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.

Not-so-petty squabbling

The original plan for today was a post dealing with a substantive, significant, and complex policy matter.

Too complex, as it turned out, to deal with in the time available. So in the interest of both precision and fairness, it will have to wait until next week.

Meanwhile, let’s have some fun with politics, because, with less than a month to go until Primary Day, a few of the candidates are starting to get a little tetchy.

Or at least to pretend to be getting a little tetchy. As a campaign reaches its final days, candidates have to find some way to distinguish themselves from their opponents. Often, that means finding some reason – or ostensible  reason—to criticize said opponents, or at least to make some news.

Perhaps surprisingly, this testiness has not really been evident in the race that dominates the scene right now – the Democratic primary for governor, in which the five candidates so far are being gentle with one another.

So far.

Oh, there was that little dustup between Peter Shumlin and Matt Dunne. After Shumlin bragged that he was “the only candidate in this race who has sponsored a single payer health care bill,” Dunne noted that  “in the 1993-1994 Legislative Session, House Bill 0763 titled, ‘Vermont Health Security Plan/Single-Payer Health Plan’ was co-sponsored by several House Members including Matt Dunne.”

Shumlin conceded defeat (well, he conceded error), and the two shook hands in front of the State House and they all lived happily ever after, at least until they can find something else about which to quarrel.

As squabbles go, this was both bland and minor. Perhaps more significantly, it was also irrelevant to the actual world and the actual state both men want to govern. According to Pubic Law 111-152, officially the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, commonly known as the Health Care Law, states may not adopt significantly different health care financing systems until at least 2017.

Some Vermont Democrats insist that Congress might change this provision earlier. Congress will do no such thing, and a politician who refuses to acknowledge this reality risks disserving the voters.

Will one of the Democratic contenders be so bold as to publically acknowledge this?

Don’t bet on it.

But the real tetchiness has come in the two primaries for secretary of state, an office which may not be worth getting angry about. On the Democratic side, the flappette began when candidate Charles Merriman of Middlesex went on Mark Johnson’s WDEV-FM radio show and said, “I should have run as an independent… I thought about it and frankly I ran as a Democrat because I figured I had a better chance of winning than if I ran as an independent. If I get in, I’ll run as an independent next time.”

Horrors!

So, at least, proclaimed a few Democrats. Merriman’s opponent, former Chittenden County Senator Jim Condos, the apparent front-runner in the race, told Vermont Public Radio that the comment might reflect on Merriman’s “character, if you’re…using the party to benefit yourself.”

Merriman tried to wriggle out of the hole he’d dug by proclaiming himself a good, loyal, liberal, Democrat, but one who thinks the Secretary of State’s office ought to be non-partisan.

Not a bad point. Perhaps the Secretary of State’s office ought not even be elected. It is, after all, an administrative (as opposed to policy-setting) position. In neighboring New York, the Secretary of State has been an appointed position for decades, and it works just fine.

But if the Democratic candidates are having a little tiff, the Republicans are engaged in a cat-fight. The first blow was struck by the candidate who seems to be losing, attorney Chris Roy, who accused Jason Gibbs of exaggerating his accomplishments both in the private sector and as Commissioner of Forests and Parks.

“Inaccurate and misleading accusations,” shot back Gibbs, who has the endorsement of Gov. Jim Douglas, whose spokesman he was for several years. Gibbs also appears to have more money and a better-organized campaign.

Indeed, so confident does Gibbs seem to be that he has poked his snoot into the governor’s race, trying to help Republican Brian Dubie by attacking the incumbent Secretary of State, Deb Markowitz, one of the Democratic candidates for governor.

In a letter to Markowitz, Gibbs claimed that “insufficient effort has been made (by her office) to ensure that all (Vermont troops in Iraq and Afghanistan) are adequately notified” that the primary date has been moved up to August 24.

As evidence, Gibbs cited a tape of Gov. Douglas, on his recent trip to the war zone, discovering “that the Primary Election date being provided to troops there was still September 14.”

Yes, but while that is evidence of a mistake, the mistake was not made by Markowitz. It was made by the United States Armed Forces, which are, as those of us who have served in them are well aware, so mistake-prone that their employees over the years have created several inventive expressions for mistake-making which are too colorful to be repeated here.

Gibbs also criticized Markowitz because some of the ballots for early voting in the primary, which started July 12, were printed on paper that was the wrong size. The error, which was made by the paper company, was discovered and rectified (at the company’s expense) that day, and there have been no reports of anyone who wanted to vote being unable to do so on time.

Markowitz has been Secretary of State since 1998. Being mortal, she has no doubt made a few mistakes in that time. But if her opponents can’t come up with more troubling examples than these, she must have done quite a good job indeed.

There are 25 days to go. Prepare for more of the same, only pettier and tetchier.

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?

Now that the Legislative session is semi-officially over, the 2010 campaign for governor has semi-officially begun.

