That post and this one concern the same subject, and while they can be read in either order, the better option would be to scroll down and read Monday’s first.

The Sheffield wind project

So you want to build a whole bunch of wind towers on a Vermont mountaintop to generate electricity?

Not so fast. First you have to comply with a whole bunch of state and federal laws designed to make sure that – among other things – the  roads you build up to and along those ridges, plus the huge platforms on which your towers will sit, don’t pollute the water. All that excavation can cause erosion. Cutting trees along stream banks means less shade, hence warmer water. The law says the water can’t be made more than one degree warmer or otherwise “degraded.”

So what to do?

One obvious technique – the one preferred by most environmentalists – is first to test the streams. Take their temperature. Check for pollutants. Measure acidity and turbidity (suspended sediments in the water). That provides a baseline, a foundation for judging , as the project proceeds, whether the excavation and construction is doing unacceptable damage to the mountain waterways.

“How else to determine degradation?” asked Stephanie Kaplan, the Calais lawyer representing opponents of the wind project now under construction in Sheffield. “The logical thing is to test before and then during and after” to measure the impact, she said.

That’s not the way it’s being done. Instead, First Wind, the developer of the Sheffield project, has committed to perform the work using “Best Management Practices (BMPs). Under this theory, if BMPs are followed, then, ipso facto, the streams are not being polluted.

Huh?

Well, it may sound absurd, but it seems to be legal. The Agency of Natural Resources endorsed the policy. So did Environmental Court Judge Meredith Wright. Though her decision is under appeal, the bulldozers, dynamiters, and chain saws are working on the Sheffield project.

Kaplan is convinced she has a chance to get the State Supreme Court to overturn the Environmental Court decision. She acknowledges that in some cases the statute (10 V.S.A. § 1264) allows for using BMPs. But it also says a project “can not raise the temperature more than one degree Fahrenheit, can not degrade the water, can not change the ph. Water quality  standards have standards. If they are to mean anything there has to be way to determine whether these things are occurring.”

Kaplan and her allies in the outnumbered and (so far) outgunned anti-wind forces in Vermont are both mystified and infuriated by the judge’s decision, by the ANR’s efforts on behalf of wind power, and perhaps most of all by the acquiescence of the state’s mainstream environmental organizations. In the past, those organizations often opposed using BMPs as a substitute for actual stream monitoring. Their silence in this case only reinforced the suspicions of the anti-wind forces that the fix was in against them, that Vermont’s establishment – government officials, politicians, the media, and even most environmentalists were stubbornly locked into their support for more wind power, regardless of the consequences.

“They all love wind, no matter what,” Kaplan said.

(Though apparently not all with the same ardor. The Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) and League of Conservation Voters are the most gung ho for wind development. The Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) is more ambivalent.  Its water resources expert, Jon Groveman, also disagrees with Judge Wright’s decision on the BMPs. The Conservation Law Foundation is generally pro-wind but has not taken a position on most of the specific proposed projects in the state)

“I’m a little baffled, myself,” said Annette Smith, the head of Vermonters for a Clean Environment (VCE),  the only green group opposing wind power in Vermont (the other, Energize Vermont, is really a VCE spinoff). Smith said she had spent a lot of time discussing the wind issue with officials of the other environmental groups, and suspects that one reason they are all so pro-wind is that a few of them have some financial connections with wind power companies.

(The subject of Monday’s post [scroll down] which erroneously said that the Conservation Law Foundation did not disclose the names of its contributors. It does list the over-$500 donors on its web site, as can be seen here.

Wind power has obviously created a schism in the green community, one which reached its apex (so far) last week when the mainstreamers rejected an advertisement Kaplan wanted to buy in the program for an environmental conference Saturday on behalf of “citizens working to protect their communities, mountains, wildlife and streams from the environmental destruction caused by industrial wind turbines.”

The language and tone did not “match our community position,” said one environmentalist, in urging that the ad not be published.

Touchy, touchy. But there is ample ill will and possible misunderstanding on both sides of this green civil war. These wind projects are not the first ones in which officials have used Best Management Practices to determine compliance. In fact, similar standards are used in enforcing environmental (and other) regulations all around the country.

Furthermore, these ridges are not wilderness. They have been logged, often more than once. Vermont has never made a decision to protect its privately owned ridge lines from development, however remote and beautiful they may be. Which is another way of saying that the state has made a decision not to protect them, but to allow development on them.

“We haven’t said no to high elevation development in Vermont,” said Chris Kilian of CLF. “In fact, we said yes to ski areas. We have restaurants on the top of our mountains. Vermont made a major strategic decision to open up summits to development.”

Kilian said he is not entirely happy about all this situation, and thinks perhaps high elevation projects should “be analyzed in a different way.”

Another thing Vermont has not done, said Elizabeth Courtney of the VNRC, is implement a statewide energy plan. With one, officials might be able to determine how much additional power generation the state needed and how it should be supplied. Without one, she said, “the developer gets to choose where the project goes, not the people.”

Assuming, of course, that the developer can get approval from the Public Service Board and the Agency of Natural Resources. But that doesn’t seem to be difficult. Even though it isn’t clear that more generating capacity is needed, even if the wind projects rip up the mountains, official Vermont, backed by most of the state’s environmental lobbyists, appears determined to approve wind power.

Because even though they might be a bit hyper-sensitive, Stephanie Kaplan, Annette Smith and their small band of allies are right: the fix is in for wind power in Vermont. Not because anyone (except the wind developers and some landowners) are making money or have been corrupted by donations. But because being pro-wind has simply become the established wisdom. It’s rather like being pro-choice on abortion in some circles. Everybody one knows, all the “right people” are pro-wind.

And it’s easy to see why. The anti-wind forces have been allied with the coal and oil industries or with nuclear power, specifically the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant which Vermont environmentalists have been battling for years.

Or – worse – the anti-wind camp is part of the climate change denial school, the minority (but a very well-financed minority) which defies the scientific consensus that the world is warming because people are burning too much oil and coal. At least after the turbines have been built and installed, wind power produces almost no greenhouse gasses.

Anyone wanting to understand why Vermont environmentalists are so devoted to wind power need only read from the opening paragraph of the recent joint statement they released, where they expressed their “deep concern that society has not moved fast or aggressively enough to address the most urgent environmental crisis in human history: climate change.”

