Vermont’s Democratic gubernatorial candidates spent their final day before Tuesday’s primary election rallying supporters, pressing the flesh and working the phones.
“A lot of well-informed voters are undecided,” former senator Peter Galbraith observed Monday after canvassing senior centers in Burlington.
Across town, rival Sue Minter said she’d detected a “shift” in the race to replace retiring Gov. Peter Shumlin as the party’s standard-bearer.
“I think people are finally actually paying attention,” the former transportation secretary said after hosting a rally near the Burlington waterfront. “It’s been great to have a field operation where we’ve made tons of touches, so by the time I’m talking to people, they’ve heard of me.”
The third major candidate in the race, former Google manager Matt Dunne, spent Monday hunkered down in his White River Junction office making phone calls, according to spokeswoman Jessica Bassett. She said he was not available for an interview.
As the candidates reached out to voters one by one, their campaigns and supporters bombarded the state with television advertising and mailings.
In the three and a half weeks since they last submitted comprehensive spending reports, Dunne’s campaign has spent more than $344,000 on mass media, according to filings with the Secretary of State’s office. In that same period, Minter has spent more than $313,000 on such expenses — including TV, radio, print, internet, mail and paid phone calls — while Galbraith has spent just $22,185.
The last-minute blitz is likely to push both Dunne’s and Minter’s campaigns over the million-dollar mark — an extraordinary sum for a Vermont primary. Including all expenses made before the July 15 filing deadline and mass media spending since, Dunne has doled out more than $956,000. Minter has spent at least $910,000 and Galbraith $309,000. Those figures are likely to grow significantly as other expenses, such as payroll, are tallied.
Such spending far exceeds that of Vermont’s last competitive gubernatorial primary. In 2010, Shumlin spent roughly $565,000 to best four opponents. Second-place finisher Doug Racine dropped just $255,000 that year, while third-place finisher Deb Markowitz spent $631,000. Dunne, who came in fourth, spent roughly a third of this year’s total: a mere $337,000.
Driving the expense of this year’s race has been an infusion of out-of-state cash.
Last week, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, a cofounder of LinkedIn and PayPal, spent $220,000 on independent advertising in support of Dunne. A super PAC founded by retired Vermont lobbyist Bob Sherman and largely funded by Washington, D.C.-based EMILY’s List spent more than $124,000 backing Minter. Another super PAC, affiliated with Vermont Conservation Voters, put $5,000 behind Minter.
Galbraith, who has received no such support, said the voters he spoke with Monday were “appalled” at the influx of outside money.
“I said, ‘Even if you don’t vote for me, leave it blank,’” Galbraith said of the Democratic ballot. “Let’s send a message that we will not support candidates that establish super PACs and have their outside buddies spend money.”
Minter dodged repeated questions Monday about whether she wished super PACs would refrain from supporting her candidacy.
“What I wish is that we could overturn Citizens United, because it’s turned all of this into something that I think is getting further away from what our democracy is supposed to be,” she said, referring to the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that gutted campaign finance laws.
Minter was joined at her Burlington rally by several prominent politicians, including former governors Howard Dean and Madeleine Kunin, and nearly 50 other supporters.
“She’s an extraordinary human being. And I think it’s great that she’s gonna be the second woman governor of the state of Vermont, but that’s not why I endorsed her,” Dean said outside of Main Street Landing. “I endorsed her because she’s competent, qualified and, most of all, she’s got guts and courage.”
While Dunne held no public events on Monday, he planned to host his own get-out-the-vote rally Tuesday afternoon in Burlington’s City Hall Park. Headlining the event will be Jeff Weaver, who managed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) presidential campaign and endorsed Dunne a week and a half ago.
Dunne’s campaign circulated a new op-ed Monday written by Weaver and making the case that Dunne was a natural choice for Sanders fans.
By voting for Dunne, Weaver wrote, “Vermonters have a chance to stand up for progressive change and to carry the political revolution forward.”
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“Minter dodged repeated questions Monday about whether she wished super PACs would refrain from supporting her candidacy.”
That is because she wants SuperPacs to spend on her behalf but doesn’t have the courage to say so to Vermont voters. One can understand why. Her SuperPac is funded by the likes of Travis Belisle, a man who boasts that he has never voted for a Democrat in his life.
