The Democratic governor’s race is no longer without form and void.

The auditor’s race is no longer boring.

OK, that wording used to describe the primary for governor is a tad grandiose, having more famously been applied to the entire cosmos, next to which the Vermont Democratic Party is an infinitesimal speck.

Still, the phrase is descriptive. The endorsements of Sen. Doug Racine by both the state’s AFL-CIO and the teachers union (Vermont NEA) do not make Racine the front-runner. No one can be considered the front-runner until someone releases an independent, credible poll (and, no, the one being taken by the campaign of Sen. Peter Shumlin, one of Racine’s four opponents, does not qualify).

But the endorsements do give the campaign some shape (form) and heft (voidlessness?). If nothing else, they provide a framework for thinking about the contest. Racine is at the very least having a good week and the other four are scrambling. It isn’t that the boost he got can’t be overcome. But the other candidates have to take steps to overcome it.

By no means do the endorsements mean that all 10,000 or so Vermont members of AFL-CIO affiliated unions or the 11,500 teachers who belong to the NEA are going to vote for Racine. If there was ever a time when rank and file union members automatically voted as their leaders recommended, that time is long gone.

On the other hand, there’s no reason why a union member – whether a teacher or a construction worker – shouldn’t pay some attention to the suggestion of an organization that helps improve his or her life. Especially when there’s not much difference among the candidates, five Democrats swimming straight in their party’s main stream.

Shumlin, who says he’s a “fiscal conservative,” and Sen. Susan Bartlett, who in her formal campaign kick-off Monday called herself a “centrist Democrat,” are trying to paint themselves as slightly less liberal on taxes and spending than the other three. They may be right, but “slightly” is the key word here. For many Democratic voters, any of the five contenders would be acceptable. So why not go with your union’s choice?

But the bigger boost for Racine might be that both the AFL-CIO and the NEA provide built-in GOTV operations. That stands for “Get Out the Vote,” and in what promises to be a low-turnout primary, the only more valuable asset than an existing organization that knows how to operate phone banks, identify supporters, and arrange car-pools to take voters to the polls is two of them. That’s what Racine now has.

The others can build their own, and no doubt are planning to do so. But it will cost a little time and money that he can spend elsewhere.

The candidate most hurt by the Racine endorsements was former Sen. Matt Dunne. He knew it, issuing a statement Monday congratulating Racine and pointing out that he it was his “understand(ing)  that the endorsement decision came down to Doug and me.”

It did. The endorsement would have been even a bigger boost for Dunne, who is less well-known, so losing it is a big blow. Dunne also hastily scheduled a press conference yesterday to announce the support of  seven House members and two Senators, including the fiscally centrist Hinda Miller of Burlington.

The AFL-CIO did not limit its endorsements to the governor’s race. It made choices in some of the other contests, too, and one of them could prove very interesting indeed. The labor organization’s preferred candidate for State Auditor is Burlington policy analyst Doug Hoffer who plans to run in the Democratic primary, and who also has Progressive Party support.

The reason this is interesting is that Hoffer could actually get elected. And if he does, the Auditor’s office might become a very lively spot.

Full disclosure: Hoffer, who knows how to find economic data and who analyses it astutely (if from his own point of view) has been an occasional source for this web site, which he obviously reads because he now and then comments on the posts. On the other hand, he and the News Guy have never met, and what follows is analysis, not an endorsement.

It’s not really a prediction, either. But here’s why he could win. So far, the only other Democrat running is former Auditor (and present state senator) Ed Flanagan. In the interests of both brevity and kindness, this account will skip the details abut Flanagan’s political problems (available on line for the curious). Suffice to say that thanks to some recent bizarre personal behavior Flanagan is all but unelectable.

Meaning Hoffer could win the Democratic Primary and also be on the Progressive line for the November election against incumbent Republican Tom Salmon.

Not quite unelectable, but decided beatable, also thanks to some of his own bizarre behavior, including a drunk driving episode and writing obscene emails to a reporter. Plus, he’s a party-switcher, elected and re-elected as a Democrat before becoming a Republican late last year. Party-switchers have a tough time getting re-elected.

Aside from one unsuccessful bid for town council in Massachusetts years ago, Hoffer said, he has never run for office. He could be a terrible candidate. Furthermore, another Democrat might jump into the race before next week’s filing deadline. Democratic Party Chair Judy Bevans said “a number of candidates have expressed interest” in running.

