Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to campaign in Vermont for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Shumlin the day before the election, Shumlin campaign manager Alex MacLean said Monday.
Biden, a former U.S. senator from Delaware who was elected vice president in 2008, is set to hold a noon-time rally next Monday in Burlington at a location to be announced, MacLean said.
Heh. Might be fun. Biden’s pretty entertaining.
Talk about an explosion of activity in the nuts and bolts world of elections, as Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell’s office has sued both the Republican Governors Association and the “Green Mountain Future” organization, for which the Democratic Governors Association is a funder. Both are running political ads in the state.
The charges against GMF I have little information on at this point, although it looks to be akin to the first issue the AG has with the RGA (more on that below).
The RGA, however, has countersued the Attorney General, and that’s because the charges against them, as well as the investigation, are (for the moment) at a different level.
The letters from the AG’s office to the RGA have two themes. The first is, frankly, a bit embarrassing. Much as I’d like to say it has value, it reads like yet another case where the Attorney General’s office doesn’t seem to understand the law it’s supposed to be enforcing, in some very fundamental ways. The AG has concluded that the RGA is essentailly in violation of its nonprofit status and should be filing as a Vermont Political Action Committee. Sadly, they don’t need to, as the AG’s office is clearly screwy on this one. It’s true that if an organization expressly advocates for a candidate, the jurisdiction of that election (in this case, Vermont) can regulate its behavior – thing is, the RGA hasn’t done that. Their ads are all about how cool Brian Dubie is, but they stop short of telling viewers to vote for him. The AG office’s letter of October 19th alleging a violation, therefore, ignores established Supreme Court precedent, whether we like it or not – and the issues the office has with Green Mountain Future are in a similar vein. The AG’s office is going way out here in trying to claim regulatory authority.
Unfortunately, this silliness is allowing the RGA to use it to cloud the second issue, which is more damning and potentially has implications for Vermont, in that the countersuit amounts to an unprecedented power play over a State government by the arm of a national political party.
More after the flip, along with a pdf of the RGA’s suit, filed by former GOP Secretary of State candidate Chris Roy
The AG’s second letter from October 22nd gets into the meaty stuff. In that, Assistant Attorney General McShane makes broad demands for all communications between the RGA’s “Green Mountain Prosperity” PAC, the RGA and the Dubie campaign. They want information on the sharing of poll data, including copies of any communication the RGA plans to run between now and the election. Pretty sweeping stuff that’s clearly an information dragnet supporting a more serious investigation.
Here’s what’s really extraordinary, though. The RGA (through attorney Roy – man, good thing he ain’t gonna be Secretary of State, eh? Geez!) wants an injunction to prevent the AG from proceeding with any civil or criminal investigation of them. They claim he’s incapable of fairly investigating, because he is an elected Democrat, which is a spit in the eye of Vermont’s fundamental governmental structure. The RGA would have Vermont throw that structure out the door, at their demand, and allow the Governor (who I believe also is a partisan elected official, if I’m not mistaken) to appoint some sort of independent counsel a la Ken Starr.
They got nerve, at any rate. And unfortunately they muddy this more serious issue by calling out the AG’s office for their blown call on the former point.
But here’s the thing – the RGA says they want a judgment on their request within 60 days, even though the election is only a week away. WTF?
Well, they could be flailing. They could also be filing the suit just to discredit the action of the AG in the press, except that they really did no press on this suit, so they weren’t exactly trying to trumpet it. More likely it’s just a delaying action, either by good old fashioned legal red tape, or by virtue of the explosive threat to the Attorney General’s authority and Vermont’s constitutional autonomy. The AG has indicated its intention to deal with issues like this before the election, and it looks to me like the RGA knows it’s in big trouble and it wants the whole issue put off until it won’t do Dubie any damage.
And it needs to be said that Vermont isn’t the only state where they’re engaging in these shenanigans. In a previous diary, I referenced their checkered history of ignoring campaign finance laws, but it’s not just history. Right now in Hawaii, this is the story:
Democratic Party Chairman Dante Carpenter and lawyer Tony Gill claimed the Aiona campaign shared polling and other information with the RGA, which was then used to produce its “rise and shine” television ads that appeared between Aug. 5 and Sept. 24. Similar RGA-financed ads recently began airing.
Under state statutes, the RGA’s efforts on behalf of a Hawaii candidate are to be independent of that candidate’s campaign, the Democratic Party officials said.
