Lots of political developments since we last dealt with them here. So let’s deal with them here.

Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie is running for governor, so Republicans will not have a primary, which they hate.

Democrats, on the other hand, must love primaries because they have so many of them. To their great joy, they will have one for governor.

Lite Gov Dubie

Great joy (for them) might not be the consequence.

(Republicans might have a primary for lieutenant governor, but that doesn’t count because, as has been noted here before, nobody cares who is lieutenant governor because nobody knows what the lieutenant governor does because the lieutenant governor doesn’t do anything).

Though assured of nomination, Dubie has to be considered an underdog for election because he is: (a) a Republican; and (b) a social issue conservative in a socially liberal state, and specifically an opponent of abortion rights in a state where most voters favor them.

That last factor might not be as big a problem as some liberals hope. The swing voters here, pro-choice Republican and independent women (and some men) are not likely to vote against Dubie over the abortion issue, being aware that he can do nothing to change the status quo. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, a woman’s right to an abortion is Constitutionally protected. The odds of the Court reversing itself in the next few years are roughly zero, making any governor’s views on the subject roughly moot.

Some pro-choice activists, to be sure, disagree, arguing that having an anti-choice gov alters the vibes. These activists are, however: (a) Democrats who won’t vote for Dubie anyway; and (b) wrong.

All the Democratic candidates agree on being pro-choice. In fact, all the Democratic candidates seem agree on just about everything, making it difficult to tell them apart without a scorecard.

At some point, the News Guy will provide that scorecard. For now, a general overview of the field is all that is needed.

This exercise will proceed on the assumption that there will be five Democratic candidates even though: (a) Right now there are three; and (b) it’s a good bet that there will end up only being three (though perhaps not the same three) or four.

The (sort of) declared three are State Senators Doug Racine of Richmond and Susan Bartlett of Hyde Park and Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz. The all-but-declared is Senate President Peter Shumlin of Putney. The fifth possibility is former State Senator Matt Dunne of Hartland.

The reason all five might not stay in the race can be summed up in one word: Money. Even in Vermont, candidates for governor need a goodly amount of it, there are only so many Democratic contributors in and out of state, and what with the recession and all, they have less to give.

Making it somewhere between uncertain and unlikely that all five will raise enough to be viable.

Markowitz and Racine have already raised enough to compete, and considering his leadership position, Shumlin might well be able to match them.

The other two? Bartlett reported no fund-raising when Markowitz and Racine did in July, but she does have a spiffy web site which, among other things, offers supporters a click to contribute. No sign of any Dunne fund-raising, and he seems not to have a campaign web site.

Besides, who is he? Well, he’s reportedly a charming and impressive fellow. But he’s a two-term state senator who has run one statewide campaign, in 2006.

He lost.

To Dubie.

Which might prompt a typical Democratic primary voter to wonder why he could beat him this time.

To be fair to Dunne, Shumlin once lost to Dubie, too. That was when Dubie first got elected, in 2002. But Shumlin had an excuse of sorts. That was a three-way race, with Progressive candidate Anthony Pollina taking enough votes away from Shumlin to elect Dubie.

Could that happen again? It could, but so far Pollina shows no signs of being interested in another statewide race (he has not actually run every two years since the Pleistocene Era; it just seems that way). No other Progressive is likely to get more than a few percent of the vote. To be sure, in a very close race, a few percent could be decisive, but without Pollina, the Progs are less of a threat.

Who’s the Dem front-runner now? Well, Markowitz has raised the most money. But Racine has a better web site and has been more aggressive. His statement after Dubie revealed that he was running, calling him “part of the Administration that has failed for seven years to deliver on the promise of new jobs,” was by far the most vigorous and politically astute coming from the Democratic contenders.

For now, call him the front-runner.

There’s one other problem facing “the other” Democrats, the ones who have not entered the race and/or raised much money, whichever two (or three?) they turn out to be. Since there’s not much disagreement on issues, there’s not much incentive for a Democratic voter to take a flyer on an underdog. It isn’t as though there’s some issue or crisis that a Matt Dunne, say, is uniquely or even unusually qualified to meet.

