coordinating with campaigns.
Asked whether Donovan was specifically referring to Dean in his comments at the Free Press debate, Emerson said, "He may or may not have been referring to Howard Dean." Asked if the Donovan campaign was accusing Dean of breaking the law, Emerson said, "No comment."
Reached by phone from Washington, D.C., Wednesday, Dean vociferously denied facilitating any illegal coordination between the two entities. He said that after the super PAC approached him about recording a voiceover, the former governor offered suggestions about "where their money should go as far as television ads and mailers" — but did not share that information with the Sorrell campaign.
"I know the campaign laws," Dean said. "At no time have I ever discussed the ads, the mailers with anybody in the campaign or Bill Sorrell."
The former governor expressed outrage about the Donovan campaign's remarks.
"That's really unfortunate that T.J. would stoop to that level. There is absolutely no truth to that whatsoever. I have never discussed anything like that with Bill Sorrell," Dean said. "This is why I don't support T.J. and why I think he's doing harm to his future. I think this is not the way to run a campaign in Vermont."
Contrary to Emerson's assertion that Dean serves as a de facto "campaign consultant" to the Sorrell campaign, Dean said his only role has been to appear at a handful of fundraisers and a press conference highlighting his endorsement of Sorrell.
"I've had almost no discussions with him about how to run his campaign," Dean said.
Sorrell said much the same in an interview Wednesday, arguing that, "The role [Dean] has been playing as it relates to my campaign has been public." Sorrell said that aside from the fundraisers, the press conference and an appearance on WVMT-AM's "Charlie + Ernie + Lisa Show," "I don't think I've talked with him on the phone or anything in between any of those."
He said the only piece of campaign advice or strategy Dean provided came when the two got together at Handy's Lunch in Burlington before the AG launched his reelection bid.
"He said you just gotta fight and hold your own in Chittenden County and win elsewhere. And that was it," Sorrell recalled. "That's the sum total of strategizing, if that constitutes strategizing. I agree with him, so it was reinforcement, not value added."
Dana Bykowski Ju, a representative of the Committee for Justice and Fairness, did not return calls for comment Wednesday.
Photo of Dean and Sorrell by Paul Heintz
With just six days to go before the August 28 primary, a new poll from Castleton Polling Institute shows incumbent Attorney General Bill Sorrell with a commanding lead over Democratic challenger T.J. Donovan.
At least among those who have made up their minds. Almost a third of voters surveyed said they were undecided in the Democratic primary for attorney general.
And the small sample size of 223 likely primary voters means the poll comes with a high margin of error — plus or minus 7 points.
"It's summer," said Castleton poll director Rich Clark. "And while those of us who love politics have been following it with great intensity, most of the public has been following the Olympics and everything else but politics."
According to the poll, Sorrell leads Donovan 44 to 24 among likely voters, with 31 percent of respondents saying they are undecided. Among the 122 self-identified Democrats polled, Sorrell leads Donovan by 16 points, with 36 percent of Democrats saying they are undecided.
Click here for full results from the new poll.
Meanwhile, the poll showed Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin (whose name the poll misspelled as "Schumlin") with a healthy lead over Republican challenger Randy Brock — 60 to 26, with only 10 percent of voters undecided. Twenty percent of Republicans polled said they'd vote for Shumlin if the governor's election were held today, compared with 6 percent of Democrats who favor Brock.
And surprising no one, President Barack Obama also holds a solid lead over Republican Mitt Romney among Vermont voters, 62 to 25 with just 7 percent of voters undecided. The poll was conducted between August 11 and August 21 — after Romney selected Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. As Clark noted, that pick doesn't seem to have moved the Vermont electorate.
In the AG's race, the Castleton poll showed Sorrell leading Donovan among almost every demographic group surveyed — women, men, southern Vermonters, northern Vermonters, wealthy voters, middle class voters, those with only a high school education and those with undergraduate and post-graduate degrees. In voter-rich Chittenden County — the home turf for both candidates — the poll showed Sorrell leading Donovan 48 to 30, with 22 percent of voters undecided. However Clark stressed that sample sizes for those sub-groups are very small and should not be relied upon.
"Polling in any race where we expect turnout to be 12 percent is difficult if not impossible," the poll director said. "It's going to be all about the turnout."
Donovan, who was en route to WPTZ in Colchester for a TV appearance Wednesday, reacted to the poll numbers in a brief phone interview. "I feel good. Feel great. Six days to go and a third of the electorate is undecided. Bill Sorrell dropped six points. This is going to come down to organization and get out the vote."
A May poll conducted by Castleton for WCAX-TV, WDEV-FM and Vermont Business Magazine had Sorrell leading Donovan by 49 to 23, with 25 percent undecided. While that is indeed a six-point drop for Sorrell, that poll surveyed a higher number of likely voters and had a smaller margin of error than the new one, so Clark cautioned against comparing results.
Sorrell, who was campaigning at a South Hero farmer's market Wednesday, told Seven Days by phone that the results mean "We can't take our foot off the accelerator. We think momentum is breaking our way. We are going to accelerate our efforts."
Why are so many voters still undecided? "There are still a lot of Vermonters I run into, including at the farmer's market in South Hero, who are unaware that there is a primary next week," Sorrell answered. "I think there are a lot of folks who just don't think of a primary before Labor Day."
File ilustration by Marc Nadel
We interrupt our serious coverage of Vermont's 2012 election campaigns to bring you this totally frivolous bit of infotainment.
Every two years, Vermont politicians go through the rite of passage known as pandering for running for re-election. How do candidates win the hearts and minds of voters? Not with wonky policy plans and details about their "records," but with photos that show they are regular Joes — just like you!
To that end, Vermont candidates have peppered their Facebook pages with photographs depicting the lighter moments of the campaign. You know, milking goats, doing yoga, shaking hands with a guy in a cow costume. We pulled together the most amusing snapshots we could find and posted them here for your enjoyment. Many more are sure to come as the fall campaign kicks into gear post-Labor Day.
Our elected officials may at times leave us cynical, especially around campaign season, when things can get pretty petty. But at least they have a sense of humor.
Without further ado, we present the most ridiculous photos of the 2012 campaign, so far...
Attorney General Bill Sorrell submerged in a babbling brook
Many more after the jump...
Sorrell in a sweaty gym shirt
Democratic Attorney General candidate T.J. Donovan doing yoga
Sorrell in a form-fitting wetsuit
Donovan wearing a shower cap
Donovan hangin' in a pontoon boat
Democratic/Progressive candidate for state auditor Doug Hoffer (on left), when he worked at the famed Alice's Restaurant in the '70s
Apparently, a picture with a furry mascot is something of a must-have for Vermont political candidates this year. Of course, everyone remembers ...
Republican candidate for governor Randy Brock with a guy in a bear suit
Republican candidate for state auditor Vince Illuzzi with a giant moose
Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Scott with the Vermont Lake Monsters mascot
Sorrell shaking hands with a giant furry cow
Republican candidate for state treasurer Wendy Wilton milking a goat
Scott in a go-kart with a fiberglass bear on the back
Sorrell rowing a giant pumpkin
Donovan getting his face powdered before a Vermont Public Television debate