On that, they are as correct as they are sincere. And they are sincere in their conviction that exploiting Vermont’s wind power potential can ease this crisis, can produce enough power to allow the state, the region, the country to burn less coal and oil, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. production and easing the impact of global warming.

If they’re right about that, they could have a good case that it’s worth blowing up a few mountains.

But suppose they’re wrong about that. Come back Friday.

Vermont’s environmental community, notably the Vermont Natural Resources Council and VPIRG (Vermont Public Interest Research Group), supported a recently-passed bill providing certain advantages to producers of “sustainable” or “renewable” energy produced by sun, wind, water or biomass (largely a polite way of saying manure).

The green groups endorsed the legislation though they didn’t like the provision including power produced by the massive Hydro-Quebec dams in Canada in the same approved classification as power produced from local renewable energy sources.

Obviously, power from Hydro-Quebec is sustainable and renewable. Those rivers up there will keep flowing. And the power they produce does not create an ounce of greenhouse gas, the avoidance of which is the crucial argument for renewable energy in the first place.

But, explained VPIRG Executive Director Paul Burns, to his organization and other environmental groups. “mega-hydro projects were not considered green energy” in the same way as the power produced by wind, sun, or smaller hydro plants. Burns agreed that the Hydro-Quebec power is “renewable in a sense,” But he insisted that the environmental damage caused by building the massive power-generating dams has to be included in the equation.

“You quickly get into a… public policy definition,” he said. “In defining what is a renewable energy project and then defining which projects receive financial benefits. We think there’s a greater rationale to providing those benefits to smaller projects.”

That seems a perfectly consistent and reasonable policy position. If anything, Burns understated his case; those dams caused social as well as environmental damage, disrupting the traditional culture of some 5,000 native Cree. In that context, it makes sense to provide public benefits (in the form of guaranteed higher prices) to smaller wind, solar, and other renewable projects.

As it happens, the more public support those small projects get, the better it is (at least potentially) for, among others: Matthew Rubin, David Blittersdorf, Leigh Seddon, Mark Sinclair, and perhaps Greg Strong.

These people are in or associated with the renewable energy business. The first four are or recently were on VPIRg’s Board of Trustees. Strong, the president of Spring Hill Solutions, LLC, “a clean energy and carbon reduction consulting firm,” is on the Vermont Natural Resource Council’s board.

Neither VPIRG nor the Conservation Law Foundation, another important Vermont environmental group, make public the names of their contributors. VNRC does, in its annual report, reveal the names of all contributors of more than $100. One of them was Greg Strong and his wife, but they were not in the list of the biggest contributors.. Eight of VNRC’s contributors asked to remain anonymous, mostly, according to Executive Director Elizabeth Courtney, because “they don’t want to be solicited.” The one business contributor which asked to remain anonymous was not, she said, a renewable energy firm.

“It is absolutely true that people who have been or are in the renewable energy business have served on VPIRG’s board,” Burns said, agreeing that it was “not an unfair question to ask” whether their financial interests influence VPIRG’s policy positions.

Not surprisingly, he said it did not.

“We have conflict of interest policies,” he said. “Whenever an issue comes up for consideration by the board in which a board member has a financial interest. that board member would recuse him or her self from that vote.”

Merely suggesting that  the leaders of Vermont environmental organizations are in it for the money seems preposterous. Many of them are attorneys who could easily double their incomes by moving to a law firm. One of them, VNRC’s Jon Groveman, said he stays where he is because “it feeds the soul.”  It is easy to make too much of these connections.

As did John McClaughry on the Vermont Tiger web site last month when he cited Dartmouth Professor Robert Hargraves saying that the Conservation Law Foundation, like most Vermont green groups a supporter of wind power and an opponent of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant “has a for-profit consulting subsidiary called Conservation Law Ventures….(which) is providing strategic advice to a company…that is working to build a 720 Megawatt natural gas fired electric plant in New England.”

Except that the subsidiary is really called CLF Ventures, it’s a non-profit, and its association with that gas company ended eight years ago. At any rate, Hargraves said that he was not implying that CLF officials were influenced by the income their subsidiary might have earned from a potential competitor to Vermont Yankee, Instead, he said, he wanted to suggest that “the fossil fuel industry is supporting opposition to nuclear power.”

A plausible if unproven suspicion. But it isn’t likely that coal, oil, and gas companies are secretly supporting wind development. Wind developers are supporting wind development, but they have allies. Some of those allies are environmentalists, who support wind power because it can reduce the climate-changing greenhouse gasses emitted by fossil fuels.

But maybe also for other reasons – political psychological, and – yes – financial.

CLF Ventures, for instance, has a web site on which it lists its clients. But not all former clients, one of which was First Wind, the company developing a wind power facility in Sheffield in the Northeast Kingdom.

Jo Anne Shatkin, the CEO of CLF Ventures, who in an earlier conversation did not reveal the First Wind connection, said when asked, “we were working for First Wind,” in facilitating community meetings in Brimfield, Massachusetts, abut a proposed wind energy development there. “We told the community. We served as a neutral facilitator. Our goal was to facilitate a process where people could understand the issue. We facilitated the meetings that First Wind sponsored.”

And paid for. Shatkin would not say how much.

First Wind also contributed more than $10,000 to the Nature Conservancy chapter in Maine, where the company is putting up wind power facilities.

Chris Kilian, the head of CLF’s Vermont operations, said he had not known that First Wind had been a CLF Ventures client. Kilian said CLF had “very vigorous internal controls” to make sure its subsidiary’s contracts don’t “influence our policy positions.” But he acknowledged that the connection could raise questions.

So while  there is no evidence that Vermont environmentalists are being “bought” by contracts or contributions, there are institutional connections between wind power developers and what might be called the environmentalist establishment. Some of those institutional connections are financial. However honorable the green group officials may be, like the leaders of  all other non-profits, they have to keep raising money if they are to perform their mission. It’s close to impossible to conclude that consciously or not so consciously, their awareness of where this money comes from has no influence on them.

This doesn’t mean their support of wind power has been bought. There are legitimate reasons to support wind power. But it does complicate the situation.

This fact does not solve – but it may help to begin to solve – a political-environmental puzzle in Vermont: why has wind power faced almost no opposition? Or, more precisely, why has it faced nothing but very localized and politically inept opposition?