If Hoffer does win, he is likely to be, based on his work as an economics numbers-cruncher, both aggressive and independent. He’s an unabashed economic liberal who approves of raising taxes on the wealthy rather than cutting social services. But he’s also a dedicated data freak who does not go where the statistics do not lead. Should he get elected, the Sate Auditor’s office might become not just interesting, but also a word rarely associated with auditors of any stripe: fun.

MEDIA NOTE: The News Guy is by and large a fan of (and has written for) Seven Days, Burlington’s sprightly alternative newspaper. So it was discouraging to see, in its on-line version, a sophomoric swipe at the Roman Catholic Church and Bishop Salvatore Matano. Apparently some ex-Catholics who write for a blog called The Plaid Crew and who seem to harbor ill will toward the Church, saw a perfectly ordinary (actually, a rather touching) picture of the Bishop ordaining a new priest on the cover of the Vermont Diocese’s magazine, Vermont Catholic, and gave it the smuttiest possible interpretation.

For whatever reason, Seven Days writer Lauren Ober found it “sort of the most amazing photo I’ve ever seen…this week” (sort of the most?) and for whatever reason, the editors agreed to post the item on the paper’s Blurt blog.

The temptation to describe this as locker-room humor offends those of us who have spent some time in locker rooms and remember that the jokes there usually contained a modicum of wit.

Susan Bartlett said she did not throw a reporter out of a meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which she chairs, because “there was no meeting.”

She did, she acknowledged, ask Louis Porter of the Vermont Press Bureau  (The Times-Argus and the Rutland Herald) to leave the room one day the week before last while she and the other Democrats “consulted with legislative council.”

Two House members, Democrat Jason Lorber of Burlington and Republican Oliver Olsen of Jamaica, were also asked to leave.

The consultation, Bartlett said, was originally going to be held in the Legislative Council’s offices, but the space there was cramped, and she suggested they’d be more comfortable in the committee room.

“We can do that,” she said.

Obviously they can, because she did. Whether senators may, under their own rules, hold closed sessions inside their committee rooms is less certain. Because an official meeting had not been convened, holding a private session might not have violated those rules.

Or maybe it did. It seems to be a matter of interpretation.

The place to start looking, suggested State Archivist Gregory Sanford, is the Vermont Constitution,  specifically Chapter 2, Section 8, which states that, “(t)he doors of the House in which the General Assembly of this Commonwealth shall sit, shall be open for the admission of all persons who behave decently, except only when the welfare of the State may require them to be shut.”

According to Sanford and others, this section applies to committee rooms as well as the legislative chambers, the exception for “the welfare of the state” refers only to emergencies, and being a reporter is not proof of indecent behavior in and of itself.

That would seem to indicate that the session in the committee room –whether or not it was a “meeting” — should have been open. Bartlett acknowledged that five committee members – a quorum – were present.

Bartlett said the committee was also gong to discuss “personnel” matters, therefore it could meet “executive session.”

It can, but only after voting to do so in open session, by a two-thirds majority, and even then only for certain designated reasons, one of which is to discuss personnel. None of that happened the day Bartlett closed the meeting.

But Allen Gilbert of the Vermont American Civil Liberties Union, himself a strong advocate of open meetings, acknowledged that Senate rules might be unclear as to whether a gathering “is a meeting unless it’s convened.”

At any rate, Gilbert said, there is no remedy for this violation, if it was a violation. The only redress is to “complain to the (Senate) Committee on Rules” because the Senate is “not covered by the Open Meeting Law,” so there is no “statutory violation.”

There also appears to have been no harm done. Privately, some senators from both parties were unhappy about Bartlett clearing the room. But no one suggested she was trying to pull a fast one. She just wanted to meet in more comfortable surroundings.

But in the first place, it’s not certain that under Senate rules a reporter (or anyone not misbehaving) didn’t have the right to be at the meeting no matter where in the Statehouse it was held. Or maybe even if it was held out of the statehouse, though Sanford pointed out that lawmakers have sometimes held closed meetings elsewhere, apparently (though perhaps mistakenly) believing that as long as they were in a different buildings they could bar press and public.

Gilbert said the Open Meeting Law draws no distinction between meetings in official or unofficial venues. Should two members of a three-person school board or select board bump into each other at the grocery store, he said, they are forbidden from discussing board business.

