Considering that they are…well, you know…Democrats, Vermont’s leading Democrats are acting awfully grown-up.

It isn’t just that they’re not being petulant, a surprise in itself, petulance being what the computer nerds would call a Democrat’s default position.

Instead all five candidates for governor have been exuding graciousness and good humor in this post-primary period, none of them more than Peter Shumlin,  the certified leader (by 197 votes) if not yet the final winner of the primary.

But he would be the final winner had runner-up Doug Racine not demanded a recount.  It would be no surprise, then, were Shumlin a might miffed at Racine.

If he is, he’s not showing it; to the contrary, he said the recount was the right thing to do. Meanwhile, Racine keeps acknowledging that Shumlin is likely to end up as the nominee after the recount, and the other three have joined the top two on the campaign trail.

Under the circumstances, this is just what the Democrats should do if Shumlin (or Racine) is to have a chance to beat Republican Brian Dubie. But Democrats do not always do what they should do.

Republicans usually do, and Dubie is. He’s being aggressive and energetic, yesterday announcing a 26.2-hour campaign marathon scheduled to start  early Tuesday and go nonstop into the following morn.

“Vermonters work hard for their money, and they deserve a Governor who will work hard for them,” said Dubie, firmly if not originally, in a campaign press release.

For two reasons, this is just what Dubie ought to be doing. First, he’s taking advantage of the Democrats delay. Second, he’s trying to do what Gov. Jim Douglas did in his last two elections – create the appearance of inevitability, make it the conventional wisdom that “Dubie can’t lose.”

Harder to do against either Shumlin or Racine than against Douglas opponents Gaye Symington and Scudder Parker, two of the more inept statewide candidates (and not just in this state) of recent years. But that doesn’t mean Dubie shouldn’t try. For him, the effort is like chicken soup; even if it doesn’t help, it couldn’t hurt.

Perhaps more amazing than Democrats acting like grown-ups, so are the Progressive Party leaders. Party Chair Martha Abbott abandoned her own candidacy for governor to support…well, to oppose Dubie, though she was apparently not quite grown up enough to endorse anyone, or even, in her statement on the party’s web site (and in the Burlington Free Press) to mention the word “Democrat.”

Still, it was a more politically productive maneuver than an actual Abbott campaign for governor would have been. Nor is Abbott the only Prog venturing into adulthood these days. Anthony Pollina, who ran for governor as a Progressive in 2000 and as a sort-of Progressive (technically an independent) two years ago, ran in the Democratic primary for a state senate seat in Washington County. He won.

Are these signs of a future rapprochement or even merger between the Dems and the Progs?

Not yet. It would be interesting to see, however, if a Governor Shumlin or Governor Racine would appoint Abbott or another Prog to a senior administration position. If that happens, rapprochement/merger discussions might follow.

And now for something that is not as completely different as it first seems. This little outdoor vignette will circle back onto policy and politics.

As has been noted before on this site, the News Guy likes to go fishing, and did so the other day on the Black River (the one in the Northeast Kingdom, not the one that runs through Springfield).

The Black is a beautiful River. There’s plenty of access. Most of it is easy to wade. It is, in short, almost the perfect river for state and local tourism officials to market to anglers in nearby states, and as far away as New York City and New Jersey. Come to the placid, pastoral, easy-going Northeast Kingdom, bring your money, and enjoy a great trout stream.

Just one little problem: the Black is not a great trout stream. Not any more. It was “once considered one of Vermont’s great brown trout streams,” according to Vermont Trout Streams, a guide edited by Lawton Weber and published by Northern Cartographic (2002). “Sadly,” the  guide continues,  “that can no longer be considered the case,” thanks largely to a ”combination of intensive logging and farming practices over the last 30 years.”

Another way to put it is that the fishery degraded because of not enough government regulation.

The Black, alas, is not alone. Most Vermont rivers contain fewer wild trout and other species than they did a few decades ago, and in most cases the main reason is that logging and farming polluted the water, silted over the spawning beds, or denuded the streambanks of the shade that kept rivers cool enough for trout.

There is an economic as well as an ecological price to be paid here. Mediocre trout streams draw far fewer visitors than good ones. That means fewer customers for hotels, restaurants, shops and gas stations. Some of those visitors might have decided to move into the state, bringing money with them, possibly hiring workers.

But in some cases, only if they could live near a great trout stream.

To be sure, maybe it was all worth it. Perhaps the lax regulation allowed farmers and loggers to produce more wealth than the state has given up by not being able to attract as many tourists toting rod and reel. That’s probably impossible to figure out. What is known is that logging and farming are an increasingly small percentage of the state’s economy while tourism and outdoor recreation are growing.

Either way, the point here is that regulation has its economic benefits as well as its costs, and de-regulating can entail an economic loss. For instance, if all those wind towers are erected near the Long Trail on Lowell Mountain, will some hikers from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut decide they’d rather backpack in Maine or the Adirondacks? Wherever they go, some of those folks spend lots of money.

Again, it’s hard to know. But maybe it should be thought about, especially as the candidates propose easing or at least streamlining the regulatory process. Dubie has taken the lead here, calling for less regulation. All three candidates say they’d like to speed up the permitting process for developers, and all say their proposed changes can be put into effect without hurting the environment.

Maybe they can, but it could well depend on just what they want to deregulate. And how they propose to deregulate it.

(Oh, like most Vermont rivers, the Black is not a terrible trout stream. The tally that day for four hours of fishing was one decent-sized rainbow, one smallish but feisty brookie, a few missed strikes. Fine when the river is a 20 minute drive from home, but not good enough to attract folks from away).

The News Guy will not take a Labor Day holiday, but will – appropriately — discuss some of the candidate tax claims and counter-claims, especially as they relate to who might get much and who might get little.

The fight is on, and it promises to be a humdinger.

Attack and counter-attack. Quick response. Thrust and parry. Jab and hook. Give no ground or quarter. The best defense is…well, you get the picture.

