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).

The Democratic governor’s race is no longer without form and void.

The auditor’s race is no longer boring.

OK, that wording used to describe the primary for governor is a tad grandiose, having more famously been applied to the entire cosmos, next to which the Vermont Democratic Party is an infinitesimal speck.

Still, the phrase is descriptive. The endorsements of Sen. Doug Racine by both the state’s AFL-CIO and the teachers union (Vermont NEA) do not make Racine the front-runner. No one can be considered the front-runner until someone releases an independent, credible poll (and, no, the one being taken by the campaign of Sen. Peter Shumlin, one of Racine’s four opponents, does not qualify).

But the endorsements do give the campaign some shape (form) and heft (voidlessness?). If nothing else, they provide a framework for thinking about the contest. Racine is at the very least having a good week and the other four are scrambling. It isn’t that the boost he got can’t be overcome. But the other candidates have to take steps to overcome it.

By no means do the endorsements mean that all 10,000 or so Vermont members of AFL-CIO affiliated unions or the 11,500 teachers who belong to the NEA are going to vote for Racine. If there was ever a time when rank and file union members automatically voted as their leaders recommended, that time is long gone.

On the other hand, there’s no reason why a union member – whether a teacher or a construction worker – shouldn’t pay some attention to the suggestion of an organization that helps improve his or her life. Especially when there’s not much difference among the candidates, five Democrats swimming straight in their party’s main stream.

Shumlin, who says he’s a “fiscal conservative,” and Sen. Susan Bartlett, who in her formal campaign kick-off Monday called herself a “centrist Democrat,” are trying to paint themselves as slightly less liberal on taxes and spending than the other three. They may be right, but “slightly” is the key word here. For many Democratic voters, any of the five contenders would be acceptable. So why not go with your union’s choice?

But the bigger boost for Racine might be that both the AFL-CIO and the NEA provide built-in GOTV operations. That stands for “Get Out the Vote,” and in what promises to be a low-turnout primary, the only more valuable asset than an existing organization that knows how to operate phone banks, identify supporters, and arrange car-pools to take voters to the polls is two of them. That’s what Racine now has.

The others can build their own, and no doubt are planning to do so. But it will cost a little time and money that he can spend elsewhere.

The candidate most hurt by the Racine endorsements was former Sen. Matt Dunne. He knew it, issuing a statement Monday congratulating Racine and pointing out that he it was his “understand(ing)  that the endorsement decision came down to Doug and me.”

It did. The endorsement would have been even a bigger boost for Dunne, who is less well-known, so losing it is a big blow. Dunne also hastily scheduled a press conference yesterday to announce the support of  seven House members and two Senators, including the fiscally centrist Hinda Miller of Burlington.

The AFL-CIO did not limit its endorsements to the governor’s race. It made choices in some of the other contests, too, and one of them could prove very interesting indeed. The labor organization’s preferred candidate for State Auditor is Burlington policy analyst Doug Hoffer who plans to run in the Democratic primary, and who also has Progressive Party support.

The reason this is interesting is that Hoffer could actually get elected. And if he does, the Auditor’s office might become a very lively spot.

Full disclosure: Hoffer, who knows how to find economic data and who analyses it astutely (if from his own point of view) has been an occasional source for this web site, which he obviously reads because he now and then comments on the posts. On the other hand, he and the News Guy have never met, and what follows is analysis, not an endorsement.

It’s not really a prediction, either. But here’s why he could win. So far, the only other Democrat running is former Auditor (and present state senator) Ed Flanagan. In the interests of both brevity and kindness, this account will skip the details abut Flanagan’s political problems (available on line for the curious). Suffice to say that thanks to some recent bizarre personal behavior Flanagan is all but unelectable.

Meaning Hoffer could win the Democratic Primary and also be on the Progressive line for the November election against incumbent Republican Tom Salmon.

Not quite unelectable, but decided beatable, also thanks to some of his own bizarre behavior, including a drunk driving episode and writing obscene emails to a reporter. Plus, he’s a party-switcher, elected and re-elected as a Democrat before becoming a Republican late last year. Party-switchers have a tough time getting re-elected.

Aside from one unsuccessful bid for town council in Massachusetts years ago, Hoffer said, he has never run for office. He could be a terrible candidate. Furthermore, another Democrat might jump into the race before next week’s filing deadline. Democratic Party Chair Judy Bevans said “a number of candidates have expressed interest” in running.

If Hoffer does win, he is likely to be, based on his work as an economics numbers-cruncher, both aggressive and independent. He’s an unabashed economic liberal who approves of raising taxes on the wealthy rather than cutting social services. But he’s also a dedicated data freak who does not go where the statistics do not lead. Should he get elected, the Sate Auditor’s office might become not just interesting, but also a word rarely associated with auditors of any stripe: fun.

MEDIA NOTE: The News Guy is by and large a fan of (and has written for) Seven Days, Burlington’s sprightly alternative newspaper. So it was discouraging to see, in its on-line version, a sophomoric swipe at the Roman Catholic Church and Bishop Salvatore Matano. Apparently some ex-Catholics who write for a blog called The Plaid Crew and who seem to harbor ill will toward the Church, saw a perfectly ordinary (actually, a rather touching) picture of the Bishop ordaining a new priest on the cover of the Vermont Diocese’s magazine, Vermont Catholic, and gave it the smuttiest possible interpretation.

For whatever reason, Seven Days writer Lauren Ober found it “sort of the most amazing photo I’ve ever seen…this week” (sort of the most?) and for whatever reason, the editors agreed to post the item on the paper’s Blurt blog.

The temptation to describe this as locker-room humor offends those of us who have spent some time in locker rooms and remember that the jokes there usually contained a modicum of wit.