It’s unclear whether the Senate rules are quite that strict, but it would seem that Bartlett at least violated the spirit of Vermont’s open government tradition.

To be sure, a case can be made that the tradition is too strict. Maybe people have to get together in private sometimes to hash matters out. Banning such sessions in public (or even in the grocery store) could just push officials into more clandestine locales, such as the back table of the local saloon. (No, come to think of it, that’s too public). But if the system should be changed, officials should argue for changing it, rather than simply breaking the rules.

If there is any price Bartlett will pay here, it’s political. She’s one of the five Democrats running for governor. Getting a reputation for acting surreptitiously (which in general she does not seem to deserve) is not likely to be a political plus.

But when it comes to tension between public officials and members of the Fourth Estate, Bartlett cannot compete with State Auditor Tom Salmon.

Salmon apparently dislikes Seven Days political reporter Shay Totten. Disliking Totten, an unusually pleasant and easy-going fellow, is not easy, but presumably if a reporter keeps catching a politician doing stuff he shouldn’t do, the pol might start taking it personally.

A couple of weeks ago Totten caught a member of  Salmon’s official staff  sending a political email from a state computer during business hours. The email “welcomed” as an opponent (perhaps prematurely) State Sen. Ed Flanagan into the Auditor’s race. Flanagan, who once served as auditor, is thinking about running for his old job against Salmon, who was elected as a Democrat but switched parties last year.

Responsibly, before writing a story, Totten emailed Salmon for response and comment.

Which arrived promptly and…well, let’s just say bluntly. No, on second thought, let’s say obscenely. This web site, determined to persist in its policy of (outward) respectability, will not quote Salmon’s reply (but here’s the link). Suffice to say that it was as far from respectability as one can get.

There is a term for a politician who not only talks this way to a journalists, but actually puts it in writing, meaning he can’t later claim to have been misquoted.

No, make that two alternative terms: (1) A person of dubious judgment; (2) a dope.

At least one Republican, sort of defending Salmon, suggested in a Statehouse corridor last week that Totten was “nitpicking” because sending the email on state time and state equipment was a minor infraction.

Maybe, but you know what? Reporters are supposed to be nitpickers. The Auditor’s office is about a five minute walk from Republican headquarters, and Salmon’s aide could have gone over there at lunch time or after the business day to send the email all legal and proper on a GOP computer. Campaign finance laws, like open meeting laws, exist for a reason.

For the Vermont voter, the political prospects for the Auditor’s race seem especially dismal. For reasons that will be dealt with another day, Flanagan’s judgment isn’t all that reliable, either. In fact, perhaps the most puzzling political question of the day is why Democratic leaders haven’t by now found an attractive accountant – or at least finance-savvy businessperson – to oppose Salmon, who would seem vulnerable if opposed by a minimally competent candidate.

It’s a little early to pronounce State Auditor Tom Salmon politically cooked and ready to have the loser’s fork stuck into his carcass.

But just a little.

Salmon, of course, is the elected Democrat who took the political risk earlier this year of becoming a Republican in a state where that is generally not considered a shrewd career move.

Last week he made the personal and political mistake of driving his car after he’d had too much to drink.

Monday he went on the radio to talk about it and botched things up totally.

Asked the obvious question by Jane Lindholm on Vermont Public Radio’s Vermont Edition, Salmon refused to say how much he’d had to drink before a Montpelier cop pulled him over Friday evening. The question, he said, was not “germane.”

This dictionary (American Heritage Second College Edition) defines “germane” as “having a significant bearing upon a point at hand; pertinent.”

Under that definition, what could possibly be more germane than asking an elected official who has had too much to drink just what he had been drinking, and how much?

Especially considering that he had earlier said he’d been drinking red wine.

Asserting that his goal was maximum “candor,” Salmon practiced maximum evasiveness. He wouldn’t say forthrightly that he planned to plead guilty when his case comes to court next month, leaving the impression that he was hoping for some other outcome.

To top it all off, before the brief (maybe five minute) interview ended, Salmon got potty-mouthed. If he thought the vulgarity would mark him as a regular guy, he was wrong. It marked him as vulgar. It also raised the question of…well, to come right to the point…of whether he’s something of a dope.

