Last week, in an interview on WDEV Radio, state Republican Party chair Jack Lindley said that his party’s ticket for statewide offices was pretty much set. But, he added, we shouldn’t expect any announcements until the time was right.

He did say that Sen. Randy Brock was all but certain to be the Republican challenger to Governor Shumlin: “the ship has sailed,” he said, on others getting into the race.

So, in the absence of a big announcement, let’s examine some tea leaves and entrails.

We know we’ve got Brock for Governor and Phil “Blue Collar” Scott for a second term as Lieutenant Governor. It seems unlikely that the GOP would jettison its other statewide officeholder, Tom Salmon. In that WDEV interview, Lindley made some very positive comments about Salmon’s anti-embezzlement crusade (which mostly consists of cut-and-pastework plus some breathless news releases, but never mind).  

That leaves us with three offices occupied by Democrats: Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Treasurer.

After the jump: rumors, inferences, speculation, general snarkitude, and… The Penguin!!!

Attorney General. Let’s start with rumors of a primary challenge for longtime incumbent Democrat Bill Sorrell. Some names have been bruited about in the media, including Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovan and Speaker Shap Smith. That could be just Statehouse water-cooler talk, but for the most telling development of the week: Governor Shumlin’s conspicuous non-endorsement of Sorrell:

When asked at his weekly press conference whether he would endorse Sorrell, Shumlin paused for a few seconds, then said, “The attorney general is doing a great job for Vermont. I’m not going to get involved in electoral politics until past the filing date in any of the offices statewide in Vermont to see whether or not anyone … There are other people seeking those offices, so we’ll have plenty of time for politics after Labor Day so we’ll discuss it then.”

To Sorrell, that pause must have seemed interminable. In the words of Don Corleone: “I said that I would see you because I had heard that you were a serious man, to be treated with respect. But I must say no to you…” 

Next thing you know, horse’s head under the sheets.

On the Republican side, there’s been speculation about Sen. Vince Illuzzi as the AG candidate. Makes sense in a way; he’s a high-profile lawmaker with a bipartisan reputation. He currently sits as a Democrat/Republican. But for those just joining us, he carries some incredibly heavy baggage pertaining to the job of Attorney General. (This baggage was detailed in a 2007 GMD diary; highlights below.)

On at least three occasions in his career as an attorney, he has gotten into trouble for professional misdeeds. The most serious cost him the ability to practice law for four years. In part, it involved a dispute with a judge named David Suntag who, as it happened, was married to the state bar’s counsel investigating Illuzzi for earlier misdeeds. This is from a 2001 Boston Globe story, which is preserved online in a hard-to-read plaintext format, but is well worth the effort:

In the summer of 1993, [state bar counsel Wendy] Collins’s investigation concluded that Illuzzi had violated the Code of Professional Responsibility and moved to suspend his law license. Illuzzi fought all the way to the state Supreme Court, but the justices ruled against him, determining that “his conduct was aimed at interfering with a pending legal proceeding.” On September 1, 1993, his six-month suspension went into effect.

…There’s more. During his suspension, Illuzzi apparently continued to represent clients. The first letter of apology he promised to write to Suntag somehow never got sent, and the next one, which Illuzzi insisted had been mailed, never got to the judge, who had not changed either office or home addresses for five years. The third letter made it.

His combined transgressions cost Illuzzi 4 years of enforced hiatus from the practice of law, and the bar counsel (no longer Wendy Collins) moved to have him disbarred. But on March 19, 1998, more than a month after his latest suspension expired, a hearing panel unanimously recommended that Illuzzi be reinstated as a member of the bar.

So. Are the Republicans ready to give this guy their stamp of approval for Attorney General? It would seem unlikely, but there are hints at a high-profile gig of some kind in Illuzzi’s immediate future.

