It's almost two years ago now that Anthony Pollina started his campaign to try to get the state's Democratic Party to support him in his run for governor. What he heard from me, and presumably others, was that there was one straightforward way to get the support of the Party: enter the Democratic primary and win.

Of course we know that he didn't do that, but he didn't run as a Progressive, either. Instead he ran as an Independent, polled a lower percentage of the vote than he received in his last statewide race, but counted that as a win because he didn't come in last.

It's another year, both the governor's and lite gov's seats are open, and liberals and progressives across the state are hoping to avoid the mistakes of years past, including setting up three-way races likely to lead to a minority Republican win. Part of this strategy involves focussing on winnable races. For instance, while the D's were scrambling for a candidate against Douglas two years ago, this year there are five announced candidates

For the Lite Gov seat there are multiple declared or possible candidates, but with a twist: David Zuckerman, a Progressive State Rep. from Burlington, has announced that he's thinking of a Lite Gov run in the Democratic primary.

Exactly the strategy some of us were urging on Pollina two years ago. While Vermont law says you can't appear on the ballot in two party primaries, there is no impediment to running on the primary of one party and launching a write-in campaign in another. Naturally, the only way this can possibly work is to run in the D primary and persuade your Prog supporters to write your name in. A few hundred write-ins and you're on the ballot as the fusion D-P (or P-D) candidate, going head to head against the Republican.

Last night Zuckerman took the first step down this path, meeting with the Washington County Democratic Committee. While making it clear that he hadn't decided whether to run, and what office he might run for (either Lite Gov or State Senate), Zuckerman laid out the key issues that would form the basis of his campaign, tok questions, and directly addressed the issue of electability.

The reaction of this favorably disposed observer was that Zuckerman was well received by the Democratic activists in attendance. His key issues of health care, agriculture and rural economic development, and environmental protection are all well within the Vermont Democratic mainstream. The answers he gave to the questions from the committee were detailed, fluent, and showed a good command of the issues. 

What may be more important is that he was open and approachable, emphasized the importance of looking at the future and on where we can work together, and explicitly called for both sides to drop the old fights of who did who wrong in the last election, or the one before that, or the one before that, or  . . . You get the picture.

This is Step One. He's met with one county committee, talked directly about how he would overcome the obstacles that any Prog would have in getting Democrats and Republicans to vote for him, and came away with good feelings on both sides. Over the next month or two Democrats in other counties can expect a visit. How those visits go will  tell us a lot about our chances in November.