All of which is lots of fun, but threatens to obscure the meaningful substantive differences between Republican Brian Dubie and either Peter Shumlin or Doug Racine.

In fact, “obscure,” may understate the case. “Pervert” could be more appropriate. The barbs each side is throwing at the other seem designed to convince voters that the opposition is extremist: that the Democrat would raise everybody’s taxes; that Dubie would permit the poor to starve on the sidewalks.

Not hardly.

As mentioned here the other day, the winner will be governor, not emperor. Even if Shumlin/Racine wanted to raise everybody’s taxes, the Legislature would not. Nor would it allow the poor to starve on the sidewalks.

Besides, the Democrats, who are prudent, do not want to raise everybody’s (or anybody’s) taxes, and Dubie, who is decent, does not want the poor to suffer at all, much less starve on the sidewalks.

“People who depend on vital state services are not going to be abandoned by state government,” said Dubie campaign spokesperson Kate Duffy.

Even the semi-defensible attacks are a bit over the top. There is some justification for Shumlin to argue that Dubie’s economic policies would lead to “deficits, unending deficits, tax cuts for the wealthiest Vermonters and budgets that don’t balance.”  Dubie’s determination to cut taxes and his vagueness about what programs he would cut do complicate the budget-balancing task.

But in addition to redundancy (deficits are “budgets that don’t balance”), the attack ignores Dubie’s pledge that tax cuts “won’t happen in one big step or one year,” but would be “incremental.”

Similarly, Dubie may not be dead wrong when he claims the Democrats have “only two solutions for the challenges we face: more government spending and higher taxes.” Both Shumlin and Racine are on record in the past favoring new programs and higher spending. But while they still favor  some new state initiatives, they are not for higher taxes.

Besides, there’s another candidate who proposes new government spending: Brian Dubie. The jobs plan in his “Pure Vermont” document calls for the state to “increase support for (Vermont Economic Development Authority’s) highly successful interest rate subsidy program,” “ increase public investment in the new Technology Lending Program,” “add support for (Small Business Development Center) counseling,” and create an investment tax credit.

All that costs money. Yet the heart of Dubie’s campaign is to hold the state budget to spending increases of  two percent a year. Because revenue is projected to rise at a higher rate, a Dubie Administration could then cut income taxes by a total of $240 million over four years.

This means, said  Duffy, that Dubie’s plan “is not making any cuts.” State spending, she said, would continue to rise, just more slowly than it has been rising, and more slowly than revenue would rise.

Dubie’s arithmetic is correct, except that he first pledges to close the projected $112 million deficit for the coming Fiscal Year (2012). That would require a spending cut of more than 9 percent, creating a new base. Increasing spending by two percent a year for the next four years on top of that new base would mean that spending would fall by an annual rate of about three-quarters of a percent over a five-year period. Extend the same policy out another five years, and spending does go up, but only at an average annual rate of slightly more than one percent.

That might be the smallest growth rate of state spending in decades, if not a century, raising questions about how realistic the plan is. Dubie claimed that in the early 1990s, Gov. Howard Dean actually level-funded (no increase) spending over a three-year period, a harsher reduction than Dubie’s proposed two percent growth.

Not really. Check the esoteric document available from the Joint Fiscal Office web site’s “Appropriations” page,called “Budget History FY 83-present.” It shows that while the General Fund budget actually went down for one year under Dean, it then started up again, and over a five-year period it rose by an annual rate of 3.4 percent a year.

That document provides other interesting information, both casting doubt on the assertion that Dean really “level-funded” spending and confirming that budgeting is a creative art. In those same recession years that Dean was spending less out of the General Fund, some new expenditures are recorded in the Transportation Fund.

Could it be that the state was using Transportation Fund money (financed from gasoline taxes, auto registration, etc) for non-transportation purposes? The document suggests, but does not prove, that the answer to that question is in the affirmative.

If so, it would not be unusual, in Vermont or elsewhere. One reason for that $112 million projected shortfall for the next Fiscal Year, for instance, is that the Legislature and Gov. Jim Douglas have been effectively filching from the Education Fund by not transferring into it as much General Fund money as the law required. (Legislatures and governors, who make laws, can change them as an alternative to obeying them). Reached at home where he did not have access to his records, Joel Cook, the executive director of the Vermont National Education Association, estimated that the shortfall was at least $50 million.

If the Legislature doesn’t repay that (as it said it would) or come up with enough money again this year, the Education Fund could be short tens of millions of dollars. That would require either deep cuts in school spending or substantial increases in local property taxes.

This poses a potential political problem for Dubie. He wants to cut everybody’s income tax rate by about a third, reducing the top rate from nine to six percent and the lower rates comparably. That’s good politics; everybody likes lower taxes.

But the Democrats will try to convince voters that the result would be higher property taxes, which are the taxes Vermonters really dislike. Democrats are already making that argument as well as claiming that, in Racine’s words, Dubie’s “numbers just don’t add up.”

“He wants to add money for various business promotion efforts…but he wants to cut taxes,” Racine said in a telephone interview. “This sounds like the federal budget discussion. Make promises of higher spending for business and lower taxes for everybody. That’s Washington. We don’t do that here in Vermont.”

That’s harsh, but standard political rhetoric. What came out of the Dubie campaign late yesterday may have crossed the line from standard to…well, to  false. In a statement released yesterday afternoon, Dubie said Racine had wanted to use money from the state’s “Rainy Day Fund” to “expand government-run services,” and that he opposed the “Challenges for Change” plan to make government more efficient.

The first of those accusations is simply incorrect. Racine has suggested dipping into the reserve funds, but only to support existing social service programs, not to “expand” government service. The second charge is minimally defensible, but a stretch. Racine supported “Challenges for Change” during this year’s legislative session, voting for it at least twice,  though he voted against the final Fiscal Year 2011 budget which incorporated “Challenges.”

“Fundamentally, Brian is a decent man,” Racine said. “If he wants to disagree with me, that’s fine. But don’t be deceitful.”

It could be a long two months.

