Has everybody been keeping up with the campaign websites?

You don’t know what you’re missing.

First, of all, printed out, they are perfect cures for insomnia. Just try to stay awake reading prose such as “Supporting and sustaining Vermont’s businesses will be the first step in an eonomic development strategy” (Deb Markowitz, and, yes, that’s cut and pasted; her web site really says ‘eonmic’) or “I devoted my time to bringing entrepreneurs and business leaders together to develop economic development legislation that would create jobs” (Matt Dunne).

What is remarkable about the candidate web sites is not that they are filled by writing that recalls the late novelist Nelson Algren’s term “dead stick prose,” but that most of them read as though they were written by the very same practitioner of dead stick prose. It seems highly unlikely that there could be four writers who are quite that bad in exactly the same way.

(Four, not six, because the sort-of exceptions here are Sen. Susan Bartlett’s and Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie’s web sites. When Dubie “speaks” in the first person on his site, he does so in plain if uninspired English. On her site, Bartlett is both breezy and specific).

But today’s post is not primarily a literary critique. It is a plea to Vermont’s voters – and especially to its journalists – to read some of these web sites carefully, to note the (often concealed) specifics in the public policy positions, and to insist that all the candidates flesh out their relatively indistinct proposals with real detail.

Specifically, with dollars and cents detail.

The first job of any governor of any state is to be a prudent steward of that state’s fisc, as the public treasury used to be called. So when a candidate pledges, for instance, to take steps to improve the state’s economy, somebody ought to ask that candidate just how much those steps will cost, and just how the candidate intends to pay that cost.

And any candidate who responds, “by making government more efficient,” or words to that effect, is not qualified to be governor.

For instance, most of the Democrats say they will “expand broadband to every last mile by 2012” (Sen. Peter Shumlin on his web site; in his television commercial he says 2013) or “(b)ring the economic development potential of high-speed internet and cell service to all of Vermont’s businesses and to the last mile of every town in Vermont,” (Dunne).

That has to cost money. As Sen. Doug Racine had the gumption to acknowledge, “we cannot rely on the private sector to provide this service.”

Private Internet providers are not going to extend broadband down every little dirt road in every little hamlet unless the state helps pay for it, directly by appropriation or indirectly by giving the companies a tax break.

Either way, that means less money in the ol’ fisc.

(It should be noted here that by and large Racine is the most straightforward candidate when it comes to acknowledging fiscal realities. During the Legislative session, he even suggested a temporary tax increase).

The Democrats also like to talk about “investing.” “In our institutions of higher learning” (Dunne), in “energy efficiency” (Markowitz), in “smart grid and smart metering technology” (Racine), in health care (Racine and Shumlin).

Another word for “investing” is “spending.” It isn’t that the Democrats are being disingenuous here. Those spending proposals are real investments, which may pay benefits in the future. First, though, they cost money.

Even Republican Dubie, who wants to cut taxes and spending, calls for a “strong push to help Vermont students lead the nation in science, math, engineering and technology,” which sounds very much like an investment, or cost as it is sometimes known.

But isn’t it unreasonable to ask these candidates to tell Vermonters just – or at least roughly – what all these proposals will cost and how they will pay for them?

No. Au contraire, as they say just north of here, it’s irresponsible not to ask them. Certainly after August 24 when the Democratic nominee is known, it would be irresponsible not to insist on specifics from that nominee and from Dubie.

In fact — and this is specifically for the political journalists, including this one – it is irresponsible not to ask them for their paperwork. Let’s not take their word for it. When Candidate A says his/her broadband or higher education plan will cost X million bucks, let’s ask how they know. Who’s the high tech or higher ed economist who ran their numbers? Let’s see those numbers (this is especially for news organizations with lots of resources; are you listening Channel 3? The Free Press?) so we can run them past our own experts.

There is here a difference between Dubie and the Dems. Though the Republican, should he win, will propose spending money – every governor does –his campaign centers on his pledge to cut both spending and taxes.

OK, Mr. Lieutenant Governor: Just which programs would you cut or eliminate? Which taxes will you reduce? How much would that cost the state treasury? And precisely how would you offset the revenue loss?

And don’t say, “by reducing waste, fraud, and inefficiency.” As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to note, there is no line item in any government agency budget reading, “waste, fraud and inefficiency.”