After all, the wind projects have to go where the wind blows, which in Vermont means remote, high-elevation ridges on land where the ecological balance is delicate. The towers and the roads needed to build and maintain them pose obvious threats to unspoiled, swift-flowing mountain streams and to habitat for bears and maybe even (if they are anywhere) catamounts. If ever there were a recipe for opposition from environmentalists, this would seem to be it.

Yet just last week all the “mainstream” green groups in the state reiterated their support for wind power. That leaves only the not-so-mainstream Vermonters for a Clean Environment to oppose the wind projects in Sheffield, nearby Lowell, and other ridges.

Asked why she thought her group was alone in opposing wind development, Annette Smith of VCE said, “follow the money.”

Come back Wednesday when this site will follow the money – but also more than the money – to try to solve that political-environmental puzzle.

Meanwhile:

Correction of self: For the second time in a couple of months (clearly there is a synapse out of kilter here) the News Guy said “Hartland” last Friday when he meant “Hartford.” Accchhhhhh!

Correction of other: In Sunday’s Burlington Free Press appeared the headline, “Environmentals look ahead with optimism.”  There is no such thing as an “environmental,” much less two or more of them. The word is an adjective. It can not look ahead with anything. Yes, making the headline fit can be a challenge, but that’s no excuse.

One more look back at the election before proceeding to matters of greater substance.

Start with this surprising statistic: fewer Vermonters voted last week than in the last mid-term election of 2006.

Sounds peculiar, doesn’t it?. That one was a runaway, with incumbent Republican  Gov. Jim Douglas whomping Democrat Scudder Parker  by 56-to-41 percent.  Then-Congressman Bernie Sanders won the open U.S. Senate seat by an even wider margin. Peter Welch’s victory over Martha Rainville for the House seat Sanders was vacating wasn’t quite as huge. But  53-to-44 percent isn’t exactly close, either. Well before election day, few doubted who the winners would be.

But 262,524 Vermonters went to the polls, roughly 20,000 more than the number turning out for this year’s neck-and-neck race to choose the first new governor in eight years.

This year’s final tally is neither official nor complete. According to the web site of WCAX-TV (Channel 3), which had by far the best vote-counting operation of the night, with 99.9 percent of the vote in, 241,697 votes had been cast for governor. Unlike the official count of 2006, that total does not include write-ins. But write-ins plus that last tenth of a percent are not likely to add more than a few hundred votes to the total.

Bernie Sanders is both more polarizing and more fun than most politicians, which might have boosted turnout. And until the last week or so, the Welch-Rainville race seemed kind of close. But neither of those factors, nor the two combined, seem sufficient to explain why turnout was higher for those romps than for this year’s nail-biter. The question deserves further examination.

But first a digression. It is high time that Vermont politicians and Vermont news organizations – both print and on-air – stopped bragging about the state having voter turnout rates in the 70-to-75 percent range. That may be the percentage of registered voters who came to the polls last Tuesday. But the standard measurement for voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters, meaning citizens who are at least 18 years old.

Thus in 2,000, the year of the last Census, there were 461, 248 Vermonters who were over 18. But about 10,000 were non-citizens or otherwise ineligible to vote (though this state does not disenfranchise inmates or ex-convicts). That left 451,982 Vermonters eligible to vote, of whom 63.1 percent did cast ballots in that close presidential election.

Last year, according to the latest Census Bureau estimates, there were 671,760 people in the state, of whom 20.3 percent, or 136,213, were under 18. That left 535,547 Vermonters of voting age.

The 2000 count is from the “actual enumeration,” as the Constitution requires, while the 2009 statistics are a Census Bureau estimate The estimate, as it turns out, might be more accurate but it did not count non-citizens. Considering the immigration of the last several years, there are probably many more non-citizens in the state than there were in 2000.

But just for the purposes of discussion, assume there were twice as many. That would leave roughly 516,000 eligible voters in the state, making this year’s turnout about 47 percent. That’s still higher than most states, but not that impressive.

OK, let’s return to the question of why this year’s turnout was relatively low. Obviously, we are in the realm of conjecture here (even more than in the process of comparing not-totally-comparable statistics), but here are two theories: Early voting, which increases every year and seems to depress turnout in more places than not; or “negative” ads.

The quotation marks are there because, while acknowledging that this is the widely used term for dishonest, trivial, misleading political commercials, what is really deplorable about these commercials is that they are dishonest, trivial, and misleading. There is nothing at all wrong with a candidate being “negative” about his or her opponent as long as the negative message is true and relevant.

‘True,’ in this case, means what it means. ‘Relevant’ means that the commercial be about an actual policy position of the candidate – or in some cases, a blatant act of personal dishonor – not a distorted interpretation of some long-ago vote to refer a bill to committee, or the revelation that the candidate once went to dinner with an unlikable fellow.

This year’s campaign in Vermont had plenty of false and irrelevant ads (though no one seems to have sunk quite as far as the dinner-date theme), and plenty of analysis that the tone of the advertising hurt Republican candidate Brian Dubie, whose ads were criticized even by some Republicans.

It may have hurt him because it undercut his major political strength – his image as a nice fellow. But it also may have been one factor holding down the turnout.

The political scientists disagree here, with some pooh-poohing the assertion that many voters are so turned off by nasty campaigns that they decide to stay home. But in some campaigns, the most contentious mud-slinging has been followed by the most meager turnouts, and if the cause and effect is not provable, neither can it be ruled out.

If that happened here this year, Dubie might not have done any better had he chosen a different strategy. The people who stay home out of disgust with the tone of campaigns tend to be middle-of-the-road voters, and in most of the country, more middle-of-the-roaders vote Democratic, if they vote. If that’s true here, Dubie might have lost by a larger margin had he run a higher-toned campaign.

And in conclusion, a brief word about the national results.

A big Republican victory. A meaningful Republican victory, the significance of which should not be minimized.

Or maximized. Here is what politicians learn every time their party wins big.

No, scratch that. Here is what politicians fail to learn every time their party wins big.

The winning big does not mean the people agree with you.

At best, it means that on that day, those voters who voted (in the off-year, always less than half the eligible electorate and about two-thirds of those who will vote next time) agreed with you marginally (or perhaps minimally) more than they agreed with the other party.

More likely, all it means, especially when the out-of-power party wins big, is that the voters are dissatisfied, and that voting for you, you being “the other guys” was the only way they could express that dissatisfaction.