School starts this week (where it didn’t already start), as does – despite this year’s weird delay – Vermont’s general election campaign.

The two are related.

Whether they should be is a matter of legitimate disagreement. Some argue that education should not be “politicized.” Perhaps not. But it always has been and always will be, if only (and not only) because education accounts for more state and local tax dollars than any other function of government.

And this year, there’s little doubt that Republican Brian Dubie and either Democrat, Peter Shumlin or Doug Racine, will have very different ideas about schools and how to pay for them.

So the News Guy today begins a series of several connected (though not consecutive) posts about Vermont schools – what’s wrong with them and what’s right; how much they cost and how they’re financed; what the candidates are saying about them.

Consider this post a general introduction, but one that will pose some impolite if not downright insolent questions, starting with this one: is the whole “school reform” movement embraced by both liberals and conservatives – the one calling for more transparency, accountability, and innovation – a lot of hooey?

Especially, perhaps, in Vermont, where according to the standards by which American schools are judged, the schools are quite good.

Some qualification: That question is a question, not an allegation or even a suggestion. Nor should it imply opposition to transparency, accountability or innovation, just some doubts about how those values are applied to American public schools.

And those italicized words two paragraphs above are emphasized because there is a plausible case to be made that schools in all 50 states aren’t very good, that American public education has become so preoccupied by process that it does not adequately transmit knowledge. (To be examined in a future post).

Though it received little attention, the State Board of Education on August 17 voted to adopt “Common Core State Standards” in math and English, actually a national standard promoted by the U.S. Department of Education, precisely the kind of step urged by “school reform” advocates.

At first glance, at least, this policy might be a step toward transmitting more knowledge. But as the Board acknowledged this transition “will certainly come with cost,” as schools and the State Education Department junk their old curriculum programs and the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) testing they have been using for years.

How much cost? The board didn’t say. But with the state likely to cut back on its share of school funding, any cost increase seems likely to fall on property taxes.

That’s one reason to be wary of school reform, and not the only one in Vermont. Earlier this summer, to qualify for $1.2 million in federal aid, the Burlington school district fired Joyce Irvine as principal of the Integrated Arts Academy. By almost all accounts Irvine was an excellent principal, but the school was “failing,” as measured by test scores, and the federal rules required a rough response – such as firing the principal – as a condition of more aid.

But the school did not “fail” because Irvine was a bad principal. It “failed” because it is chock full of children from poor families and immigrant children who do not speak English. Of course those kids do poorly in standardized tests.

There is only one word to describe Irvine’s dismissal: stupid. Not that the Burlington school officials were stupid; they did what they had to do to get the money they thought they needed. The whole structure is stupid, raising an interesting question: is school reform going to teach children that stupidity is the path to success?

None of this means that schools could not and should not be better, nor that, in Vermont, they might be cheaper. But it does raise questions about the wisdom (lack of stupidity?) of some of the “school reform” movement’s specific proposals.

One pet idea of some school reformers can be ignored– vouchers, or “school choice” as its promoters prefer, under which all parents would get vouchers to send their children to any public, private, or parochial school. This will not happen. It has fervent and well-financed devotees. But it is dead.

Who says? The American people. Voucher plans were put to public referenda in ten locations, including such large states as California and Michigan, in the 1990s. The results were clear. Even though in every case the early polls predicted easy approval, voters rejected all ten by large margins.

No, the pro-voucher side was not outspent. Instead the voters learned something during the campaigns. What they learned was that in the final analysis the “choice” (Americans love choice, which explains those early poll results) lies not with the parents or children, but with the private schools that taxpayer-funded vouchers would support. If it is not discriminating on the basis of race, religion, sex (or, in some states, sexual orientation), a private school may accept or reject any applicant for any reason or for none at all.

With few exceptions, the voucher advocates know they’ve lost. That’s why they’ve retreated to their drop-back position, charter schools. These are public schools operated by private (including for-profit) entities which are exempt from the some of the restrictions and requirements applied to conventional public schools.

Charter schools have not been rejected by the public. Furthermore, some of them seem to be quite good.

But others are quite bad, and on balance standardized tests reveal no convincing evidence that charter schools are any better than regular public schools. A report last year by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO)found that “a decent fraction of charter schools, 17 percent, provide superior education opportunities for their students. Nearly half…have results that are no different from the local public school options and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their students would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.”

In general, studies have found that students who benefit most from charter schools are poor, minority, children whose alternative is an inner-city school, often in a troubled neighborhood. There are, for all practical purposes, no such schools in Vermont. Still, education reformers recommend establishing charter schools around the state.

A good idea? Or an effort to fix something that ain’t broken?

One more observation before ending this introductory post, an observation for which no special expertise about education is needed. If improving schools is the object, making war on the teachers makes no sense.

This does not mean that teachers or their union should be coddled or granted every wish. The National Education Association is a union like any other. It always asks for more than it can or should (or knows it will) get. In this whiney society, teachers tend to be whinier than most, their closest competitors being building contractors, hunters, and farmers, the last of whom have somewhat more justification for their complaints.

Still teachers are  the employees of the entire community, and dissing your employees is not the way to get the most out of them. Like firing a good principal, it’s just plain stupid.

Yet some folks seem to get their jollies by bashing the teaching profession. One wonders where (or if) they went to school.

He'll debate

No, Brian Dubie is not trying to wiggle his way out of debates with his Democratic opponent by arguing that the five independent candidates for governor deserve to join them.

Oh, he thinks they do deserve to join them. But he understands that it isn’t up to him to set the debate rules.

“In theory,” said Dubie campaign spokeswoman Kate Duffy, “Brian does think it’s fair for every candidate whose name is on the ballot to have a chance to…participate in the debate process. But we have not made that a condition to our participation in any debate. We are coming to the debates we have been invited to.”

So there will be two-man debates between Dubie and whoever ends up with the Democratic nomination.