Then let’s hope Dubie does not succumb to that national Republican deception of claiming that taxes can be cut without loss to the treasury, that lower taxes will so spur the economy that tax revenue will stay level, maybe even go up.

This is unadulterated garbage, and should be described as such. Lower taxes did not lead to higher revenue under George W. Bush, under Ronald Reagan, or under John F. Kennedy in the 1960s.

Yes, in raw terms, revenues did rise after those presidents cut taxes. But only because the economy grew. Yes, it grew somewhat faster because taxes were cut. But in all those cases, the government would have ended up with more money in the till under the older, higher, rates. The authority here ought to be Gregory Mankiw, the highly regarded economically conservative economist and loyal Republican who was the head of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors: “Lower tax rates might encourage people to work harder and this extra effort would offset the direct effects of lower tax rates to some extent, but there was no credible evidence that work effort would rise by enough to cause tax revenues to rise in the face of lower tax rates.”

The Reagan tax cuts, Mankiw wrote, “did not cause tax revenues to rise,” and he called those who predicted that they would “charlatans and cranks.”

Or, in this context, unqualified to be governor.

Tomorrow, candidates have to file their campaign finance reports, revealing how much they’ve collected, and from whom. How much they’ve spent, and on what.

Though money and politics is the subject of the bulk of today’s post, those filings will not be discussed here Friday. As regular readers know, the intent of this web site is to cover the stories nobody else is covering, and almost every major news organization will send a reporter to the Secretary of State’s office Thursday afternoon to get the info.

All those reporters can read and do arithmetic at least as fast and as accurately as this one, who is happy to defer to them.

Sen. Bartlett: Enough money?

This one will, however, get copies of the filings, look them over, and discuss them Monday if there is anything worth discussing that the other folks have not already covered.

Speaking of politics and money, a housekeeping note and an appeal. The News Guy, who has a life outside these postings, is going to take some time off in August (exact dates to be determined). Aside from the time off, many of the 39 days and (roughly) ten posts between now and the August 24 primary will be devoted to covering that primary, primarily the contest for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

This means going to campaign events, which in turn means driving around the state, which in turn means buying gasoline and occasional lunches and possibly a motel room or two if an important event ends too late and too far away to drive home safely.

It means, in short, spending money, and despite those advertisements you see over on the right, the News Guy’s major source of revenue is reader donations. Readers who have not donated are urged to do so.

Just Look over on the right under “Pages,” where it says, “Donate. It’s easy.

Speaking of politics, money, and news coverage, kudos to the Burlington Free Press, which, first of all, did not run last week’s very bad Associated Press story about the race for Auditor as if there were two, not three, major candidates. Then on Monday, the Freep had a front page story centering on the other guy, Doug Hoffer, who is challenging State Sen. Ed Flanagan for the Democratic nomination. (The winner will take on Republican incumbent Tom Salmon).

One of the papers that did run the bad AP story, the Brattleboro Reformer, then used the AP’s corrective (but not correction; it didn’t acknowledge the earlier story) about the Democratic primary, and also had a staff-written story about Hoffer.

But the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus and the (jointly owned) Rutland Herald only appended a semi-correction to a letter to the editor, promising to do better in the future and saying “(T)he Associated Press was in error by not including Doug Hoffer in its article.”

Yeah, but you were in error, too, fellas. Editors ought to know who is running for major statewide office.

Okay, now to those campaign finance reports, even though we don’t yet know who raised how much.

Except that we sort of do.

One may take, as the saying goes, to the bank, that Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, the only Republican seeking the governorship, will report having raised more than any of the five Democrats. A couple of weeks ago, one of Dubie’s senior campaign staffers mentioned the figure of $800,000. Sure, he could have been bragging. But that would have been foolish. The exact figure will be known to all the world Thursday evening. The smarter move would have been to low-ball the expectation. Dubie has probably raised more than 800 grand.

As to the Democrats, it’s all but certain that Secretary of State Deb Markowitz will report raising more money, and Sen. Susan Bartlett less, than their three competitors. Markowitz’s campaign aides have not thrown around a number, a la the Dubie camp. But they are obviously operating under the assumption that their candidate will lead the money parade as she did in the earlier filing last summer.

