( – promoted by odum)
On my tour around the Vermont webscape, I noticed that Colby has resurrected a perennial canard that's worth responding to; the myth of the Democratic overlord (or boogeyman, if you prefer) – Harlan Sylvester.
To start, Colby sets up a faux cause-effect link by stating “I told you the real behind-the-scenes Vermont Dems weren’t going to sit on their hands and watch Anthony Pollina play in the media spotlight for long,” and goes on to implicate Sylevester as “The real behind the scenes kingmaker of Vermont politicians” in a post dramatically entitled “The Hand of Harlan.” It's just the kind of chatter that makes most actual, hands-on Dem insiders roll their eyes. While Colby's overall assessment of mainstream politics and the Democratic Party is a legitimate, defensible opinion that one may or may not agree with, his “insider info” can be very bit hit-or-miss.
This one, while dramatically compelling, is a miss.
The reason the Democratic gubernatorial whisper campaigns suddenly went live, is that rank-and-file Democrats were getting antsy – even rebellious. And with reorganization coming up, and the Party Chairmanship at stake, that matters in a big way. The idea that a Democratic Wizard of Oz behind the curtain decided to throw a switch to avoid Pollina is sexy, but off-base. This operation just aint that coordinated. If there were such a command-and-control operation, its a switch that would've been thrown weeks or months ago. The fact is that Pollina's entry into a left wing vacuum threw gasoline on a sense of humiliation already bubbling among the rank and file, and a grassroots pushback from many Dems was inevitable.
And setting the record straight on all this matters for one reason; that if such a narrative gets wide enough circulation, perception can become reality (at least to a point). The perception of power is power, and the limited power Sylvester does have, he has precisely because there is still this myth of the uberlord Sylvester in some, old-school circles in Chittenden County, and the mutterings about the “Burlington mafia.”
For an example. By the time I could get corroboration from enough sources, this was already old news – but the mystery man in this article from back during the session was, reportedly, Mr. Sylvester:
The energy bill also caused one of the more tense moments in the Statehouse recently.
Sen. John Campbell, D-Windsor, said he felt threatened by David O'Brien Wednesday evening when the head of the state's Department of Public Service was trying to convince the Senate majority leader to vote against the energy bill.
O'Brien told him a prominent member of the state's business community and a major force in state politics, whom Campbell declined to name, would be disappointed if Campbell supported the bill.
Campbell said he found O'Brien's comments “extremely disturbing” and took them as a “direct threat” to his political future. The lobbying “jeopardized the integrity of the legislative process,” Campbell said.
That's the hubbub, anyway. Clearly the Governor's people have bought into the line that Sylvester is some sort of kingmaker, but that breaks down fairly quickly when you think about it.
Sylvester's a wealthy guy, but you can only throw so much wealth around in this state. And he's hardly in a professional position to put together contribution “bundles.” Sylvester is a conservative investment banker and stockbroker, who rose to political prominence as a primary financial adviser to Howard Dean's governorship – to the dismay of liberals. His Democratic Party context has always been a Howard Dean context. Once Dean moved off the state scene, Sylvester became a Douglas supporter, becoming the Chair of his Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Believe me, the Chair of Douglas’s Council of Economic Advisors is hardly in control of the Democratic Party.
The simple fact is, he hasn't been on the radar screen as a Dem force since the Dean days, and there's no way he's a master manipulator. When Doug Racine was running to replace Governor Dean, Sylvester was reportedly dour and resigned to the prospect of Racine beating his new man – Jim Douglas. He assumed a few months before the campaign (incorrectly, as we all did), that lefty Vermont would easily promote the liberal Racine to the top spot. It's hard to be the master manipulator if you're just watching and reacting to the conventional wisdom just like the rest of us. And do you really think, if he had been the overlord of the party, he would've “allowed” a Peter Clavelle or Scudder Parker candidacy?
And the truth of the matter is, at this point, most people working the Statehouse have still never even heard of the guy. That's not because his existence is some super-secret dogma that only the illuminati are graced with, it's because he's not really a factor. It may not be very exciting, or sexy, or sufficiently spooky in a Da Vinci Code kinda way, but life is never that simple.
Seriously, if the Democratic Party really were a dictatorship, it wouldn't be such a perennial mess.