If you fool yourself into thinking it means any more than this, you’ll be….just like all who went before you.

First, the announcement:  A final decision will not be made for another week or so, but this web site is probably in its final days.

The election is over, the year is coming to an end, and so, most likely, is the News Guy.

It has been fun. It may have done some good. But with the election over, the year coming to an end, perhaps it is time to go.

A few weeks ago, the proprietor of this site woke up and found himself 70. No problem. There is but one alternative to getting older, and as long as most systems are functioning adequately, getting older is the preferred option.

But it is a reminder that if one is going to do something different, one had best get to it. Being the News Guy isn’t all that different from previous activities.

It isn’t much less time-and-effort consuming, either, and at least in the old days, the time and effort was compensated for with…compensation. At best, this web site breaks even. Happily, under the present circumstances, profit is not necessary. But neither is expending all that time and effort, enhancing the appeal of either (a) spending the time and effort at something potentially remunerative; or (b) not spending the time and effort at all.

Because a few interesting subjects have been put on hold during the election campaign, the News Guy will continue for another couple of weeks. But that’s probably it.

Now to the analysis. Last Friday’s post (The Big Day Dawneth) pointed out that the “downside” of Brian Dubie being governor would have been the constant (and worse! Incorrect) repetition of the mantra about Vermont’s economy being in such bad shape.

But there would have been an upside to a Dubie governorship, too, and one that might have transcended Vermont. That’s because Dubie – his anti-abortion stance and some attacks from the hard-line left to the contrary notwithstanding – is a politician of the center-right.

For instance, he was one of the few candidates in either party, anywhere this year to praise the new health care law. No Tea Partier, he campaigned for tax cuts and budget restraint, but not for decimating or dismantling government. According to office-holders in both parties, he has sometimes shown more flexibility than Gov. Jim Douglas in negotiating with lawmakers and officials.

Some critics argue that political expediency forced Dubie to try to come across as more moderate than he really is, that if he were not running in (sort of) left-leaning Vermont, he would have shown his true, farther-right, colors.

Maybe, but it makes no difference. He was running in Vermont. Had he won, he would have been governor of Vermont, and whatever private agenda he might have had, his would have been a center-right governorship, which is by no means the worst kind of governorship to have.

Especially now, where the center-right is endangered in Vermont and all but extinct elsewhere. The most prominent center-right office-holder in the country, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, is leaving office in a few weeks. With a few exceptions, the Republicans of the impending 112^th Congress can not be described as center-right politicians.

In Vermont, it is not clear whether leading Republicans have quite grasped what the Dubie defeat means for their party. Political fortunes are (in the words of a great poet) “constantly fickle,” so the GOP could rebound quickly. But it’s hard to see how. The party holds fewer than a third of the seats in the Houses, barely over a third in the Senate, and could not find credible candidates to run for either the U.S. Senate or Congress.

‘Credible,’ in this context, means ‘center-right’, the only kind of Republican who can win statewide elections in Vermont. The fact that no center-right Republican made any effort to take on Sen. Patrick Leahy or Rep. Peter Welch – even knowingly playing the sacrificial lamb role to build up some party cred for a winnable race in the future – speaks volumes about the poor prospects for the GOP in the state.

Yes, there are Lt. Gov-elect Phil Scott and re-elected Auditor Tom Salmon. But Salmon has, so far, painted himself farther right as he apparently prepares to challenge Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2012, an uphill battle to say the least. Scott is center-right, and right now seems to be the Vermont Republican Party’s best hope.

But it isn’t easy being lieutenant governor when the top guy is from the other party. It will not be in Gov. Peter Shumlin’s interest to give Scott much opportunity to look good, and the lite gov really has no official duties.

Well, presiding over the Senate, but with the Senate 20-8 Democratic, the presiding of a Republican will be largely ceremonial.

Had Dubie won, he might have helped revive the moderate wing of the Vermont GOP. He might also have been one of only a handful of Republican center-right governors in America (there are a few Democrats who fit that description), along with Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Terry Branstad of Iowa.

And the country needs center-right office-holders. For at least two reasons, even liberals ought to be glad that center-right politicians survive, and sometimes win. First, even when they are wrong, center-right officials keep the center-left from getting carried away with itself, as it is wont to do. Second, center-right politicians are not always wrong.  Because there are so many genuine needs, governments do have an incentive to keep spending money, sometimes more than is wise. Here moderate conservatives, wary of spending but not hostile to government, help restrain excesses.

Alas, other excesses on the right have all but obliterated moderate conservatism. Explaining how and why is beyond the scope of this post, but two examples should encapsulate the problem. Nationally, the conservative mainstream refuses to accept two facts: (1) cutting taxes means governments will have less (not more; less) money to spend; (2) the world is getting warmer, in part because of human activity. A political movement that willfully blinds itself to reason can accomplish nothing more than winning some elections. Winning elections is indeed one purpose of a political movement, and an important one. But so is rational governing.

Those are two Kool-Aid cocktails Brian Dubie did not drink.

Actually, Vermont may have a center-right governor next year – Peter Shumlin. Either winner would have faced the same immediate dilemma: expected revenues next year will be some $110 million lower than anticipated revenue. Though not as ideologically – even viscerally – hostile to higher taxes as Dubie, Shumlin doesn’t want to raise taxes either. It would be bad politics, and bad economic policy (though not as bad as laying off more state workers).

Like a center-right politician, Shumlin is going to propose budget cuts, possibly deep cuts, possibly deeper than many Democratic legislators can accept. The next session could be a tough one for Democrats. Maybe Vermont Republicans will enjoy themselves after all.

The Governor-Elect

NOTE: The last two days being essentially a blended blur, consider this an update on the post published this morning (scroll down) which itself was an update of the post published last midnight (scroll down farther).

Tomorrow, a Friday post as usual, which will be either the last or the next-to-last look at the election and its consequences.

So what will governmental/political life be like in Vermont with Peter Shumlin occupying the second floor corner office of the Capitol?

Different.

But maybe not all that different.

