For months, Gov. Peter Shumlin has been dodging questions about Republican challenger Randy Brock, telling reporters there’d be plenty of time for “silly season” after Labor Day.
Now — on the day his campaign finally announced a forthcoming campaign kickoff event — Shumlin’s campaign manager is saying there’s not enough time left for the governor to take part in debates held by “special interest groups.”
That includes AARP Vermont’s traditional gubernatorial debate, which has been held on Vermont Public Television each election cycle since Jim Douglas went tete-a-tete with Doug Racine in 2002. This year it was scheduled for Sept. 18 in South Burlington and was to be moderated, as usual, by former Vermont Public Radio reporter Steve Delaney.
“The reason is because there are roughly eight weeks left before the election, and while the governor is absolutely going to be campaigning, he’s going to be focusing on the job Vermonters elected him to do,” newly-minted Shumlin campaign manager Alex MacLean said Friday. “If he were to say yes to every request that came in, he would be spending all of his time campaigning.”
Asked if she was, in fact, serious that the Shumlin campaign would suggest it was crunched for time after kicking the campaign can down the road for months, MacLean said she was.
“Seriously,” she said. “The governor still needs to be governor of the state. He has to balance both campaigning and governing.”
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
Shumlin may have “moved past” the merger issue but I hope it hasn’t moved past him. He’s going to have to come up with better reasons that the rubes at PSB accepted for why it was a good deal for the ratepayers to pay GazMet so that CVPS stockholders could receive $90± million more than the company was worth. Also, if he gets any time off from non-stop job creation, maybe he could let us all know why it was ok to gradually destroy hundreds of jobs in the result.