In his last State of the State address, Gov,. Jim Douglas demonstrated once again that he is tenacious, determined, single-minded, and bold.

And maybe a little clueless?

It was a fairly long (5,917-word, 50-minute) speech to the Legislature, clear if not eloquent in composition, crisply delivered, politely received.

And familiar.

In fact, if some in the audience thought they had heard similar sentiments similarly expressed not all that long ago, they were right. Similar statements had been similarly expressed a year and a day ago in the same place by the same speaker, in his fourth inaugural address.

Leading some to wonder why, early in the speech, Douglas warned his listeners not to “choose to recycle old ideas and hope for a different outcome.”

In this case, the governor recycled some of his old ideas, including several that he’d proposed last year. He didn’t get them then. If he’s hoping for a different outcome this time, he would seem to be ignoring his own advice.

After all, little has changed. It’s the same Legislature that ignored most of his proposals last year and over-rode his veto twice. If anything, the lawmakers are more confident than they were a year ago, especially because one thing that has changed is that Douglas decided not to run for re-election.

In other words, he’s a lame duck. He keeps insisting that he isn’t, though he is, or at least that it has not weakened him politically, which would be a first in the history of the country, if not the world.

So why did he make the same controversial (and probably doomed) proposals again?

Because he really believes in them. Because he’s tenacious and bold. Because he thinks this time he might prevail.

Or because he’s clueless.

As he did last year, Douglas urged the Legislature to set a cap on local school spending. It didn’t. As he did last year (though in slightly less blunt language) he called the school finance system “broken,” implying that the lawmakers should replace it. As was true last year, he didn’t specify what the replacement would look like, leaving that to the lawmakers. Perhaps because most legislators don’t agree that the system (Acts 60 and 68) is “broken,” they came up with no replacement last year. They won’t this year, either.

But Douglas did not stop at recycling his old ideas that were not adopted. No, bulling right ahead with little hope of success, he came up with some new ideas that are almost certainly not to be adopted, as follows:

–Repeal – or at least pledge to repeal in the near future — the capital gains and estate tax increases adopted last year;

–Require teachers to pay 20 percent of their health insurance premiums;

–Trim the “income sensitivity” provision of the statewide education property tax so that middle-income homeowners pay more and the wealthy pay less. (of course, he didn’t word it quite that bluntly, but that’s the gist of his proposal);

–And while this was more a suggestion than a specific proposition, Douglas made clear he thought it would be a good idea if all the teachers emulated state workers and took an immediate three percent pay cut.

(Not an outlandish idea, but unrealistic. The state employees agreed to the cut in their new, statewide, contract. Teachers contracts are district-by-district, and they do not all expire at once).

It was hardly necessary to wait until the speech was over to figure out that Douglas was not convincing the legislators. Six times the audience in the House Chamber interrupted the speech with applause. But except for the early support for his tribute to Vermonters fighting (or soon to be) overseas, almost all the clapping came from the balcony, full of old friends and administration officials.

Down on the floor, where the lawmakers sat, few applauded except for the stalwart but decidedly outnumbered Republican contingent—50 of 150 House members, seven of 30 senators, and not all of them firm Douglas allies.

Perhaps because they know they have the votes and Douglas doesn’t, the Democratic Legislative leaders were relatively restrained in their post-speech comments. Snate President (and Democratic governor hopeful) Peter Shumlin and House Speaker Shap Smith both said they were willing to discuss the governor’s ideas. Sen. Susan Bartlett of Morrisville, another candidate for governor, called the speech a “pragmatic first step” in this year’s legislative process. Sen. Doug Racine of Richmond, yet another gubernatorial hopeful, said he agreed with Douglas that the state is in a “tough” fiscal bind.

Then, bit by bit, they began to say what they really thought. Douglas’s proposed tax cuts would “reduce Vermont revenue by roughly $28 million,” Shumlin said. Bartlett said that Douglas “wants to have his cake and eat it, too,” because he didn’t call for repealing the income tax cuts adopted last year, only the capital gains and estate tax increases.

Racine said the speech sounded like “a list of the things he promised to do seven years ago and failed to do,” such as extending broadband Internet service statewide and cleaning up Lake Champlain. And Sen. Mark MacDonald, a Williamstown Democrat, said Douglas’s proposed changes in the income sensitivity mechanism would “raise the property taxes of working Vermonters and cut them for out-of-staters,” some of whom own large tracts of land. Income sensitivity used to hold down the tax bills of 80 percent of Vermonters, MacDonald said. It is now down to 70 percent, and Douglas wants to reduce it further.

Despite these dismissals, a few of Douglas’s proposals might actually get adopted, though probably with some alterations. Regardless of party, almost everybody in state government agrees that public education in Vermont is expensive, in large part because there are, as Shap Smith put it, “legitimate questions about the pupil-teacher ratios.”

They are very low, 11-to-1 statewide, Douglas said, and he proposed “a mechanism to fill only one vacancy for every two retirements.”

A politically sophisticated plan, because it doesn’t require firing anyone, and because raising the ratio to 13 to 1, as he suggested, hardly degrades the quality of education. Perhaps not a realistic plan, though. It’s based on statewide numbers, but teachers neither teach their classes nor retire statewide. They do it school by school, where the numbers may not always add up (or subtract down) precisely the right way to allow reducing faculty without letting some classes get too big.

Still, here’s one area – quite possibly one of the few– where the legislators might build on (or off) one of Douglas’s proposals.

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.