To understand how different, let’s start by assessing the Jim Douglas years, now coming to an end:

On the asset side: Eight years without scandal, and pretty much without turbulence. Douglas is not a rabble-rouser. Oh, he toyed with riling up the folks after that controversial sentencing of a sex offender, and then the awful murder of that young girl in Randolph. But he never felt comfortable doing it. Douglas is an even-keel kind of guy, a desirable quality in a governor. He kept the books balanced and the credit rating high. Unlike some current and recent governors of both parties, in states ranging from New York to Alaska, he did not embarrass his constituents.

On the debit side: For purposes of this discussion, we will glide over that little problem of coming down on the wrong side of the civil rights issue of the decade. Fortunately for Douglas, the Legislature overrode his veto of the marriage law. Otherwise, that’s how the world would have remembered him; this way, the veto will be only a footnote.

But that’s a one-of-a-kind issue, which does not help illustrate how things will be different under Shumlin. More to the point, under Douglas, Vermont spun its wheels for eight years. It isn’t that the governor did anything wrong; it’s that he didn’t do much.

Not the worst choice. Perhaps a governor who doesn’t try to do enough is better than one who tries to do too much. Meanwhile, though, opportunities are squandered, potentially productive paths never trod. Prudence is a virtue that can be overdone.

Judging from his campaign, Shumlin will be a far more adventuresome governor. He won’t just seize opportunities; he’ll try to create them, to explore new paths and try new plans in health care, energy, economic development, and more.

There is risk here, of course; politicians who plunge down paths never before trod are often forced to beat a hasty retreat with a face full of gorses. Shumlin is not a fool and probably knows this, but for now the point is not to assess the wisdom of his attitude, but simply to note it. For better and/or for worse, state government in Vermont will be more daring than it has been.

On most matters, of course, the new governor can only be as daring as the Legislature will allow. The big difference here will be that the new Governor is a Democrat, the party that will continue to dominate both houses of the Legislature.

Already Wednesday there were expressions of joy from Democrats and gloom from Republicans that the new governor could get the Legislature to accept whatever he proposed.

Maybe for a few weeks. The Legislature as a body has its own interests, ambitions, and fears. So do each of its members. Not a Republican, not a wise guy commentator, but a senior Democrat in the Legislature noted yesterday that at some point his branch of government would “begin to fight with the Governor.” It will almost surely happen, because it almost always does.

At that point, the otherwise irrelevant Republicans in the House and Senate might get some attention. Though a few races remain too close to call, the outlook as of Wednesday morning is that there might be two more Republicans in the House and one more in the Senate than there are now.

That will make the GOP delegation slightly more numerous but also more insignificant. For the last two years, the Republicans in the House comprised the nucleus of a possible veto-sustaining one third plus one. There weren’t quite 50 of them, but almost, and there was always the chance that they could attract an independent or even a maverick Democrat to uphold a Douglas veto.

On two celebrated occasions last year, they couldn’t manage that (though on one of them – the aforementioned marriage bill, several Republicans supported the override), but the possibility lent the GOP House minority a bit of oomph.

No longer. Even if Shumlin and the Democratic leaders of the Legislature have their differences, veto threats, much less actual vetoes, are most unlikely. Still, there will be enough Republicans (at least 48 in the House, seven or eight in the Senate) to engage in some deal-making under certain circumstances.

The weakness of the Republican Party in Vermont – in sharp contrast to its resurgence in so much of the country on Tuesday – deserves a closer look. Had Dubie won, his governorship might have offered some choice and opportunity to Republicans elsewhere. Not that Dubie was likely to be a presidential contender, but the election of a moderate Republican, even from a small state, might have provided a bit of ballast to an increasingly monochromatic party.

Tune in tomorrow for that closer look. But before leaving today, one more note:

Among the Democrats re-elected Tuesday was freshman Rep. Robert South of St. Johnsbury. Last year, when South voted to support the marriage bill override, the conventional wisdom in the Northeast Kingdom predicted he’d pay for the vote on election day.

He didn’t. In fact, the number of lawmakers defeated because they voted for same sex marriage, which was barely mentioned on the campaign trail, appears to be exactly zero. At least in this state, that argument is over.

At 9 AM, the Governor’s race remains undecided. Peter Shumlin has a lead of about 3,700 votes with 96.3 “percentage of votes” reported.

That’s the description from the web site of WCAX-TV (Channel 3) which has been way ahead of the other vote counters since Tuesday evening. The assumption here is that “percentage of votes” actually means percentage of precincts, which is not the same thing.

If it’s really the percentage of votes, then perhaps 9,000 votes remain to be counted, and assuming that they are from small towns where Brian Dubie is strong, that could possibly be enough votes out for him to catch up.

But if only 10 or 15 precincts remain uncounted, each of them small towns with only a few hundred voters (or fewer), Shumlin seems likely to hang on.

Either way, there’s no point in discussing the results until the results are known. So for now, just a few points about the other races.

But check back later today; say about 4 O’clock-ish, for more analysis if we have a winner by then. Either way, there will be an extra News Guy posting tomorrow.

Like their fellow-citizens of the other 49 states, Vermonters like to think their state is different from all the others. One way in which Vermont does not differ from the other 49 is that it is not as different as it likes to think it is.

But on Tuesday Vermonters showed that they are uncommonly selective when it comes to politics. They seem to have elected a Democratic governor, which would make this the only state to replace a Republican governor with a Democrat this year. But they clearly chose a Republican for lieutenant governor.

Why? Well, maybe because some people had the idea that a Republican lieutenant governor would help balance a Democratic governor and two legislative houses dominated by Democrats (it won’t, but that doesn’t mean some folks didn’t think it might). But mostly because Phil Scott was simply a better candidate than Steve Howard, whose last-minute attacks on Scott did Howard no good, and perhaps some harm.

But then the voters switched back again and chose Democrat Jim Condos over Republican Jason Gibbs for Secretary of State. Condos had the advantage of being better known, but he also ran a better campaign.

Or, perhaps more accurately, Gibbs ran a worse one. He was energetic and hard-hitting, perhaps too hard-hitting for a young man (34) who should have taken greater pains not to look like a young man in a hurry. His late attacks on Condos also seem to have backfired.

Or maybe he lost the election on the night of September 17 when he ran his car off the road and didn’t report the accident until the next morning, raising suspicions (perhaps unfairly) that he’d been driving after having a drink or two.

On the other hand, perhaps getting caught driving after having a drink or two (or five) helped Republican Auditor Tom Salmon get re-elected. Not that what happened last November when Salmon got pulled over and ticketed for drunk driving was a political plus. But what happened last week – after a political foe went to court to get the police video tape of the incident released – may actually have helped Salmon defeat Democrat Doug Hoffer.

