Isn’t anything going on in Vermont except this infernal political campaign?

Yes, actually. Quite a lot. For instance, on Thursday there is an evidentiary hearing in Superior Court in Woodstock in the matter of Galloway versus Town of Hartford, an important public records case (see Public (?) Records, August 4.)

On October 15, Superior Court Judge  Katherine A. Hayes denied the town’s motion for summary judgment, allowing the case to proceed. If possible, the News Guy will cover the hearing.

But here’s the thing about political campaigns: they end. This one is going to end in six days, making it hard to deal with anything else. So for now, we’ll continue with political stuff.

But first, this embarrassing admission.

Monday’s post ended with praise for how WCAX-TV anchors Darren Perron and Kristin Kelly questioned candidates Brian Dubie and Peter Shumlin during Saturday’s debate.

Except those who read the post before it was corrected (about 8:45 AM) did not see Darren Perron’s name. They saw the name of Anson Tebbetts, who is Channel 3’s news director, not its co-anchor.

Early (or perhaps not-so-early) sign of impending dementia?

Or just the kind of goof one can make toward the end of the day about two guys who work for the same station and both have two two-syllable names?

Either way, pluperfect dumb, and though it is not likely that either of these honorable gentlemen is insulted by being confused with the other, herewith apologies to the both of them.

Speaking of getting stuff wrong, during that debate Shumlin asserted that “Vermont lost more dairy farms in the last eight years (while opponent Dubie was lieutenant governor) than in any other time in Vermont history.”

Actually, no. Dubie and Gov. Jim Douglas took office in 2003, when there were 1,459 according to the Vermont Dairy Promotion Council. When U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsak visited Vermont last February, he was told there were 1,019 dairy farms.That’s a drop of 440.

In the eight years before the Douglas-Dubie team took office, the state lost 683 dairy farms, which, as it happens, is more, not less, than 440 and while no doubt a few farms have gone out of business in the last seven months, losses of the last eight years are clearly smaller than those of the previous eight years.

Yes, the more recent decline is slightly larger in percentage terms. But not much, and anyway, that’s not what Shumlin said. An email to his campaign asking where he got his (apparently  mis-)information was not answered yesterday.

(Not to mention that it makes no difference. Whoever is governor and whatever agriculture policies are followed, the number of dairy farms will continue to decline at a rate determined largely by factors well beyond the governor’s control).

In that same debate (and again in a VPR interview Monday) still trying to argue (to the distress of some of his strongest supporters) that Shumlin plans to release hordes of prisoners before their terms expire, Dubie twice mentioned an “August 15 Rutland Herald article in which Shumlin said he wanted to empty the prisons of 780 nonviolent offenders.”

Apparently not, the “apparently” is required here because the News Guy was unable to find that edition of the Herald either on line or in print. But at his request, someone else perused a printed (on dead tree) original version of the August 15 Herald and found…no mention of Shumlin releasing prisoners.

There was a Shumlin profile, a political column, and a “Capital Beat” column in the paper that day, the reader said, but nothing about letting lots of folks out of the pokey.

It is theoretically possible that both candidates will apologize for their misleading statements. It is highly unlikely.

Just as it is highly unlikely that the latest legal fracas is going to have much impact on the governor’s race. The state’s other news organizations have adequately covered the Attorney General’s suit against two political action committees, and the countersuit by one of them against him, so we won’t go into detail here. We’ll just answer three common questions:

Question One: Has there been and is there collusion between a candidate’s campaign and the supposedly “independent” entities that buy ads to support said campaign?

Answer One: Always. Take the following sentence both literally and as metaphor. In every capital city, all the political operatives (or at least all the political operatives of each party) drink in the same saloon. Since table-hopping can not be outlawed, information can always be shared (though the shrewd operative will first check to see whether any reporters – who also drink at those same saloons – are present).

What may have happened this year in Vermont is that somebody got careless and too blatant. According to official documents, the Republican Governors Association (one target of an AG suit) received a $22,500 in-kind contribution from the Dubie campaign on Sept. 22, and the Dubie campaign paid $25,500 for a poll five days later.