(Concealed Editor: ‘You mean two-person debates, don’t you, because Deb Markowitz could still win that final count of last Tuesday’s primary?’ Response: ‘OK, OK, but it’s more likely to be Peter Shumlin or Doug Racine).

(And for your datebooks, the sponsors and dates of the debates to which Dubie has been invited, Duffy said, are: Vermont Public Radio September 15; AARP at the Doubletree Hotel in South Burlington September 26; Vermont Press Association at St. Michael’s College October 3; Vermont Public Television October 7; WPTZ-TV at Echo Center  October 19; WCAX-TV October 23).

This little flapette emerged because Dubie has a history of being, shall we say, less than enthusiastic about debating his opponents (as Shay Totten of Seven Days documented last year),  and because during a press conference the other day, Dubie indicated he looked favorably on the idea of inviting at least one of the independent candidates to a debate.

But even if Dubie doesn’t want to debate (and there is no evidence that this is the case), he wouldn’t dare try to use the five fringe candidates as his excuse. If he said he would only debate if one or more of the other five got to participate, no one would believe him. Voters would just assume that he was afraid to debate his Democratic opponent one-on-one. It would be politically foolish, and there is no reason to think Dubie a political fool.

In short, the narrow question – will there be debates between the major-party candidates for governor? – is a non-story. There will be. What remains is the broader question – should the five independent candidates who qualified for a spot on the ballot be invited to debates?

Dubie apparently thinks so. His view, Duffy said, is that “debates are a very important part of the campaign process, and he would like everyone to have a chance to have voices heard.”

Who can argue with that? Is this America, or what? No one has the right to silence anyone else or to prevent dissident voices from being heard. The people have the right to be exposed to all points of view.

On the other hand, this being America, anyone may argue with anything. This being America, no voice may be silenced by the state. But (this still being America) no one may be forced to provide a platform for a voice he or she judges unworthy of being heard.

Let’s understand at the outset that no voice is being silenced. The five independent candidates have web sites which any voter who has an Internet connection or a nearby public library (and that’s everyone) can click into and read to his/her heart’s content. Furthermore, all five may go into any town in this state, pass out leaflets, make a speech on the village square, visit the local radio station and weekly newspaper office, or shake hands in the coffee shop.

In other words, they may campaign. They have that right.

But there is no right to be invited by private entities that want to sponsor debates. They have rights, too, including the right to choose which candidates to invite. While there would be nothing wrong if one such entity wanted to sponsor a debate and invite all seven candidates, there are good reasons for inviting only Dubie and the Democrat.

Only one of those two will become governor. These debates are public services, and the public wants to see and hear those two so they can choose between them. Bringing another one, two, or five candidates who can’t possibly win only takes time away from the two viable contenders.

Which might be worthwhile if one of the fringe candidates had anything interesting to say. Campaigns are primarily political; their purpose is to choose the office-holder. But they are partly intellectual. If a candidate who can’t win can nevertheless inform or enlighten – such as, say, the eminent biologist Barry Commoner did when he ran for president in 1980 – that candidate ought to get a little more platform time than one merely mouthing ideological clichés or gratifying his/her ego.

Alas, this year’s five independent candidates for governor fall far short of the Commoner standard. This judgment has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with their policies. Indeed, the News Guy finds a few of their proposals rather appealing, But they are all – based on their web sites and other statements – intellectually  unimpressive.

They are:

–Cris Ericson, a one-issue candidate whose issue is legalizing marijuana and whose “official campaign slogan is ‘Please! People Lovingly Educating and Saving Everyone.”

–Emily Peyton, whose platform combines some reasonable proposals (a state bank) with others such as a “Vermont Unit of exchange (VU) to protect our state from Federal Insolvency” which might politely be described as dreamy.

–Ben Mitchell also has no web site but has some connection to the Liberty Union Party, which does (and who is technically running as the candidate of the Socialist Party). In an interview with Seven Days, Mitchell conceded that he was “not running to win (but just) sitting around for office.” Mitchell calls himself a socialist, but goes into no detail.

–Dan Feliciano who wants to “cut waste…while improving productivity,” as does everyone.

–Dennis Steele, who wants Vermont to secede from the United States. Vermont is not going to do any such thing. On his web site, Steele proclaims that, “the biggest challenge facing Vermont is neither jobs, health care, energy, nor education but rather the American Empire.  The American Empire is the largest, most powerful, most materialistic, most environmentally destructive, most racist, most militaristic, most violent empire of all-time.  Not only is it owned, operated, and controlled by Wall Street, Corporate America, and the Israeli Lobby, but it is unsustainable, ungovernable, and, therefore, unfixable.”

And he expects to be taken seriously?

They all have a right to campaign. The rest of us have the right to refuse to pay them any mind.

But before we leave, a political-grammatical note on the race that’s shaping up as perhaps the state’s meanest, the one between incumbent Republican (though elected as a Democrat) Auditor Tom Salmon and Democrat Doug Hoffer.

On Salmon’s campaign web site, he said that during the Democratic primary campaign against Ed Flanagan, Hoffer “came across as self-righteous and nasty with his dramatic criticisms of Ed and I.”

Elected officials should set a better example for the young (and for that matter the not-so-young). That should have been “Ed and me,” Mr. Auditor.

As for Hoffer, perhaps he could use a proofreader. His web site talked about something happening “throughout sstate government.”

Note: The News Guy will NOT be on Vermont Public Television’s ‘Vermont This Week’ this evening after all. What with all the political turmoil, the station decided that instead of the usual mid-afternoon taping, it would air the show live at 7:30, which presented a scheduling conflict.

Answer: Yes, and historic, too. If not the closest major-party, major-office primary anywhere, ever, it’s close. If nothing else, the Democratic primary is more fun to talk about than the economy, the sundry wars, or, for you Red Sox fans (one of which the News Guy confesses he is not, save when they play the Yankees), baseball. This election has it all: drama, suspense, even a little humor. So enjoy.

Question 2: Is having no winner (yet) bad for the Democrats, meaning good for Republican Brian Dubie?

Answer: Yes. But, then again, no.