In the video, Salmon didn’t seem to be falling-down drunk. If anything, the release of the tape (to which Salmon did not object) seems to have made Salmon more appealing to many voters. John Franco, the lawyer who went to court to get the information released (a friend of Hoffer’s, but apparently acting on his own) obviously was right on the law, and should be applauded by all of us who favor more transparency in government. But if it was a political tactic, it seems to have backfired.

On the other hand, Salmon was better known from the start, and Hoffer, while a whiz at analyzing data, never seemed entirely comfortable as a candidate. Running for office is a craft; like all of them, it requires practice.

It is midnight, as late as some…uhhh, shall we just say, ‘veteran’ observers are willing to stay awake.

Maybe as late as they are able to stay awake.

According to the unofficial tally from WCAX-TV (which had far and away the best election night coverage in the state), Peter Shumlin is now ahead of Brian Dubie by 1,003 votes with almost a quarter of the precincts yet to report.

Shumlin said he was going to win. Could be, but the prudent observer will wait for some more precincts to report.

At this point, then, there is nothing to say. And while it is not a policy universally practiced in the journalism dodge, the preference here has always been that if there is nothing to say…don’t say anything.

So for you early birds, check back later. Maybe 10 AM.

And for all of you, there will be an extra posting tomorrow, Thursday.

Whew, it’s almost over. Don’t forget to vote, and would you like to know who’s going to win?

So would we all.

There is a new poll. The survey by Rasmussen Reports shows Democrat Peter Shumlin ahead of Republican Brian Dubie by 50 to 45 percent, with three percent undecided and one percent supporting minor candidates.

The poll was taken of a randomly selected sample of 750 likely voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

Do not despair, Dubie-ites. Just taking the poll at face value, it does not “prove” that Shumlin is going to win. Remember, another poll taken two weeks earlier, by anther firm, gave Dubie a one-point lead. Only the count of actual ballots tomorrow night will reveal the winner (and if the race is as close as was the Democratic Primary, more counting may be needed).

What is often forgotten is that a poll’s margin of error applies not to the “spread,” but to each candidate’s percentage of support. All this poll says is that had all 250,000 or so likely voters been polled, between 54 and 46 percent would have chosen Shumlin, between 49 and 41 percent would have opted for Dubie.

So if on Tuesday night Dubie ends up with 47 percent of the vote to Shumlin’s 46 percent, the poll would not have been wrong. The result would have been within the poll’s margin of error.

(And would require the State Legislature to elect a governor, a matter to be discussed here only if it happens, which it probably won’t).

But don’t be of too much good cheer, either, Dubie-ites. A poll’s reported results represent the midpoint of its findings, which is far more likely to reflect actual public opinion than either extreme. It’s as likely that Shumlin is really ahead 53-42 as that Dubie is ahead 47-46.

Now we come to the question of whether this poll should be taken at face value. The answer will offer no comfort to Dubie and the Republicans, but the question should be explored anyway.

Rasmussen polls have a slight Republican bias. This is not because proprietor Scott Rasmussen has a slight Republican bias. Rasmussen in fact has a colossal Republican bias. But he’s also, on the basis of the evidence at hand, a perceptive businessman (he helped found ESPN), and for the sake of his business,  a pollster tries to make his polls accurate so that people take them seriously and continue to hire his firm. A series of inaccurate polls can put a pollster out of business.

But when a voter answers his or her phone because the Rasmussen folks are calling, an actual folk is not at the other end of the line. Instead, a recorded voice asks the respondent a question to be answered by pushing ‘one’ for candidate A, ‘two’ for candidate B, etc.

This ‘robocall’ technique is frowned on by the polling establishment at the American Association of Public Opinion Research . and scorned by several quality news organizations including the Washington Post and the New York Times. In fact, Rutgers University political scientist Cliff Zukin, in a paper he wrote last year for the AAPOR, argued that “these types of surveys have little claim of scientific validity and probably should not be reported.”

One reason for doubts about robocall polls is that they can not include random sampling within the household. A person on the phone can ask to speak to a woman or a man, or the person with the most recent birthday, or use some other method to try to get a representative sample.

But as Zukin noted, “If interviewers simply spoke with whoever answered the phone, the resulting samples would be older and more female than the population as a whole.”

That could be why robocall polls have been found to tilt about two percentage points more Republican than other surveys, or than the final election results.

On the other hand, Rasmussen polls don’t have a bad track record for accuracy. In the Massachusetts Senate race won by Republican Scott Brown earlier this year, Rasmussen polls picked up Brown’s growing strength earlier than other surveys.

With all the caveats, then, it’s fairly likely that Shumlin is ahead.

Which is not the same thing as predicting he will win. It might rain (though right now the Weather Channel is predicting pretty nice weather for both Burlington and Rutland on election day) and bad weather usually keeps more Democrats than Republicans away from the polls. The Republicans might have a better get-out-the-vote operation this year (though they usually don’t). And the poll could just be wrong. Sometimes, a poll is simply wrong. Polls, after all, are based on the laws of probability, not the laws of certainty.

Rasmussen is not the only outfit polling the race. So are both campaigns. “The campaign has maintained a consistent lead in our internal polling and as the campaigns (sic) momentum grows with each day we expect to win on Tuesday night,” said Dubie campaign manager Corry Bliss after the Rasmussen poll came out.

In the same statement, Bliss tried to argue that the Rasmussen poll showing Dubie behind by five points actually predicted an eight-point victory, because polls in 2002 had understated Vermont Republican strength by 13 points.

As responses go, this one was more inventive than persuasive.

Neither Bliss nor the Shumlin campaign revealed any numbers from their internal polling, requiring the curious to engage in tea-leaf reading to try to figure out what the polls might show.

Until the weekend, there were some signs that Dubie might be ahead. Conventional political strategy is to shift, in the final week or two, from television advertisements attacking the opposition to more positive ads, often featuring the candidate talking directly to the camera.

Last week the Shumlin campaign and its allies were still running anti-Dubie ads, while the Dubie campaign was featuring a spot called, “I’m your man” in which a blue-shirted, smiling, Dubie looked directly at the camera and promised to focus on jobs.