That would appear to be collusion, banned because the RGA is one of the “independent” entities buying pro-Dubie ads. It might have piqued the AG’s interest in seeing whether the RGA is registered as a political organization in Vermont. It is not.

Question Two: Doesn’t the U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United decision mean Attorney General Bill Sorrell and his assistant, Michael McShane, are going to have a hard time prevailing in court?

Answer Two: Possibly not. McShane said The AG’s office is only trying to get the RGA and Green Mountain Future  “to register as (political action committees) and file reports with the Secretary of State’s office.” Because they have not done so, McShane said, they have “violated Vermont law.”

(Try to keep all this straight. GMF is a creature of the Democratic Governor’s Association, which has registered as a political committee in Vermont, and which so far has spent more on the Vermont gov’s race than the Repubs. The RGA has not registered, nor has GMF, but the RGA’s front group, Green Mountain Prosperity, has).

Citizens United, though, was not about registration and disclosure. It allowed corporations and unions to make political contributions from their treasuries, not just from money specifically raised (and voluntarily contributed) for campaigns. Martha Wright, the attorney who helped Sorrell argue Vermont’s election law case before the U.S. Supreme Court (they lost) pointed out that Citizens United “upheld disclosure provisions that were challenged.”

That doesn’t mean the AG’s move can not be challenged. Vermont’s statutes on electioneering expenses might be “unconstitutionally vague,” Wright said, and its “definition of a political committee” can also be disputed.

All of which can help explain the rationale behind the RGA’s countersuit and answer…

Question three: Will all this influence anybody’s vote?

Answer three: Probably not. If the court hearings are held before the elections, the Republicans – and therefore Dubie – could appear sneaky. Hence the RGA countersuit, which, whatever its legal merit (challenging the power of the AG even to seek information to investigate does seem a bit over the top) plays into the average, middle-of-the-road voter’s assumption that “they all do it” (True. See Answer one above).

Finally: Today is the last day of early voting in Vermont. Early voting by everyone, not just the physically impaired or those who are going to be away on election day, has become increasingly popular all over the country of late.

It’s a very bad idea. It depresses turnout (see this in Monday’s New York Times). It interrupts the rhythm of a campaign, which is designed to end on election day. It provides an incentive for some people to vote before they’re gotten all the information they need (who knows how many would have voted for the other candidate had they waited?). It diminishes the communal experience of the polling place.

The outcome was never in doubt and the vote was unanimous. Still, after it was cast, the committee members gave themselves a quiet round of applause. They thought they’d done something important.

Maybe they had, even though it isn’t clear whether the bill they reported out last week will become law, and even if it does, its direct, material, impact will be quite limited.

It’s the indirect, not-so-material impact that might be historic.

The bill was S-222, “An act relating to recognition of Abenaki bands and groups as tribes.” Considering that a four-year-old statute (S.117, signed into law May 3, 2006) already recognized the Abenaki  and other Native Americans living in the state as a “minority population” it’s reasonable to ask why the new bill is necessary at all, much less why it arouses enthusiasm.

But in the view of the Abenaki and their supporters, notably Sens. Vincent Illuzzi, a Derby Republican, and Hinda Miller, a Burlington Democrat, there were two flaws in the earlier law. One is very practical: the language didn’t meet the federal requirements to qualify the works of Abenaki artists and craftspeople as “Native American.” The designation can bring higher prices.

Besides, being recognized as a minority group isn’t the same as being recognized as a tribe. This year’s bill grants formal recognition as tribes to the state’s four Abenaki bands – the St. Francis Sokoki Band in the Swanton area ;the Koasek Traditional Band around Newbury; the Nulhegan Band of the Northeast Kingdom; the ELNU Abenaki Tribe in southern Vermont.

If the law passes, each of these bands will be empowered to “refer to itself as a recognized tribe,” according to the bill.

Actual recognition as a tribe is one of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs requirements for the “Native American” arts and crafts designations. But to the Abenaki, the new bill may be less  important for what it would officially do for them than for what it would effectively say to them: You are here. And you are here not just as individual members of “a minority population,” but as distinct communities.

