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.

Question 1: Is this fun? Or what?

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.

So what kind of governor – based on the (sort of) detailed economic policy statements all have now unveiled – would any of these five Democratic candidates for governor be?

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.