Belisle used the Minter SuperPac to evade the $4000 limit on campaign contributions. Having given the maximum allowable by law to Minter directly, he then gave an additional $5000 to her SuperPac. Why would a Republican give so much to a self styled progressive Democrat? Because he is the developer of the Swanton wind project and needs the state’s approval to move forward. Sue Minter is pro wind. Regardless one’s views on the wind issue, we should be outraged when a developer uses a SuperPac to circumvent campaign finance laws in order to elect a governor who will make the regulatory decision that his business needs.
Matt Dunne’s campaign says he was unavailable. He certainly didn’t want to answer a question about whether he welcomed the supposedly independent expenditure of $220,000 made on his behalf by Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman. Dunne describes Hoffman as a close friend.
These supposedly independent expenditures were carefully timed to take place at the very end of the campaign—when the forums and debates were over and therefore almost no public scrutiny.
Sue Minter and Matt Dunne made a great show of returning their corporate campaign contributions. They could denounce these cynically timed outside expenditures but prefer to have the money.
Vermont voters can express their views of this kind of politics by voting for neither.
…or they can vote for the candidate that has the support of the most recent solid leaders of the state (Dean, Kunin) and hire someone who has run a state-sized budget w/o deficit spending…Minter
Sue Minter does not have “guts and courage.” About ten days before Super Tuesday, Ms. Minter called my partner and I, Edward Clark, at home looking for our support. We asked her if she was going to endorse Bernie Sanders for POTUS. She said she was not, that she would endorse no one, because she wanted to stay neutral so that she could “get along” with whomever ended up as POTUS. Translation=I’m afraid of the Clintons. Imagine our surprise just ten days later, when we attended the Bernie rally in Essex Jct on Super Tuesday night and Sue Minter was up there roaring her support for Bernie Sanders. This kind of nauseating bandwagon jumping is reason enough to refrain voting for her. So is the “endorsement” from Howard Dean. I’ll stick to my plan and vote for Matt Dunne, who has actual convictions.
Unfortunately it costs a lot of money to run a modern and effective campaign. This is reality, but we can’t let it distract us from comparing the candidates on the issues.
I support Matt because he’s The Issues Candidate. Just compare his website with 14 in-depth issue statements (http://www.mattdunne.com/issues/) compared to Sue’s 5 (http://www.sueminter.com/issues).
Matt entered political life 24 years ago to Sue’s 11 years ago, and the reason that’s relevant is because it takes a lot of experience to first identify the issues and then come up with solutions.
I respect that Matt (yes, like Bernie) gets that most issues tie back to the economy. We all know we’ve lost too many tax paying citizens, which means fewer people are forced to carry a greater tax burden. We need to grow the economy and here Matt has the most experience having worked in both the House and Senate, in non-profit (Americorp Vista managing 6K helping the poor) and then a small tech company here in Vermont and then Google – the most innovative company on the planet. Breadth of experience and depth of experience combine to give Matt Dunne a clear view of what is possible. Vision. He can see that tomorrow’s jobs and families and schools require broadband. He clearly gets technology which has been the achilles heal for Montpelier for too long. Matt obviously gets tech and its value in growing Vermont’s economy. He’s by far the most qualified and most experienced candidate amongst them all. Thank you.
Bernie rejected the billionaires. Dunne latest ads are paid by a billionaire.
Correction: Travis Belisle did not contribute to Minter’s campaign. He still evaded Vermont campaign finance limits by contributing to the Minter SuperPac more than the $4000 allowed for contributions to Gubernstorial candidates. Another wind developer David Blittersdorf did contribute the maximum to Minter and then an additional $1900 to a separate Minter SuperPac. Both Blittersdorf and Beliisle have a huge financial stake in the regulatory decisions of the state. Vermonters can reject this type of pay to play politics in their votes today.
I knew I didn’t trust Jeff Weaver! Siding with a Silicon Valley-based superpac recipient? And couldn’t endorse Dunne until the national DNC was over! You don’t suppose he might have been a corporate Democrat in sheep’s clothing during Bernie’s campaign, do you?