Of course, it semi- semi-officially began in January of 2009 (no, that was not a typo; that was 2009) when Sen. Doug Racine of Richmond said he would run.

But like two of his opponents – Sens. Peter Shumlin of Putney and Susan Bartlett of Hyde Park – Racine was otherwise occupied until May 13, when the Legislature adjourned, but with the proviso that it “reconvene on the ninth day of June, 2010, at ten o’clock in the forenoon if the Governor should fail to approve and sign any bill and should he return it to the house of origin.”

So technically the Legislature remains in session, which created a minor political flap when the campaign of Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie’s, the unchallenged Republican, solicited contributions from lobbyists for an event scheduled before the official adjournment. Realizing its error, the campaign promptly unsolicited.

But technically shmecknically. For all practical purposes, “The Ledge” (a term coined by the late Molly Ivins to describe the version down in Texas, but too good not to be given wider currency) is over, and the attention of the state’s politicians – and its journalists – can shift to the campaign. It has.

It will be a long campaign, and because brevity is a virtue, today’s exercise will focus on just two features, the second of which is an early assessment of how the campaign is going.

It is not going well.

But first, a warning of sorts. Each of the various players in this comedy-drama has his or her own role. The role here is to ride herd. This web site hereby appoints itself a (one of many, it is to be hoped) campaign truth squad. Every word said or written by every candidate or released in his or her name will be examined, be it in a speech, an interview, an advertisement, a web site communication. Misstatement, miscalculation, deception will be exposed.

Mercilessly.

And gleefully. The News Guy is indifferent as to who wins the August 24 Democratic primary or the general election in November. He is hostile – very hostile — to factual error, unsupported assertions, misuse of data, conclusions based on conjecture rather than verifiable truth, cheap shots, meaningless cant, and will take great joy in calling them out.

But not with a petty, “gotcha” attitude. Nits will be left un-picked. Minor errors, inconsistencies, and slips of the tongue during interviews or debates are…well, minor errors, inconsistencies, and slips of the tongue. The point of this exercise is not to catch candidates in the kind of trivial flubs everybody makes in spontaneous speech. It is to stop them from substantively misleading the electorate.

Now, as to this business about the campaign not going well.

OK, it’s early. There’s plenty of time left for improvement. The early signs, though, are not encouraging. Judging from the campaign web sites (which is where most of the activity takes place for now), the candidates seem to be heading toward a campaign which will be: (a) dominated by pabulum; and (b) about nothing.

Or, to say the same thing in different terms, about itself.

In fairness to Vermont politicians, this politics of the self-referential (post-modern politics?) is a nationwide phenomenon. All over the country, races are being won or lost not according to any candidate’s vision of the future or position on substantive issues, but on who ran the less honorable campaign (“He did.” No, he did.”) and whose commercials were more misleading.

The scary, early, signs that Vermont may be headed in that direction came in the flapette between the campaigns of Democrats Matt Dunne and Secretary of State Deb Markowitz following Dunne’s call for all the contenders to reveal their personal financial assets.

Racine agreed. Shumlin called the idea “Montpelier parlor games.” Bartlett said voters are “concerned about their future and the future of Vermont, not the details of my finances.” But the Markowitz campaign launched a counter-attack against Dunne.

“If this was anything more than political posturing Sen. Dunne would have used his 11 years in the legislature to make this Vermont law,” campaign manager Paul Tencher said. “He also would have advised his opponents of his request before holding a press conference.” (all this according to a May 14 story in the Times-Argus).

He did both, shot back Dunne’s campaign manager, Kevin O’Holleran.

Apparently he did. In 1994, Dunne was a major backer (though not the sponsor) of H-830, which would have required the kind of disclosure he now supports. It failed.

On the issue, Dunne would appear to have a strong case. In both politics and government (except for the Legislature) Vermont’s disclosure and transparency requirements are weak. In many states candidates now have to reveal their financial assets. In theory, there is always the possibility that a candidate could hold huge blocks of stock in say, Entergy, or Corrections Corporation of America. If so, voters ought to know that.

But Bartlett is right, too. Voters care about what the candidates plan to do in office, not their portfolios. In her case, she and her husband reported income last year of less than $100,000. Assuming they don’t have the most incompetent financial advisor in captivity, they don’t own enough stock in anything to rise to the conflict-of-interest level. Neither, in all likelihood, do the other contenders.

Yet this is so far what the campaign is about. Whoever thinks it’s about anything else is invited to check the web sites and look for specific proposals or substantive ideas.

Good hunting.

Well, Bartlett may have one, worthy of future consideration. Check it out here. But for the most part, the sites are full of tedious jargon and tired slogans designed only to offend no one. As a result, they also interest no one.

Two items deserve special mention. Dunne’s web site notes that “at age 22,  Matt’s neighbors elected him to the Vermont Legislature,” which is probably not true. Because what it says is that all of Dunne’s neighbors were 22 when they elected him to the legislature, which seems unlikely.