That’s because there is no crisis. It’s important to remember this because candidates and ideologues always have a vested interest in proclaiming one.

Not that everything is peachy keen. It is not, but the only problems that might reasonably be considered crises—the economy, climate change – are thoroughly national in character. There is nothing peculiar to Vermont about either of them. Sure, the state has a fiscal mess. But so do about 45 others, most of them worse than Vermont’s.

There is one other point to make and one more question to ask. The point is that it’s early, time for a Dunne or Bartlett to figure out how to squeeze up the middle to victory in a multi-candidate race. Time, also, for a couple of those Democrats to get together and create a de facto Gov-Lite Gov ticket.

It stops being early (herewith the pseudo-official proclamation) January 2. It starts being late March 1.

The question is: Why does anyone want to be governor? By all indications, the next governor will have to spend his/her first term raising taxes and/or cutting programs. That’s no fun. Worse, it’s a prescription for being a one-termer.

Back in 1945, when most of the real ball-players were off at war, the theretofore (and largely here to-aft) hapless Chicago Cubs met the slightly less hapless Detroit Tigers in the World Series.

Walking into the ball park for the first game, Chicago sportswriter Warren Brown was asked who would win.

“Nobody,” he said.

In the wake of Tom Salmon’s switch from the Democrats to the Republicans, it’s time to consider Vermont politics in the light of that story. Not because of what Salmon did, but because of the way he did it: not very well. He seemed pleasant and moderately articulate, but a bit wooden.

Not nearly as wooden as his prose, though. He actually said, “The Democratic Party left me,” which was a cliché 30 years ago.

But this is Vermont, which, with Howard Dean gone and Jim Douglas going, is bestridden by political mediocrities. Right now, most of the likely candidates to replace Douglas as governor have a history of either losing or most unimpressively winning. There’s not a fearsome face in the crowd.

Start with the Republicans. The front-runner to whom all will defer should he want the job is Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie.

Winner of four statewide elections. Strong record, no?

No. Dubie snuck into office in 2002 because Progressive candidate Anthony Pollina took enough votes from Democrat Peter Shumlin to allow Dubie to slip in with a plurality. Then he kept getting re-elected because: (a) He is by all evidence a nice guy; (b) His Democratic opponents were palookas; (c) Nobody cares who the lieutenant governor is.

Outside the Republican inner circle Dubie has only the tiniest personal following. If he runs, he will get the hard-core Republican vote and nothing more, unless, of course, the Democratic candidate is yet another palooka.

Or, considering how much more conservative Dubie is than the average Vermonter, maybe even if the Democratic candidate is yet another palooka. Meaning he’d probably lose.

(Digression: And doesn’t it seem that he’ll not run? The very fact that he’s taking time to think it over (assuming that’s not an act designed to make him appear modest) indicates his heart isn’t in it. After all, the only point to being lieutenant governor is to run for governor. Why hesitate?)

If Dubie doesn’t run, many Republicans will turn to State Sen. Randy Brock of Franklin County, the only Republican aside from Douglas and Dubie (and Jim Jeffords, who soon thereafter became an ex-Republican) to win statewide office since roughly the Pleistocene era. That’s a sign of strength, isn’t it?

Not really. Brock beat an incumbent Auditor of Accounts who had been caught fudging her educational credentials. Even if the evidence did not quite support the judgment “lying about” those credentials, it was close enough. Elmer Fudd could have beaten Elizabeth Ready in 2004.

Politically speaking, the Auditor of Accounts has one thing in common with the lieutenant governor: almost nobody cares who he or she is because almost nobody knows what he or she does. Substantively, there is a difference. The Auditor of Accounts actually does something. Brock apparently did it well enough.

But two years later he got beaten by Salmon, a challenger whose only credentials were having the same name as a popular former governor and being a Democrat.

Besides, Brock, who also seems to be a nice guy (based on one conversation) is even more conservative than Dubie. His conservatism does not make him completely unelectable in Vermont. But close.

Or what about Mark Snelling. Like Salmon, he’s the son of a popular former governor. But he’s a Republican, and people do care who the governor is, meaning the typical voter might examine his credentials beyond checking out his name.