Sure, the Democrats would be happier to have an undisputed winner, rather than one guy (Peter Shumlin) leading another (Doug Racine) by 192 votes, and only some 500 votes ahead of the third-place finisher (Deb Markowitz).

The Dems had hoped to hit the ground sprinting Wednesday, raising money and debating Dubie. The first debate had been scheduled for tomorrow evening (the News Guy was to have ‘liveblogged’ it from on site in South Burlington) but it has been postponed. Democrats think and Republicans fear that either Shumlin or Racine (and perhaps Markowitz, too) is a better debater than Dubie, who has a history of trying to meet his opponents one-on-one as rarely as possible. Now the Democrats will have to wait.

Question 3: For how long?

Answer: At least until Friday, maybe until Tuesday, or maybe even for another week after that. Racine issued a statement Wednesday saying he would not concede until the “official results” are released, which he said could come as early as Friday or as late as next Tuesday

Those official results could differ from the unofficial count showing Shumlin ahead. Early counts are often bedeviled by transcription errors, typographical errors, failures to communicate. Over the next few days, town clerks and other election officials will edit themselves and do some recapitulating. Who knows what their final count will be?

Whatever it is, both the second and third place finishers will be close enough to the leader to demand a recount, which could take another week or so.

Question 4: Wait a minute. Didn’t the last statewide recount take closer to two weeks?

Answer: Yes, but that was a general election, for Auditor in 2006, in which the top two candidates got 223,438 between them. Tuesday, slightly more than 72,000 people voted in the Democratic primary, a good turnout, but fewer ballots to count.

Question 5: But won’t another week’s delay be really bad for the Democrats?

Answer: Yes. Or, then again, maybe no. It would cost the eventual winner more valuable time, and it would be a real impediment to fund-raising. On the other hand, the delay would also keep Dubie out of the news and off-stage, or at least away from the center of the stage.

That’s where the top Democrats would be, right in the spotlight, where they are still looking good, acting like grown-ups and treating one another with civility. Shumlin did release a victory statement of sorts yesterday, but it was restrained. So far, the Democrats are neither strutting nor whining.

Question 6: How does anyone know that a recount would be more accurate?

Answer: Because it’s overseen by the courts and operates under much more rigorous standards. Each candidate can have a representative on site (the Washington County courthouse in Montpelier) to challenge any ballot that seems unusual and to monitor the tally. A recount would remove all reasonable doubt that the winner really got more votes than any of his or her opponents.

Question 7: So why not just agree on a recount right now?

Answer: Not a bad question. In fact, unless the leader has a margin of at least 400 or 500 votes,  it might be good politics for whoever wins the official tally to be the one calling for a recount. There will be one anyway if either opponent demands it, the chances are that the leader will still be ahead when the recount is over, and both the candidate and the party will appear public-spirited and generous.

Question 8: Aren’t Democrats worried that all those (mostly) young volunteers who worked so hard for one of the top three will be even more disheartened if one of the others ends up with the nomination, and therefore might not work for the nominee in the fall campaign?

Answer: Yes, and that’s a reasonable worry. But first of all there’s nothing they can do about it, and second it doesn’t loom as a major problem. These candidates, bland if enlightened, did not arouse much emotion. Even most of those who learned to love Candidate A didn’t seem to work up much animosity for Candidates B and C. Most of those campaign volunteers are first and foremost Democrats who want the Democratic nominee to win. They may have to work through a week or so of petulance and grumbling. But most of them will be knocking on doors for (fill in the nominee’s name) by mid-September.

Question 9: How did the Democrats get themselves into this pickle to begin with? Couldn’t they have locked all five candidates in a room and read them the riot act until at least two of them dropped out to seek another office or wait for another day?

Answer: It doesn’t work that way any more, if it ever did. Not just in Vermont, either., It hardly works that way anywhere.

Chicago Democrats or Dallas Republicans? Maybe. But that’s about it. No state party committee, and certainly not Vermont’s, has anywhere near the kind of power over ambitious candidates, who increasingly select themselves. The threat, ‘drop out or else,’ to any candidate would be met by the question, ‘or else what?’

At which point the threatener would have nothing to say. So nobody threatens.

OK, that’s enough questions for now. But remember, this is a good show our pols are putting on for the next few days. Enjoy it.

Scroll down for the earlier version of today’s post.

And don’t forget: The News Guy will be on Vermont Public Television’s ‘Vermont This Week’ Friday.

A Democratic governor, that’s what kind.

Whatever their differences – and there are some – all the Democrats propose to govern the state as one would expect a Democrat would govern. Unlike Brian Dubie, the unopposed Republican one of them will run against after Tuesday’s primary, not one of them promises to cut taxes.

Which does not mean any would raise taxes. Only one even dares to mention the possibility, and the possibilities he mentions are either temporary or selective or both.

So to say that the Democrats would govern like Democrats is not to say that they would govern as Republican caricatures of Democrats, the kind who would make the rich pay higher taxes to finance more generous services for the poor.

These are five center-left Democrats. One or two are a tad lefter and one or two a tad centerer than the others. But as is often the case, Candidate A might be slightly to the left of Candidate B on one issue, but slightly to the right of him/her on another. So where one puts them along the ideological spectrum (assuming that the ideological spectrum is important) depends on which issues any voter finds most important.

From one perspective, for instance, Doug Racine might be considered the most liberal of the contenders. He’s the one who’s open to tapping into the “Rainy Day Fund” or even imposing a temporary tax hike (though he doesn’t think it’s needed now) to avoid budget cuts harmful to the poor. He’s even suggested making sure Internet sales are subject to the state sales tax, and perhaps a special tax on sugar-heavy processed snacks and sodas.

But Racine’s overall policy outlook is relatively restrained. He proposes no big spending programs. Instead he wants to “get back to basics” by being a governor who is “directly involved in every phase of our economic development strategy,” starting with the selection of “the right Secretary of Commerce and Community Development.”