Maybe he’s the brightest guy around. But the context here is politics, in which appearance often outstrips reality. A candidate who comes across as kind of dense risks getting the reputation as a candidate who’s kind of dense. Once acquired, this reputation is hard to shake.

To be fair to Salmon, he does not appear to have been falling-down drunk. His breathalyzer test measured a blood alcohol content of .086, not far above the .08 legal limit.

Still, above the limit is above the limit. It doesn’t look good.

For two reasons, Salmon could still get re-elected next year. First, it’s early. Assuming there is no repeat performance, voters could forgive even if they don’t forget. A candidate who gets the vote of everyone who has ever driven after a drink too many would probably win in a landslide.

Second, one can never underestimate the facility of Vermont Democrats to nominate a turkey to run against Salmon. The Democratic leadership is no doubt trying to recruit a good candidate. But that leadership has limited power to control events. Anybody can enter the primary, meaning anybody can win it, including a turkey.

Right now, though, the Auditor’s re-election prospects seem bleak.

Oh, the other guy who wasn’t exactly impressive in handling this kerfuffle was Lt. Gov. and Republican gubernatorial candidate-designate Brian Dubie, who had nothing but praise for Salmon at Saturday’s Republican convention. Not a hint that he disapproved of what Salmon had done.

The appropriate response in the family, the fraternity house, maybe the Elks Club. Not in politics.

Enough of that. Now let’s turn to that other kerfuffle, the one about that letter to the editor of the Burlington Free Press, the existence of which the Freep is trying to deny.

The letter, by Ethan A. Sims (apparently the highly respected, much-honored professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Vermont, though the News Guy was unable to reach him for confirmation) which appeared to suggest that, while hunters were out trying to shoot a moose, anti-hunters might want to shoot the moose-hunters.

At least that’s how a great many hunters understood it. Preferring to be predators rather than prey, these hunters and their organizations not unreasonably became upset, deluging the newspaper with so many angry letters to the editor that the editors surrendered.

Abjectly. Not because they apologized, which was defensible if perhaps not necessary. But because they removed the letter from the newspaper’s web site archives.

It became, then, an un-letter, rather the way some one-time associates of Stalin who fell out of favor (and soon thereafter of sight) had their names and photographs purged from the history books, becoming un-persons.

Because no one here was killed, tortured, or exiled, the editors hardly sink to Stalinism, or other aspects of Bolshevism except in their obvious toadiness. Theirs is the spirit not of the independent journalist but of the ever-obsequious courtier.

Besides, this not being Soviet Russia, suppression doesn’t work. Anyone with a desire to see the letter and an Internet connection can find it. Here it is:

On this beautiful day we learn that about 1,251 hunters are taking to the woods with legal permits to “pursue prized quarry.” Certainly the members of various humane organizations do not approve. I suggest that before the next annual killing season, other residents be awarded legal permits to kill hunters who will be out to kill these beautiful, non-destructive animals. Or the government could just rule out all this primitive killing.
ETHAN A.H. SIMS
Shelburne

As another letter-writer noted last Sunday (a letter the Free Press editors, to their credit, printed), Sims obviously didn’t really want anyone to shoot a moose hunter. His letter was Swiftian satire, modeled on Jonathan Swift’s famous Modest Proposal (1729) suggesting Ireland’s poor ease their penury by selling their children to be eaten.

Not that hunters should be blamed for insufficient attention to Dr. Sims’ literary playfulness, which would have alerted them to his motivation. Hunters feel put upon these days because everybody does. It’s the American way to think everybody’s out to get us, whoever “us” may be. In fact, a very small percentage of the American people actively oppose hunting, and they have not been taken seriously by most of the rest of us (the News Guy is a very pro-hunting non-hunter) at least since the anti-hunting group PETA called for New Yorkers to change the name of the Fishkill River, apparently unaware that “kill” is Dutch for “river,” and so the name is not evidence of anti-piscatorialism (though perhaps of redundancy).

The editors could have explained that Sims was not in fact urging the murder of anyone, simply expressing his own anti-hunting views in a sardonic manner and with some literary flourish. Such a rational response, however, does not come easily to courtiers. Instead, the paper apologized for running a letter “advocating for violence against hunters,” which the letter does not do.

(OK, since this site is beating up on the Free Press again, this is a good place to note that Sunday’s package on the Lake Champlain Bridge, with stories by Terri Hallenbeck and Matt Sutkoski, was first class journalism.)