His credentials are that he runs the family business and the Snelling Center, a think tank of sorts which…well, which does something having to do with looking into government and politics. Exactly what it does remains mysterious. Its impact, however, is clear: it has had none. Being the head of a think tank about which nobody thinks isn’t much of a credential.

There are a few other Republicans supposedly contemplating a run for governor, and for all anyone knows, Sens. Phil Scott , Vince Illuzzi, and Kevin Mullin might be good candidates. So might former Sen. John Bloomer. But none has ever run statewide. Only Illuzzi is widely known, and he might be too much of a maverick, and too much the economic populist, to win a Republican primary (though possibly the Republican most likely to beat a Democrat).

Oh, yes, the Democrats. Among whom we have one candidate (Sen. Doug Racine) who lost a statewide election he should have won; a potential candidate (Shumlin) who did the same, in the same year (2002); and another candidate (Sen. Susan Bartlett) who appears to have raised no money for her campaign and who is little known to the general public.

Granted, there is one undefeated champ—Deborah Markowitz, who has been elected six straight times as Secretary of State, a string of victories that would be more impressive had the elections been for, say, Homecoming Queen at Siwash U. or Treasurer of Local 252 of the International Tiremakers and Mechanics Union.

Like Sate Treasurer, Secretary of State should be an appointed position, and isn’t only because it gives politicians an office to run for so they can run for something else. Somehow, her predecessor (the one she knocked off in 1998) managed to do the job poorly, an extraordinary feat suggesting a level of incompetence so extreme as to be almost admirable.

Having knocked off an incompetent, being competent herself, not to mention rather charming, and a Democrat, Markowitz kept getting re-elected. Elmer Fudd would have done the same.

At this point, a certain generosity would be both compassionate and (more important) accurate. Political losers –Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama — have returned as better candidates and won big victories. Shumlin and Racine seem to be sharper, more aggressive, candidates than they were in 2002. Bartlett, an accomplished legislator, could emerge as the sleeper candidate of 2010. And who knows? Even Tom Salmon, if he could hire himself a better writer, might become formidable.

Right now, though, the 2010 campaign here looms as a clash of…well, not quite of midgets. But certainly not of giants.

Still, someone will win. Someone won the 1945 World Series, too. The Tigers in seven. Hank Greenberg, home from serving in the Army, hit two home runs.

But that didn’t mean they were any good.

Third?

Jim Douglas finished third?

Take a look. There it is in black and white, In the latest political contribution reporting period, Douglas’s campaign raised $91,203.

That’s less than the $102,416 raised by State Sen. Doug Racine, who is one of the Democrats who wants Douglas’s job. It’s a lot less than the $190,737 raised by Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, who is another one.

Enough numbers. Numbers are booooring. In and of themselves, campaign finance reports are booooring. But sometimes there are stories behind the numbers. Sometimes there are even mysteries, which of course are not boring. This is one of those times.

We have here two questions and two mysteries. The questions apply to the Democrats, and we will get to them presently. The second mystery is really not so much a mystery as a secret, the secret of why campaign money is so important. It is a secret kept though the answer is in plain sight, but never discussed by the insiders, including political journalists.

We’ll defy the fraternity rules here, but thanks to the other mystery, it looks as though we won’t have time or space to do it today. So this will be a two-part exercise, to be completed Monday.

OK, let’s get to that first mystery: Does the (relatively) paltry Douglas report indicate that the governor might not seek a fifth term next year?

Probably not. It’s early. So early that there is still time for State Sen. Susan Bartlett, who says she is running but has raised no money, to become competitive. So early there is time for State Sen. Peter Shumlin, who has not yet said he is running, to announce his candidacy and get into the game.

So certainly there is plenty of time for Douglas to raise enough money by next year at this time to give him a huge financial advantage over whichever Democrat wins the primary (which won’t even have happened a year from now; it’s scheduled for September 14, 2010).

Douglas himself noted that the Democrats need more money earlier than he does, because Racine and Markowitz (at least) will be running against each other in that primary, while Douglas will be unopposed for the Republican nomination.

“They now have more money to beat each other up with,” he told the Barre/Montpelier Times-Argus.