Racine, then, seems to be pledging to improve the state’s economy less by a specific economic program than by his own forceful leadership, with which he hopes to energize state government.

By contrast, Matt Dunne’s rhetoric is unabashedly pro-business. His economic policy paper is titled, “The Innovation State: a Business Plan for Vermont,” and he even accepts the Republican complaint that the state’s economy is held back by “complicated regulations and taxes (and) burdensome costs.”

But Dunne’s specific policy proposals are possibly the most audacious of the bunch (if not always the most comprehensible, at least to those to whom power point presentations remain exotic). He’s calling on the state to issue two separate revenue bonds, each for roughly $400 million, one to finance renewable energy production, the other to bring high-speed Internet service “to the last mile” of every road in the state.

Similarly, Susan Bartlett, the self-described “moderate” in the race, has one of the more novel ideas. Arguing that “innovation and entrepreneurs have always been a part of Vermont,” and could be “true job creators,” Bartlett would establish an ”Office of Innovation and Intellectual Property” to “coordinate the various pieces of our business support organizations (and) educate regional economic development groups about the potential of intellectual property.”

The other two candidates, arguably the most establishment as well as (by the conventional political wisdom) the front-runners, exhibit a comparable mix of caution and daring. Deb Markowitz’s “Jump Start VT” (she does not use spaces between the words; there are depths of degradation to which this web site will not descend) isn’t just an economic policy document. It’s an all-purpose laundry list of positions on issues ranging from ethnic diversity to education.

No sweeping, big-spending programs, but a few bold moves. Markowitz would emulate New Hampshire and require young Vermonters to stay in school until they are 18 unless they have graduated and she would take state money out of big banks that don’t grant adequate credit to Vermont businesses.

Peter Shumlin does have one big-spending plan, $33 million to provide “universal pre-kindergarten education” statewide. But he would pay for it, according to his economic policy (“Vision for Vermont,” spaces in the original) by releasing the state’s imprisoned “non-violent offenders back into society,” which he claims would save $40 million.

Shumlin’s numbers seem to be accurate. His confidence that the Legislature will agree to such a large-scale release of convicted criminals may be misplaced.

As any Vermonter who has been watching television in recent weeks knows, Shumlin also wants to bring a single-payer health care financing system to the state. So does Dunne. Racine favors a similar approach, though he doesn’t say so on his campaign web site, calling only for “universal” coverage. That’s what Bartlett and Markowitz want, too.

Does this mean that if one of these candidates gets elected, Vermonters can expect a universal health insurance system?

No, at least not for a while. The single-payer option is especially iffy, being, for the moment, illegal until 2017 under the new national health law. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the U.S. Senate champion of a “Medicare for all” plan, has said he will try next year to get Congress to move that date up to 2014. Congress seems unlikely to comply, and at any rate, 2014 is two years beyond the term of the governor to be elected this November.

Health care is not the only area of near-unanimity among the Democrats. They all want to bring high-speed Internet to everyone.  They all want to provide small businesses with more credit options. They all want Vermonters to produce and consume more “sustainable” energy, created neither from fossil fuels nor from the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, which they all think should shut down when its license expires in 2012. They all want to use the state’s higher education institutions to help spark a knowledge-based “green” economy.

All five also clutter their position papers with stale bromides. “I want every family to know that if they encourage their children to do well in school and to work hard, they will be better off,” proclaims Racine. “To move together as a state we will need to work together,” intones Markowitz. “Build a Vermont future that is a global leader in the innovation economy, based on a foundation of authentic communities, strategic location, and our premium Vermont brand,” says Dunne.

If pressed, all five would probably endorse motherhood and apple pie, too.

Another commonality is that, like most candidates these days, the Democrats (Shumlin’s pre-kindergarten plan being the exception) make little effort to provide the nitty-gritty details of how much their proposals will cost and how they would pay for them.

In fairness, most of their plans wouldn’t cost much, and they all suggest trimming some state programs. But, just to take one example, Dunne does not seem to have asked an economist to run the numbers on how (or whether) the revenues from Internet and energy users would pay off those $400 million bonds. The other contenders are comparably vague about how they would pay for everything they suggest.

It may be too early to condemn the candidates for this fuzziness. At this point, only Democratic primary voters care what the candidates say, and they are saying enough to give those voters an idea of how each of them would try to govern the state. Each is presenting a vision. Whether the numbers add up isn’t all that important yet.

After all, they are running for governor, not emperor. Governors do not promulgate programs. They suggest them to the Legislature, which will create nothing it can’t pay for. Almost certainly, that means pay for without raising taxes, which the candidates (Racine’s limited exceptions noted above) don’t want to do, either. Like presidents, governors not only don’t get everything they want, they end up not even asking for everything they really want.

It’s still helpful for the voters to know what the governor-to-be really wants.

This generosity of spirit will not last long. Whoever wins the Democratic primary and Brian Dubie will both be pressed harder to tell the voters how they will pay for new programs or for tax cuts. But that’s for next week.

Steel yourselves for heartbreak, you teeming hordes who clicked in today expecting to read the post advertised last Friday – an in-depth analysis of the economic plans of the five Democratic candidates for governor.

Only four of those plans are ready. The fifth, from Doug Racine, was scheduled to be released Wednesday, but scheduling problems, said his campaign, forced a postponement until Monday. Out of fairness, then, the analysis will be put off until next week’s only scheduled post, again on Friday.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to say today. In fast-paced, ever-changing Vermont, the news never stops, so neither does the News Guy.

As noted in another recent post (Guilt By Association, July 27) finding politicians “guilty by association” is acceptable. We’re not sending them to jail, just holding them responsible for their choice of friends.

Earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders chose as his friends an organization called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), which inspired him and two other senators to introduce legislation to phase out taxpayer-supported scientific experiments on chimpanzees.

The senator might want to reconsider.

Not that he or PCRM are necessarily wrong on the chimpanzee issue. According to Sanders, the animals are “no longer needed for research,” and the fact that only the U.S. and Gabon continue to hold chimpanzees for testing indicates that he has a point.