Then there is the latest advertisement on Dubie’s web site. It’s called “Pure Vermont” and manages, in three minutes and 26 seconds, to say almost nothing. But at the end, walking along a lakeshore, Dubie and his wife tell each other they love one another.

It could be along five months.

But first, everyone, especially those who read Friday’s post before it was corrected at about 10AM, is urged to scroll down to read the special Sunday post explaining what went awry, and why,

Now let’s deal with the forest-trees problem in re: the Democratic primary for governor and perceptions thereof.

Whether some people are so carefully examining the trees that they can’t see the forest, or vice versa, makes no difference. In general, observers have been so carefully scrutinizing the numbers (with five candidates, one could win with less than 30 percent of the vote, etc.) that no one has noted that the contest has taken form.

Racine

Not over strategy or tactics, either. Over policy. One of these guys wants to raise taxes.

Somehow, because the “narrative” has been created and set in stone that the five Democrats don’t disagree on much, the emergence of a real disagreement has been all but ignored.

Not that State Sen. Doug Racine of Richmond has come out and proclaimed in so many words, “I want to raise your taxes.” Nowhere on the home page of his campaign web site does the word “taxes” appear.

But he isn’t being cute about it, either. What is prominent on his web site is a link to his November 20 appearance on Vermont Public Radio’s Vermont Edition, where Racine clearly said he thinks the answer to the state’s budget shortfall has to include some new revenue.

That means higher taxes.

On that program, and again in an interview last week, Racine said his policy was modeled on what Gov. Richard Snelling, a Republican, did when the state faced a similar revenue shortage in 1991. Working with a Democratic Legislature, Snelling did cut spending. But to ease the impact of spending cuts, especially on the poor and the ill, Snelling and lawmakers agreed on temporary tax increases.

“(Snelling) went to Vermonters and said, look we’re all in this together, we’re all going to feel a little bit of the pain,” Racine said on the radio, calling for the same “balanced approach” to be used next year, when the state faces a revenue-spending gap of at least $90 million.

Racine said he, too, would cut spending, would “try to find efficiencies in state government, and think about using the rainy day funds.” But some new revenue would probably be necessary, he said.

How much and how it would be raised he has not yet figured out, he said, adding that he and some campaign aides were trying to work out the details of a specific proposal.

The other four Democrats running for governor haven’t absolutely ruled out calling for any new or higher taxes. But neither have they come close to suggesting any such thing. In a recent article on “the state budget problem” on her web site, State Sen. Susan Bartlett of Hyde Park spoke only of the need for cutting the General Fund budget and holding down school costs. Senate President Peter Shumlin of Putney announced his candidacy last month saying, “Vermonters cannot  bear more of a tax burden.”

(Although he said much the same thing earlier this year, but then put together a budget package that included higher taxes for upper-income earners; Racine and Bartlett voted for it).

The other two candidates, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz and former State Sen. Matt Dunne of White River Junction have said little about how they would deal with the impending budget problem.

So Racine is taking a gamble. Most people don’t want to pay higher taxes. As Racine himself said, the Democratic field is strong. Most Democratic voters would be reasonably happy with any of the five. So why wouldn’t most primary voters choose one of the four who doesn’t call for higher taxes, even if they’re advertised as temporary?

(The 1991 tax increases were rescinded in 1993 as scheduled, though the sales tax was later raised back to five cents; it is now six cents).

“Running for office is a gamble,” Racine said. “I’ve run for office before. Maybe it’s a function of my age. I’m telling people what I think.”

But just looking at the politics of the situation, maybe it’s not such a foolish gamble. One way to carve out a plurality victory in a five-person Democratic primary is to appeal to the social welfare liberals – call them the “One Vermont” constituency, after the group that formed last year to fight cuts in programs that help the poor.

These voters are likely to make up a heavy share of the Democratic primary electorate, and if they unite behind one contender, that candidate would probably win the primary.

Traditional political strategy calls for the candidate then quickly to trim back to the center for the general election. But as Racine acknowledged, in this case, that would be close to impossible.

“If you’re out there. It’s really hard to trim back because you’re not trimming, you’re contradicting,” he said. “It would hard for me the day after the primary to say I didn’t mean everything I just said.”

So should he win the primary, the Republicans, presumably led by Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, would undoubtedly – and credibly – assail him as a “tax and spend liberal.”

Not as deadly a label in Vermont as in many other states. But still a potential problem.

On the other hand, before the election – even before the primary — the Legislature, including three of the candidates, is going to have to pass a balanced budget for the state. Voting to cut programs for, say, poor, sick, children, might not be any more politically palatable than voting for a temporary tax hike.

But that’s for later. For now, the Democratic race has a structure. It even has an issue. And an obvious question for the other four candidates: Without any new revenue at all, exactly (and that means exactly, with numbers) how would you balance the budget?

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.