So let’s beware the danger of over-interpretation. The danger in reading the tea leaves is that they may contain no message at all.

And yet….and yet…something seems out of kilter here. There is no doubt that had he really wanted to, Douglas could have raised much more. He has two overwhelming advantages: He’s the incumbent and he’s a Republican. Incumbents can always raise more money, and so can Republicans because, even in overwhelmingly Democratic Vermont, most of the overwhelmingly rich people are Republicans.

Conventional political wisdom holds that you take every advantage you can. Coming in with the biggest financial report gives you a few days of news coverage as being the top dog. Douglas could have raised $250,000 or even more, effectively sending a message to the Democrats saying ‘all right, children, you’ve had your fun. Here’s how we play in the big time.’

Not only is this conventional political wisdom; it is Jim Douglas’s method of operation. As a candidate, Douglas has been relentless. Even when he’s been 20 points ahead, his campaigns have attacked his opponents. Just think of the attack (deserved but unnecessary) on Gaye Symington last year after she refused to disclose her family’s financial information. For Douglas, passing up a chance to make himself look stronger than his opponents seems almost out of character.

But pass it up he did. It isn’t just that he didn’t raise that much money; it’s that he reported only 101 contributors. It’s as if he wasn’t trying.

So far, Douglas has not had a good year. Until this past spring, he had suffered but one political defeat in his life, failing to unseat U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy in 1992. Since then he’s won every election he’s contested. As governor, he never got everything he wanted, but for six years he could block everything he didn’t want.

Now, after two of his vetoes were over-ridden, he faces a Legislature which not only has more Democrats, but shrewder and more aggressive Democratic leadership. He is also facing at least two more years of being governor when the state has no money. Generally speaking, being governor is fun when the governor can cut taxes and increase spending. Doing the opposite is clearly less fun.

It would hardly be surprising, then, if at least every now and then the words, “Why do I need this?” ran through this governor’s head. He’s just starting his year as head of the National Governor’s Association. Not a bad stage from which to take a final bow.

On the other hand, he’s only 58. And of the three candidates, only Douglas has spent money on actual politics (as opposed to logistics and organization) all year. Last month, according to his financial filing, he paid Public Opinion Strategies, the prominent Republican polling firm in Alexandria, Va., (creator of the famed “Harry and Louise “ads against the Clinton health care plan) $8,000 for “survey research.”

He’s also raising money. The same day he paid New Hampshire fundraising firm SCM Associations $4,000 for “fund-raising expenses.”

So he’s in the game. For now.

As to those questions about the Democrats. The first question is whether both Markowitz and Racine raised enough. They answer is yes. Obviously, raising more is better, but she didn’t raise that much more. Not enough to establish herself as a clear front-runner.

She has more cash on hand right now — $128,635 to roughly $82,000. But Racine, who didn’t start serious fund-raising until after the Legislative session ended, has enough in the bank, and has been raising money at a fast enough clip to be competitive.

But Markowitz had many more donors, almost all of whom can make more contributions to her campaign.

Another question is whether Markowitz was smart in trumpeting her fund-raising success on the liberal blog Daily Kos.

“I wanted to post a diary here to introduce myself and to announce the spectacular results of our first filing,” she wrote, before giving the web site’s millions of readers her campaign email address.

Smart, because it could help her raise more money and make her appear the established liberal favorite?

Or not-so-smart because it gives opponents, especially the Republicans, ammunition to attack her as being too far to the left, even for Vermont?

Actually, Daily Kos proprietor Marcos Moulitsas is less an ideologue than a pragmatic Democrat. But the web site’s strong stance against the Iraq war has linked it in the public mind with farther-left groups such as Moveon.org. Not that being strongly anti-war is a political liability in this state. But the blogosphere’s vibes have their negative connotations.

The biggest question of all, needless to say, is whether bringing in the most money assures ending up with the nomination, and then with winning the office. So far, Racine has done better than Markowitz at getting endorsements from legislators and other top Democrats. He has had the energy. She has the money.

Which is more important? Why? Why won’t anybody talk about it? Why is the importance of campaign money increasing in Vermont?

Tune in Monday.