Last week, we profiled Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Milne in a story that explored some of the quirks of his campaign.
The story showed Milne traveling without staffers and repeatedly declining to engage voters — even those who indicated they were supporting him — during a 14-hour day on the campaign trail.
In all, we deemed it a "novel approach" from a man "uncomfortable with many rituals of modern campaigning."
We may have been underselling it. A lot.
This morning, the Milne campaign released via Twitter (its first tweet in nearly a month) a link to something that
can be called a campaign ad.
Tongue firmly planted in cheek (lord, we hope so, anyway) the clip, dubbed "Milk Bowl Legend," shows Milne winning the World Cow Chip Throwing Contest at Thunder Road in Barre last weekend.
In all seriousness, before we go any further, we need to be clear about one thing: Scott Milne can seriously hurl cow shit.
The video captures his textbook form. Milne steps forward with his left leg and bends gracefully at the knee, while in perfect synchronization his right arm swings back. As if a pendulum, his arm sweeps forward. At the point where he can reach no farther Milne releases the cow pie, sending it floating through the brisk autumn air, soaring with the grace of a migrating songbird before reaching its destination — a bull's-eye in the middle of a tire.
Winner!
The video, which appears to have been filmed from a cellphone, had 15 views as of this writing, and we're pretty sure we account for at least 12 of them.
Milne wasn’t the only politician to test his accuracy in Barre over the weekend. Roughly 30 other office-seekers also participated, the
Burlington Free Press reported. But Milne's throw was reportedly the best.
Our spy who witnessed Milne's triumph reports that he did a little dance-shimmy thing after his throw that sadly was not captured on this video.
The moment has already secured a place in Vermont political lore and the ad represents a devastating salvo as the campaign enters the home stretch.
Your move, Gov. Shumlin.
Updated 10/14/2014 to include information about other participants in the event; and corrected to note Gov. Peter Shumlin did did not participate.