Bartlett effectively acknowledged she’d be last, issuing a statement Tuesday afternoon conceding that after the numbers are in the “conventional ‘wisdom’ will be that my candidacy is in last place.”

But Bartlett argued that “there have been many Vermont elections in which the highest spender hasn’t been successful, I’ve won some of those elections and plan to do it again in August.”

Leaving the three guys, Sens. Doug Racine and Peter Shumlin and former Sen. Matt Dunne, perhaps in that order.

Or perhaps not. Dunne will no doubt have the least of the three, but Shumlin has bought television advertising time while Racine has not, perhaps meaning that Shumlin has more money to spend.

Or just that Racine is biding his time and saving his money for later. Amy Shollenberger, his campaign manager, said the campaign was “working on  a paid media strategy for sure,” and exploring “different options.”

Which could mean that the campaign isn’t sure it will be able to afford much TV time.

“We’re running a really grass-roots campaign,” Shollenberger said.  “It’s different from some of the others. We relying on a lot of volunteer help.”

So say officials of all the Democratic campaigns except Markowitz’s.

“The ground game in this race is going to be very important,” said Shumlin Campaign Manager Alex MacLean. “It’s going to be mail, phone calls, and canvassing, because we’re targeting such a small number of people.”

Kevin  O’Holleran of the Dunne camp had a similar message, saying the candidate who “comes in with the most money and is able to buy a whole bunch of TV time isn’t going to be successful. We’re building up more of a grass roots campaign.”

All that could be the denial and/or desperation of losers.

Or, in this case, it might be true.

Because the turnout really is likely to be quite small. Political Scientist Eric Davis suggests no more than 60,000 voters in the Democratic Primary. And the estimates go down from there, down to as low as 30,000.

Just to put this into some context, in 2008, Democratic candidate Gaye Symington got 69,534 votes finishing third in the governor’s race after running one of the most bumbling campaigns ever. Not just ever in Vermont. Ever anywhere. Yes, that was a general election, Still, her total would have to be considered the rock-bottom Democratic vote, a rock-bottom not likely to be reached next month.

If these low estimates turn out to be accurate, reaching the “masses” (even just the Democratic-voting masses) may be less important than mobilizing committed supporters, appealing to two or three socio-political niches, and getting loyal voters to the polls.

It would be kind of like “the old days”(“old” meaning back about 1980) when primary campaigns worried less about TV ads than about “identifying your ones and twos” (committeds and likelies) and arranging for enough high-school seniors and bored housewives to drive them to the polls.

An old-fashioned election. How Vermontish. It’s the political equivalent of eating local food, fixing up vintage houses, wearing fleece vests to dress up. It might work, Susan Bartlett is right. More money does not necessarily lead to victory.

But not enough money necessarily leads to defeat. The Democrats may be about to find out how much is enough.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Vermont Democratic Party decided that, on second thought, it would allow reporters to cover its Sunday evening fundraiser starring Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts.

A wise move. When a powerful House committee chairman speaks in a quasi-public setting, he might commit what some reporters call a “new” (or perhaps a gnu?). That is, he might make news. News ought to be covered by folks whose business it is to cover the news, not because they have such a wonderful time doing so (it’s often a drag) but because it’s better to have an informed public that an uninformed public.

Such, at least, is the theory behind democracy, or, as it’s sometimes known, a republic, meaning both Democrats and Republicans should facilitate rather than encumber the process. For the nonce, the Democrats seem to have figured this out. Some of us will be watching all political parties for future compliance.

Speaking of politics, let’s deal with that poll about the governor’s race that came out the other day, and with the reaction to said poll.

According to a Rasmussen Reports survey of 500 randomly selected Vermonters, Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, unopposed for the Republican nomination, is leading all five Democrats running in the Aug. 24 primary to oppose him.

Dubie’s lead over Secretary of State Deb Markowitz is a modest one, 47 percent to 40 percent, within the poll’s plus-or-minus 4.5 percentage point margin of error.

Against the other four, Dubie gets more than 50 percent, though just barely (51) against Sen. Doug Racine. But the lieutenant governor has a 15-point margin over Racine, and bigger leads against Sens. Peter Shumlin and Susan Bartlett and former Sen. Matt Dunne.