It’s a very effective ad even though its main point – “Vermont’s economy is in crisis” – is wrong. By all the usual criteria – economic growth (or, these days, shrinkage), unemployment rate, poverty rate, foreclosure rate – Vermont’s  economy is less in crisis than that of most other states.

This would be the downside of a Dubie governorship—the constant (and, worse, inaccurate)  griping about Vermont’s economy (there would be upsides, to be discussed later regardless of the outcome).

By the weekend, however, the Dubie campaign was back on the attack, including one ad – falsely accusing Shumlin of wanting to let prisoners out of jail – that has been widely criticized for being not just inaccurate but dishonest.

Considering that even many Republicans have been speculating that it is ads like this that seem to have put Dubie behind in the race, the decision to keep running it could be a sign of some desparation.

Maybe the Dubie campaign’s internal polls weren’t that different from the Rasmussen numbers.

You probably know this, but just in case, the Internal Revenue Service does not communicate via emails. These emails are attempted scams. What the IRS would like you to do is forward them to: phishing@irs.gov.

Or just ignore them.

CLARIFICATION: It turns out that the fellow who read through the August 15 Rutland Herald on the News Guy’s behalf didn’t read it closely enough. He was, kindly,  on his own time and on request from here, trying to find evidence for Brian Dubie’s claim that an article in the paper on that date supported Dubie’ss contention that Peter Shumlin has proposed releasing some prisoners before their terms expire. The article, Dubie said, reported that Shumlin “wanted to empty the prisons of 780 nonviolent offenders.”

As reported Wednesday (scroll down) the volunteer reader from Rutland could find neither hide nor hair of any such statement, though he did find a profile of Shumlin in that day’s paper.

Actually, way down in the third from the last paragraph of that profile, there was such a hide and/or hair.

At least so says – and there’s no reason to doubt her – Dubie spokesperson Kate Duffy, who emails that the story contains the following: “Emptying the prisons of non-violent offenders, he says, will cover the nearly $50 million price tag attached to his early childhood education plan.”

So Dubie was not making something out of nothing.

Only something out of little. The words “Emptying the prisons of non-violent offenders” were not Shumlin’s, but the reporter’s, There remains not a scintilla of evidence that Shumlin ever proposed releasing a single convict before his or her sentence has run its course, and Dubie’s continued efforts to argue that his opponent has made that proposal is pitiful at best.

(Though perhaps here it should be noted that Shumlin’s office still has not replied to an email asking how and why he misstated the numbers about the decline in the number of Vermont dairy farms).

NON-WARNING: If anyone is really concerned about either voter fraud or voter intimidation in Vermont next Tuesday: stop. By all discernible evidence and all rational analysis, neither will occur. That the subject is even under discussion seems to be the result of various confusions plus perhaps a little opportunism.

Here’s what happened: A small item in Monday’s Burlington Free Press reported that  members of Vermont’s “Tea Party” movement (also known as the Green Mountain Patriots) would hold a “poll watching training session” in Rutland Wednesday evening.\

The next day, Democratic Secretary of State candidate Jim Condos pounced, suggesting that the Tea Partiers were planning voter “intimidation,” and claiming that his Republican opponent, Jason Gibbs, was associated with the Tea Partiers “and other national groups that are planning to interfere with the voting process.”

In reply, Vermont Tea Party coordinator Jon Wallace of West Rutland, in a telephone interview Thursday, called Condos “shameless” and “disgusting,” as he insisted that “poll watching is part of the responsibility we have as citizens,” and that the Tea Party “wants every eligible voter to cast a ballot.”

Maybe everybody should calm down. First of all, in Vermont, the Tea Party represents a small if not quite insignificant minority which couldn’t intimidate more than a handful of voters if it wanted to. Second, there is no reason to suspect that it wants to. Condos may have been making much out of little as he saw an opportunity to link Gibbs with the Tea Partiers.

But considering the national context (to which he referred) Condos didn’t make much out of nothing. This is all part of the continuing debate between Republicans who suspect voter fraud and Democrats who claim Republicans are using “ballot security” concerns to try to scare minority (meaning mostly Democratic) voters away from the polls.

The Democrats have by far the better case. There is almost no voter fraud in America, and more than a tinge of racism in the allegations of it, most of which focus on minority polling places. Most of the few federal convictions over the last decade or so have been technical or individual (somebody voting in another town to vote for his brother-in-law; or maybe to vote against his brother-in-law). Large-scale voting fraud would make no sense. It would too complicated, too expensive, too easy to get caught. In fact, today’s only credible vote fraud accusations – fake absentee ballots cast in a Troy, N.Y., city election – make the case. There were – if the allegations are true – all of 36 fraudulent ballots cast.

(Even history’s most celebrated voter fraud, Richard J. Daley’s Democratic organization supposedly stealing votes for John F. Kennedy in Chicago in1960, may never have happened. It’s the stuff of legend, but there’s no convincing evidence demonstrating that any votes were stolen).

On the other hand, there is real evidence of attempted – and sometimes successful – intimidation of black and Hispanic voters at the polls. Armed private guards at polling places in Newark; leaflets falsely warning prospective voters that they’d be checked for unpaid traffic tickets or utility bills at the polls in Baltimore; false information about when and where to vote in Cleveland.

But that’s never happened in Vermont, where Democrats are neither as identifiable nor as easily intimidated.  Besides, Wallace is so open about what the Tea Partiers intend that he emailed a copy of the instruction sheet passed out to the potential Tea Party poll watchers. It essentially tells them to obey the law and not be disruptive.

Not that Wallace has any evidence of voter fraud in Vermont. He said he had heard from “college kids that some students they know boast that they vote several times.” That doesn’t really qualify as evidence.

Vigilance is always in order, and there’s nothing wrong with politically involved folks being on the lookout for intimidation or fraud. In this state, neither is likely, and whoever wins Tuesday will almost surely win fair and square.

UPDATE: The News Guy did not get to Woodstock yesterday for the evidentiary hearing in the case of Galloway versus Town of Hartford (scroll down to Wednesday’s post). Allen Gilbert of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union reported that Judge Katherine Hayes indicated she would rule in a week or two in journalist Anne Galloway’s request for official records relating to the seizure of a man in his own home last May. The ACLU is supporting Galloway,

Isn’t anything going on in Vermont except this infernal political campaign?