The long-term social and political consequences of that statement are uncertain, and their benefits open to debate. There are, after all, several other “minority populations” in Vermont, none of which get a similar official designation.

On the other hand, the Abenaki were here first, perhaps since as early as 1100. Unlike the other minorities (or the majority, for that matter) some of whom came here because they were systematically mistreated elsewhere, the Abenaki were systematically mistreated right here in Vermont, so mistreated that at one point they were all but obliterated.

Or, in the view of some scholars, actually were obliterated,  at least ceasing to exist as tribe within Vermont’s borders. Such was the conclusion of a report issued by the Vermont Attorney General’s office in 2002, when one of the Abenaki bands petitioned for tribal recognition from the federal government.

In a summary of the report it filed with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Attorney General’s office noted that “around the time of the American Revolution, ((Abenaki) retreated to (their) home base in Quebec.  Then, over the next two hundred years, there were very few observations of Indians in Vermont, and these were mostly sightings of visiting Indians.” In the 19^th Century, the report said, the ancestors of the  petitioners “were  indistinguishable from the general population in Vermont,” and that while some “appear in the census records…they are not listed as Indian.”

Assistant Attorney General Michael McShane said these comments were made solely in the context of the specific guidelines for federal recognition, and did not mean that state officials were denying the existence of the Abenaki now or in the past.

“The question is what do you use for the definition of a tribe,” McShane said. “The Federal Government says it has to have been an autonomous and existing entity from colonial times to the present in an organizational sense. That they failed to prove. But nobody’s saying there aren’t people who live in Vermont who have claimed, probably legitimately, Native American ancestry.”

The distinction seems to make sense in law, especially to officials who worry that federal designation could lead to gambling casinos and land claims as has been true in other states. But some Abenaki were simply insulted.

“They said the Abenakis were genetic, political, and cultural fakes,” said Fred Wiseman, a Johnson State College professor and Abenaki activist. Though not the message state officials intended, it seems to have been the one many Abenaki heard, and their resentment was intensified by turmoil in the state’s Commission on Native American Affairs, which went through three directors in four years.

Whether there has been a continuing Abenaki community in Vermont could be one of those questions that can never be conclusively answered. That 2002 Attorney General’s report was based on standard historical research, which failed to find documentation that such a community existed. So perhaps it didn’t. Or maybe, even before the discredited “eugenics” movement of the 1920s victimized so many Indians, the Abenaki were hiding signs of their identity, to the point ofnot telling Census Bureau agents that they were Indians.

It’s happened before. In 15th Century Spain, Jews converted to avoid getting burned at the stake, lived outwardly Christian lives, but secretly observed  Jewish rituals at home.

Whatever happened in the past,  no one doubts that there are now several thousand Vermonters who have some Abenaki ancestry and who consider themselves Abenaki. That could explain why there was no opposition when the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs approved the bill last week.

But there are still complications, based on the continuing worry that something in the bill might provide a pathway for federal recognition of a Vermont tribe. McShane said he asked the committee to remove two sentences that he feared might “open up the whole question of federal recognition.”

The committee did not comply.

“It’s his (McShane’s) job to worry,” said Hinda Miller, the bill’s chief sponsor. “We appreciate him being the watchdog. We did our own research. We don’t think this will be a real problem.”

Miller and Mark Mitchell of Barnet, an Abenaki and a former head of the Native American Commission, both said it would be all but impossible for any Abenaki band to meet the criteria for federal recognition., and that, at any rate the state could block Indian gambling casinos or land claims.

McShane was not so sure.

“You get into this whole very complicated issue,” he said. “States may be able to regulate some of it. This defies easy answers.”

Miller said the bill would probably be on the Senate calendar today (Friday). There is a companion measure in the House (H. 124, sponsored by Rep. Michel Consejo of Sheldon Springs.

Whatever happens, the Abenaki will once again be defined by others.  “Indians don’t have the right to self-identify,” Fred Wiseman noted. “We have to be recognized by white people.”