But chimps are not PCRM’s only issue. The organization and its senior medical and research advisor John Pippin, who was quoted supporting Sanders’ bill, also  advocate malariotherapy, or giving patients malaria to treat AIDS and other diseases.

In correspondence that the Cincinnati Beacon said was written by Dr. Eric L Matteson, chair of the Division of rheumatology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, Matteson said the World Health Organization has condemned such treatment as “charlatanism.”

(Dr. Matteson’s assistant, Beth Hielscher, said Dr. Matteson was on vacation until next week, and could not be reached to confirm that the correspondence was in fact his. But the Beacon a feisty independent weekly, printed what appeared to be copies of correspondence on the letterheads of both Matteson and Pippin).

There have been other allegations that PCRM is more interested in promoting vegetarianism than in sound scientific research, and that it is allied with PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) whose scientific reliability is also open to question.

When asked about PCRM, Sanders press secretary Michael Briggs emailed that the Senator and his aides “worked primarily with the Humane Society,” and were not aware of the controversy surrounding PCRM.

Another Vermont politician who might want to reconsider an association is Brian Dubie. In the financial disclosure of his campaign for governor, the Republican lieutenant governor candidly reported that the $3,050 his campaign spent with Stormo & Associates of Caledonia, Michigan, was for “opposition research.”

Nothing wrong with oppo research. All candidates do it. Nothing wrong with Stormo & Associates, either, unless one is running for statewide office in Vermont, where one would probably seek to play down any connections with the farthest right fringe of the Republican Party.

Which seems to be where Jeff Stormo is. He did not return a phone call yesterday, but there is ample evidence (see for instance here) that he is closely allied with Dick and Betsy DeVos, the very active, very wealthy (he’s the heir to the Amway fortune who ran for governor in 2006, largely financing his own campaign to circumvent Michigan campaign finance reporting laws), and very conservative couple who squabble almost as frequently with Michigan’s moderate Republicans as they do with liberals and Democrats.

Two of the DeVos’s major issues are opposition to abortion and support for an organization called All Children Matter (Betsy DeVos is or at least was on its board) which supports school voucher systems which would largely replace the existing public school systems.

Perfectly defensible positions, but not ones to run on and win in Vermont. The Democratic candidate, whoever he or she may turn out to be, is likely to try to make Dubie look as right-wing as possible. Here Dubie has provided him or her with some ammo.

And speaking of the Democrats, they all appeared on a televised debate on Channel 3 last night. Channel 3 lost.

Not because there was anything wrong with the questions. There was something wrong with the setting, outdoors at an Addison County fair in New Haven, with fairgoers making noise and several obnoxious children (some of whom were at least 30 years old) jumping up and waving their hands behind the candidates as they spoke.

The candidates were all fine, though Peter Shumlin and Doug Racine were clearly the most impressive on this occasion.

With only 11 days to go until the primary, Democrats are steeling themselves for a paltry turnout. If in fact that comes to pass, one reason will be both the weakness and the strength of the field of candidates.

The weakness is that none of the five has really caught on. Not one of them stands out as especially inspiring. If there is a surge for any one of them, it is well hidden.

The strength is that they all come across as reasonable, enlightened, reassuring. Any one of them seems as though he or she could be a good candidate and a competent governor, maybe even a very good governor.

Perhaps strangely, this may hold down the turnout. Picture the typical Democratic voter, who would gladly support any of the five in November. This voter will have to do some work and some thinking to decide which one to support. Worse, to vote for one person the voter likes requires him or her to vote against another one, two, or more the voter also likes. What a quandary. It all creates a psychological disincentive to vote. Let the other folks decide.

Still, if the turnout is low, and the pundits, chatterers and grouchy letter-to-the-editor writers want to blame someone (assuming for the moment that ‘blame’ is the right reaction), don’t blame the mid-summer date or the candidates. Just blame the non-voter. Everyone should know when Primary Day is. Furthermore, early voting has been open since July 12. No one is disenfranchised.

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.

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.

First, some housekeeping:

Look up to your right, above where it says, “Pages” and below the blue bar.

There’s the link to the VT Digger web sit.

The News Guy and VT Digger are going to be doing a little more cooperating. The News Guy will write some stories for VT Digger and occasionally run stories from the VT Digger site on this one.

Today’s (Wednesday’s) post originally appeared at VT Digger last Friday. Here it is, slightly tweaked, for News Guy readers.

What’s that? From the more perspicacious among you, one hears the question: Isn’t this cheating? After all, if we could have read this on another site some days ago, aren’t we missing out on one original post?

The defendant pleads semi-guilty with extenuating circumstances. First, this will not happen very often. Second, the News guy is now engaged in some complex, time–consuming research on a few potentially significant posts.

Oh, and OK, with the candor on which this site prides itself, yeah, this is also the time of year when a fella wants to spend a little time outside. Readers should understand. Are you Vermonters, or what?

OK, enough housekeeping. On to politics:

Some questions about the Democratic primary for governor:

–How did there get to be five (count ‘em—5) bona fide contenders?

–Didn’t anyone in the Democratic Party see that this could be a prescription for defeat and try to talk one or more of the five into running for lieutenant governor or…or whatever?

–If not, why not?

It isn’t that multi-candidate fields are unprecedented. Middlebury College political science professor Eric Davis said he could remember two occasions when several candidates vied for a major nomination in Vermont.

Six Republicans ran for the U.S. Senate nomination in 1980 when Sen. Pat Leahy was seeking his second term, and four Democrats ran for the open U.S. House seat in 1988, the one Rep. Jim Jeffords vacated to run for the Senate, Davis said.

But those were federal races. Besides, as Davis pointed out, “in both instances, the winner of the large-field primary lost the general election.”

Even if not unprecedented, five candidates for one nomination is unusual, especially because none of the five is a fringe candidate with no hope of victory. Right now in Maine, for instance, there are seven Republicans running for governor, but polls show that four of them are stuck with less than four percent of the vote with just a week to go (though with 47 percent undecided, anyone could win).