First: we hear he’s doing some serious attention-whoring. This has always been a big part of Vince’s M.O., but he seems to have upped the ante of late. Second, and more telling, was the Wednesday news conference where Republican mucky-mucks gathered to endorse Mitt Romney for President. Quite a few top elephants were in the room; but the pre-event news release specifically touted three: former NH Governor John Sununu, the gubernatorial nominee-in-waiting Randy Brock, and our man Vince Illuzzi.

To single him out for special notice would seem to signify a bigger role for him in the state GOP’s 2012 plans. And while he could be running for Treasurer (nah) or Secretary of State (meh), there’d certainly be an interesting psychodynamic in having a formerly-disgraced lawyer mounting an Oswald Cobblepot-style “revenge campaign” for AG. Hopefully without exploding penguins.

Treasurer. Incumbent Democrat Beth Pearce was appointed to the office in 2011 by Governor Shumlin to replace Jeb Spaulding, who left the post (immediately after winning re-election) to become the Governor’s Secretary of Administration. She’d been deputy treasurer for seven years. She is running for re-election; it will be her first ever political campaign.

Rumor has it that her Republican challenger will be Wendy Wilton, currently Treasurer of the City of Rutland. Wilton has been a high-profile critic of Governor Shumlin’s health care reform plans, brandishing her own “careful, professional analysis” indicating that the new system “will result in a $300+ million annual shortfall.”  Don’t know how her “careful, professional analysis” jibes with the Republican attack line that we don’t know anything about the Governor’s plan and he needs to tell us NOW. (Exactly how did she analyze a secret plan?) But never mind.

Wilton has been a frequent guest on The Ethan Allen Institute’s “True North Radio,” delivering her critique of the Shumlin plan. She also seems to be spending a lot of time in Montpelier by Rutland city official standards — enhancing her visibility, cadging support, or perhaps just meeting with her favorite Senator.

Secretary of State. Democrat Jim Condos would be up for re-election; presumably he’s planning to run. We don’t have any rumors or whisperings on the Republican side. If you got ’em, load ’em up in the Comments below.

My guess — and that’s absolutely all it is — is that the Republicans will put up some Tea Party type to placate that wing of the party and to play attack-dog on the voter-fraud issue. Considering how hard it is to beat an incumbent in one of these relatively obscure statewide contests, this has to be a low priority for the Vermont GOP.

Summary. If these rumors are true, the Republicans appear to be bracing for a hard-right campaign (by Vermont standards) focused almost entirely on health care, with no particular effort at appealing to the center aside from Phil Scott’s blue-collar bonhomie. Brock, with close advisor (and possibly campaign-manager-in-waiting) Darcie Johnston, late of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, is certainly poised for a frontal attack on the health care issue. Wilton would add a veneer of fiscal expertise to the proceedings.

In his WDEV interview, Lindley acknowledged that Gov. Shumlin had a lot going for him — managing the Irene crisis, steering the state through what Jim Douglas promised would be a budgetary Armageddon*, and co-opting a fave Republican issue by blocking proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy. But Lindley slammed Shumlin and the Dems for being “arrogant.” He used that word a lot. That’s a measure of Republican frustration with their tiny legislative minorities; but it also ties directly back to their criticism of Shumlin’s health care plans — by refusing to finalize the details until after the next election, the Dems are, in effect, confidence tricksters, asking the voters to buy their snake oil. That’s arrogance for ya.  

*You remember — that fiscal disaster that would befall Vermont in a year or two because the Legislature overrode his veto of the 2010 budget? Yeah, remember that? Didn’t happen.

Scott and Illuzzi would be on their own respective islands, lending some bipartisan cred to the increasingly right-wing post-Jim Douglas Republican Party. The Scott Island looks secure, while Illuzzi might be getting the Gaye Symington Memorial Booby Prize — a high-profile nomination followed by a pat on the back and a kick out the door. The Republicans can’t seriously imagine that a guy whose law license was suspended for four years — and who came very close to permanent disbarment — can really hope to win the Attorney Generalship against either a familiar incumbent or a Democratic replacement who’d have the full backing of the Shumlin machine. Can they?

Then again, maybe Illuzzi’s running for State. Heh.

Stay tooned!