Yes, actually. Quite a lot. For instance, on Thursday there is an evidentiary hearing in Superior Court in Woodstock in the matter of Galloway versus Town of Hartford, an important public records case (see Public (?) Records, August 4.)

On October 15, Superior Court Judge  Katherine A. Hayes denied the town’s motion for summary judgment, allowing the case to proceed. If possible, the News Guy will cover the hearing.

But here’s the thing about political campaigns: they end. This one is going to end in six days, making it hard to deal with anything else. So for now, we’ll continue with political stuff.

But first, this embarrassing admission.

Monday’s post ended with praise for how WCAX-TV anchors Darren Perron and Kristin Kelly questioned candidates Brian Dubie and Peter Shumlin during Saturday’s debate.

Except those who read the post before it was corrected (about 8:45 AM) did not see Darren Perron’s name. They saw the name of Anson Tebbetts, who is Channel 3’s news director, not its co-anchor.

Early (or perhaps not-so-early) sign of impending dementia?

Or just the kind of goof one can make toward the end of the day about two guys who work for the same station and both have two two-syllable names?

Either way, pluperfect dumb, and though it is not likely that either of these honorable gentlemen is insulted by being confused with the other, herewith apologies to the both of them.

Speaking of getting stuff wrong, during that debate Shumlin asserted that “Vermont lost more dairy farms in the last eight years (while opponent Dubie was lieutenant governor) than in any other time in Vermont history.”

Actually, no. Dubie and Gov. Jim Douglas took office in 2003, when there were 1,459 according to the Vermont Dairy Promotion Council. When U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsak visited Vermont last February, he was told there were 1,019 dairy farms.That’s a drop of 440.

In the eight years before the Douglas-Dubie team took office, the state lost 683 dairy farms, which, as it happens, is more, not less, than 440 and while no doubt a few farms have gone out of business in the last seven months, losses of the last eight years are clearly smaller than those of the previous eight years.

Yes, the more recent decline is slightly larger in percentage terms. But not much, and anyway, that’s not what Shumlin said. An email to his campaign asking where he got his (apparently  mis-)information was not answered yesterday.

(Not to mention that it makes no difference. Whoever is governor and whatever agriculture policies are followed, the number of dairy farms will continue to decline at a rate determined largely by factors well beyond the governor’s control).

In that same debate (and again in a VPR interview Monday) still trying to argue (to the distress of some of his strongest supporters) that Shumlin plans to release hordes of prisoners before their terms expire, Dubie twice mentioned an “August 15 Rutland Herald article in which Shumlin said he wanted to empty the prisons of 780 nonviolent offenders.”

Apparently not, the “apparently” is required here because the News Guy was unable to find that edition of the Herald either on line or in print. But at his request, someone else perused a printed (on dead tree) original version of the August 15 Herald and found…no mention of Shumlin releasing prisoners.

There was a Shumlin profile, a political column, and a “Capital Beat” column in the paper that day, the reader said, but nothing about letting lots of folks out of the pokey.

It is theoretically possible that both candidates will apologize for their misleading statements. It is highly unlikely.

Just as it is highly unlikely that the latest legal fracas is going to have much impact on the governor’s race. The state’s other news organizations have adequately covered the Attorney General’s suit against two political action committees, and the countersuit by one of them against him, so we won’t go into detail here. We’ll just answer three common questions:

Question One: Has there been and is there collusion between a candidate’s campaign and the supposedly “independent” entities that buy ads to support said campaign?

Answer One: Always. Take the following sentence both literally and as metaphor. In every capital city, all the political operatives (or at least all the political operatives of each party) drink in the same saloon. Since table-hopping can not be outlawed, information can always be shared (though the shrewd operative will first check to see whether any reporters – who also drink at those same saloons – are present).

What may have happened this year in Vermont is that somebody got careless and too blatant. According to official documents, the Republican Governors Association (one target of an AG suit) received a $22,500 in-kind contribution from the Dubie campaign on Sept. 22, and the Dubie campaign paid $25,500 for a poll five days later.

That would appear to be collusion, banned because the RGA is one of the “independent” entities buying pro-Dubie ads. It might have piqued the AG’s interest in seeing whether the RGA is registered as a political organization in Vermont. It is not.

Question Two: Doesn’t the U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United decision mean Attorney General Bill Sorrell and his assistant, Michael McShane, are going to have a hard time prevailing in court?

Answer Two: Possibly not. McShane said The AG’s office is only trying to get the RGA and Green Mountain Future  “to register as (political action committees) and file reports with the Secretary of State’s office.” Because they have not done so, McShane said, they have “violated Vermont law.”

(Try to keep all this straight. GMF is a creature of the Democratic Governor’s Association, which has registered as a political committee in Vermont, and which so far has spent more on the Vermont gov’s race than the Repubs. The RGA has not registered, nor has GMF, but the RGA’s front group, Green Mountain Prosperity, has).

Citizens United, though, was not about registration and disclosure. It allowed corporations and unions to make political contributions from their treasuries, not just from money specifically raised (and voluntarily contributed) for campaigns. Martha Wright, the attorney who helped Sorrell argue Vermont’s election law case before the U.S. Supreme Court (they lost) pointed out that Citizens United “upheld disclosure provisions that were challenged.”

That doesn’t mean the AG’s move can not be challenged. Vermont’s statutes on electioneering expenses might be “unconstitutionally vague,” Wright said, and its “definition of a political committee” can also be disputed.

All of which can help explain the rationale behind the RGA’s countersuit and answer…

Question three: Will all this influence anybody’s vote?

Answer three: Probably not. If the court hearings are held before the elections, the Republicans – and therefore Dubie – could appear sneaky. Hence the RGA countersuit, which, whatever its legal merit (challenging the power of the AG even to seek information to investigate does seem a bit over the top) plays into the average, middle-of-the-road voter’s assumption that “they all do it” (True. See Answer one above).

Finally: Today is the last day of early voting in Vermont. Early voting by everyone, not just the physically impaired or those who are going to be away on election day, has become increasingly popular all over the country of late.

It’s a very bad idea. It depresses turnout (see this in Monday’s New York Times). It interrupts the rhythm of a campaign, which is designed to end on election day. It provides an incentive for some people to vote before they’re gotten all the information they need (who knows how many would have voted for the other candidate had they waited?). It diminishes the communal experience of the polling place.