The Vermont contest starts off with no apparent front-runner. And unlike many multi-candidate fields, which feature two or three “serious” contenders and a wacko candidate or two (almost every state has its version of Vermont perennial candidate Peter Diamondstone) all five are mainstream Democrats with impressive credentials—three senior state senators, the incumbent Secretary of State, a former legislator who ran statewide once before.

Still, all that explains only what is happening, not why. To get to the ‘whys,’ return to those questions at the beginning, which can be combined into one question with a simple answer.

There are five Democrats in the race because all five wanted to run and there was no way to stop them.

“The problem with Vermont Democrats is that there’s been such a build-up of ambition after eight years of Jim Douglas that the minute he announced he wasn’t going to run, those horses were out of the barn,” said long-time Democratic strategist Steve Terry.

Despite the crowded field, from each candidate’s perspective, running now made perfect sense.

“If history any guide, whoever wins this year will end up serving at least six years,” said Davis, meaning that a politician with ambitions to be governor “really didn’t have much choice.”

Especially, Davis said, because all three Vermont seats in Washington are filled by strong incumbents who are likely to stay in office for several years. That makes the governorship the only realistic option.

So each candidate acted on his or her own, asking no one’s permission.

There’s nothing peculiar to Vermont about this phenomenon. All over the country, politics are becoming more candidate-driven, with party organizations diminishing in importance. Outside of a few outposts—Chicago, Newark, some counties in rural Texas and Kentucky—the days when a few movers and shakers made political decisions in a smoke-filled room are long gone, and not because hardly anybody smokes any more.

If Vermont ever had the kind of strong party structure where a few political leaders and major contributors could select a candidate—or scare one out of a primary race – it was long ago, Davis and Terry agreed.

“The parties never amounted a damn,” Terry said. “It’s all been individual. “

In Montpelier eateries (and drinkeries) one hears snatches of conversation wondering why party leaders didn’t “crack some heads,” as someone put it, to get one or two of the candidates out of the race. But the question seems to express a longing for a world that no longer exists, if it ever did in Vermont.

There is one report of an attempt by a few leading Democrats to urge former Sen. Matt Dunne, at 40 the youngest of the candidates, to run for lieutenant governor instead.  But Dunne said that while a few Democrats told him he’d be “a shoo-in” for lieutenant governor, “no one approached with anything remotely like strong pressure.”

Strong pressure doesn’t seem to work any more. It doesn’t even work when it does work. It is generally accepted in Democratic circles that Gov. Howard Dean pressured Sen. Peter Shumlin to run for lieutenant governor in 2002, leaving the top spot for then-Lt. Gov. Doug Racine. That avoided a primary, but both men lost anyway. Now they are two of the five contenders, along with Dunne, Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz ,and Sen. Susan Bartlett.

Both Davis and Terry said that only two Democrats –Leahy and  Dean—could possibly persuade a candidate to drop out or to seek another office.

But Leahy is running for his seventh term this year. If he had tried to push a candidate out of the race he would have risked offending that candidate and his/her supporters. No incumbent likes to upset part of his own political base.

Besides, Leahy has always kept his distance from the inner workings and internal divisions of the state’s Democratic Party. And so has Dean since he left the governorship in early 2003.

In some states there are alternative power centers that might pressure a candidate out of a race. If a Democrat in California, for instance, found that the Hispanic community was united against him, he might realizes his chances of victory were slim, and withdraw. The same would be true for a contender who offended African-Americans in Illinois, the Jewish community in New York, the United Auto Workers in Michigan, or the Roman Catholic Church in Rhode Island. In all those cases, a few carefully chosen words from a local power broker could convince someone not to run.

But Vermont has no comparable racial, ethnic, or labor constituencies. It doesn’t even have a potent big city Democratic organization because Democrats don’t control the closest thing Vermont has to a big city. And because there is no dominant industry in Vermont, there is no dominant fund-raising community.

Thanks to campaign finance laws, candidates have had to develop broad donor bases both in and out of the state. This diminishes the clout of any one contributor. Mr. Moneybags may give the candidate only $1,000. Even if he can convince a few of his friends to cough up a similar amount, he doesn’t have enough power to push anyone around.

The identifiable constituencies with some influence on Vermont Democrats – public employee and teachers unions, environmental organizations—are not political hard-ball players. The teachers union (the Vermont National Education Association) is likely to endorse one of the contenders, perhaps this week, spokesman Darren Allen said, but it made no effort to urge any candidate to drop out.

(Montpelier scuttlebutt, for what it is worth, holds that Racine or Dunne is the most likely endorsee).

Along with worrying about what Terry called a “bloodletting” that could tarnish the image of the eventual primary winner, it is the financial implications of the five-person field that Democrats worry about most.

“The winner will be financially exhausted August 24 (Primary Day),” Terry said, while Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, the unopposed Republican,  “will have more than a million in the bank.” Like other Democrats, Terry wondered whether his party’s nominee would still be able to raise money from a possibly exhausted Democratic donor base.

But Davis said he thought the Democratic winner wouldn’t have to spend much on the campaign because it made little sense to buy broadcast television time during a summer campaign that will likely end with a low-turnout primary.

“I think it might not be a good investment,” he said. “I would be surprised if a candidate spent more than $50,000 (buying television time).”

Stressing direct mail, phone banks and personal campaigning, Davis said,  a Democrat might win the primary after spending only about $350,000, perhaps keeping competitive with Dubie for the fall campaign, which should cost each candidate somewhat more than another million dollars.

Another possible bright (or at least less dark) spot for the Democrats is that five-person races don’t often remain real five-person races. Within the next few weeks, two or three of the candidates, based on poll results and fund-raising reports, are likely to pull away from the others. The also-rans will then find it harder to raise money or be taken seriously (though perhaps also to resist the temptation to go on the attack.)

“By early July, we’ll know,” Davis said.

Leaving one more question: Just what will we know?