Bartlett fared worst, trailing Dubie by a 55-to-29 percent margin, so perhaps it was not surprising that her campaign manager, John Bauer, issued a statement questioning the validity of the poll. Bauer quoted the recent comment of Middlebury emeritus political science professor Eric Davis that 
”Rasmussen polls should be interpreted cautiously(because)  Rasmussen uses automated prompts with touch-tone responses rather than live operators to collect its data.”

That’s true, and Rasmussen’s polls are controversial, partly because Scott Rasmussen makes no effort to hide his own very pro-Republican sympathies.

But that doesn’t mean the polls are inaccurate. Even Nate Silver of  538.com, a critic of Rasmussen’s methods, concedes that the company’s polls have a higher than average record for calling races right.

Some of the poll’s findings at least raise the possibility that the survey over-sampled Republicans. For instance, it found Vermonters almost evenly split on supporting off-shore oil drilling.

Maybe they are, but it would be risky to run for office here on a pro-drilling platform.

Still, there’s not much reason to doubt that the Rasmussen poll is an accurate snapshot of the campaign right now.

But that’s all. The dynamic of the race will change on the night of August 24, when the primary results come in. (Rasmussen, confused, used the old date of September 14, but that doesn’t have any impact on the poll’s accuracy).

The more pertinent question right now, then, is not whether Dubie is ahead of the Democrats, but which Democrat is ahead of the others. That question can’t really be answered until next month, when Research 2000 releases its poll on the Democratic race. But it can sort of be answered now, as long as everyone understands that the answer is tentative and even a touch shaky, because two of the campaigns, Markowitz’s and Shumlin’s have hired respected pollsters to check out the race.

The results have not been made public. They haven’t even been quasi-officially leaked. But some people who have seen the results have…well, let’s just say they’ve chatted. In pubs, on the phone, in meetings. Hints have been dropped. With that shakiness caveat firmly in mind, the race seems to be shaping up this way:

Markowitz is ahead. Racine is second, though just how distant a second is hard to determine. Shumlin is an apparently not-very-close third. Dunne and Bartlett remain in single-digit percentage figures.

These results do not justify a prediction that Markowitz will win, or even justify an assessment concluding that she’s the front-runner.  Nor do they mean that Dunne and Bartlett have no hope. To begin with, this is  very hard race to poll. It all depends on turnout, which is likely to be quite low, and while the pollsters are probably “screening” for likely voters, that’s a most imprecise exercise under the circumstances.

All the pollsters can do is ask respondents whether they plan to vote in the primary. Ok, they can push a bit: “Are you sure you’re going to vote?” Or, “are you enthusiastic about the race?” Or some such. But for a couple of reasons, many folks may say they really, really plan to vote, but end up staying home.

Or, in this case, being away. August 24 is in the middle of vacation season. Some of those respondents who said they were going to vote may have forgotten that they have reservations at a resort or plans to visit their Aunt Louise in California on that date.

Yes, there’s early voting. It starts July 12, and all the campaigns have early-vote operations to urge their supporters to fill out their ballots before taking off for the beach or Aunt Louise’s. But one of the peculiarities of this campaign raises the likelihood that many voters may not bother.

The peculiarity is that all five of these Democrats are just fine with the vast majority of Democratic voters. This is not an ideological battle. There are some policy differences, but all the contenders are mainstream, center-left Democrats. Nor is it one of those contest between “regulars” and “reformers,” whatever that means. So far, at least, nothing resembling a “character problem” has arisen about any of candidates.

The result is that while few rank-and-file Democrats are all that enthusiastic about any of the five, neither do they harbor any hostility toward one or two of them. Harboring hostility is  great turnout builder, absent in this primary.

But there’s one more thing to keep in mind. The dynamic of the primary is likely to shift next month, when that Research 2000 poll comes out and when the candidates report their fund-raising results on July 15. The candidates who bring up the rear in both measurements (and whoever trails in one is likely to be trailing in the other) are going to be in trouble. Both press and public will conclude that they are out of it.

That may not be fair. But it’s what almost always happens. At that point, the race will take on a new shape. Don’t expect anyone to drop out officially. But at least two of those Democrats will effectively spend the last month or so going through the motions, with most attention centered on the two or three at the top.

That’s when it’ll get interesting.

And Don’t Forget: The News Guy is on Vermont This Week tonight (repeated Sunday).