They alleged that the RGA violated the law by acting “in concert or cooperation” with Aiona’s campaign committee.
[…] An exhibit accompanying the Democratic Party’s complaint showed that the RGA accepted a contribution from Aiona’s campaign for $31,039 on June 21, the same day that the RGA donated research worth the same amount to Aiona’s campaign, according to the RGA’s contribution and expenditure report filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
Familiar, isn’t it? It’s exactly what they’re doing in Vermont. Seems to me the term for such an large scale engagement in illegal activities is racketeering, but I digress…
Consider the implications of the RGA engaging in activity they know to be illegal and attempting to strong-arm the Attorney General and force a whole new way of handling legal matters in the state. If Brian Dubie is elected, it will be under that cloud.
And if he gets a plurality of the voter but is below 50%, that illegality is damn well good reason for the legislature to question the validity of that plurality. Talk about ill-gotten gains.
So that’s a snapshot, but only an initial one. There is a lot of information in the RGA’s filing, attached below – including what looks to be some information about what they may have in the pipeline. I encourage folks to take a closer look and post on what they find. May be nuthin’, may be lots…
Talk about opportunities lost. The mind boggles when you stop and consider some of the things that could be different if we’d had a green Governor in Vermont over the last few years. Of course, we can never really quantify the decisions that were not made, the initiatives not undertaken, because citizens and activists knew they wouldn’t get past square one, but beyond that there are some very specific things we can point to that might have been different:
That’s just a start. There are a couple others that jump immediately to mind that probably deserve a little more fleshing out than the above. Others? Where should we be in 2010?
Visit votegreengov.org and take the pledge to vote green in 2010! (a reminder that the posts explicitly promoting votegreengov – and those posts only – are being done as part of my working with LCV for the tail end of the election season)
As readers know, I’m doing some work on the votegreengov.org campaign in addition to my regular blogging at GMD. Even if I wasn’t, though, I’d highlight this. It’s the very cool Vermont LCV app for iphone and droid. Here’s the download link from itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vermont-league-conservation/id394313927?mt=8.
Wish I had a smart phone 🙁
Visit votegreengov.org and take the pledge to vote green in 2010!
Fun with the A/V software…
There’s a foolish, foolish thing that Peter Shumlin has continued to do in debates; lament the fact that everyone thinks he’s “slick.” His pitch goes something to the effect of I’m not slick, I’m an overcompensating dyslexic, but all it does is reinforce putting the words “Shumlin” and “slick” into the same part of people’s minds. This is Shumlin breaking the first rule of Campaign Psy Ops 101 – if your opponent beats a drum that resonates in the back of people’s minds, don’t add to it.
Well, Brian Dubie has taken Shumlin’s annoying goof and made his own full blown act of Seppuku out of the same sort of thinking. His latest ad hits back at Peter Shumlin on the issue of abortion rights – an issue that Dubie is supremely vulnerable on – with a parade of actresses women indentifying themselves as pro-choice Dubie voters.
Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. This ad guarantees once and for all the choice is the new big issue of the last stage of the campaign, and no two ways about it, choice is a loser for Dubie. In this – as with the nasty slash-and-burn campaign – Dubie becomes his own worst enemy.
But what’s better is the question of why Dubie would do something so foolish. Short of a total brain trust meltdown, the only answer can be that it’s an act of desperation – that despite the issue’s low resonance in recent polling, their own internal polls must be telling them they are losing women’s votes over this issue in the waning days, and they felt they had to do something to staunch the bleeding.
Wishful thinking? Maybe, but I don’t think so.
(Crossposted from Huffington Post… )
Vermont has a population of 620,000. Of that, roughly 260,000 are expected to turn out to vote on Election Day.
The combined population of New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut is 11,300,000, quite a bit more than 260,000, and yet those 260,000 are about to make a decision that could have tremendous impact on the lives of those other eleven-plus million.
One of the major issues on the campaign trail in Vermont is the relicensing of the state’s aging and dangerous nuclear reactor, Entergy Corporation’s Vermont Yankee plant. The problems with this plant have been documented at the Huffington Post in the past, such as in this piece from Vermonter Charlotte Dennett. The plant is quite old, has been beset with problems (including multiple leaks of radioactivity — most notably a sustained leaking of radioactive tritium into the ground, the source of which took weeks to determine), is routinely pushed to produce energy beyond its originally intended capacity, and has also frequently had that production dialed back or completely halted to deal with safety or functional concerns. This is why a recent poll indicated that 44% of Vermonters want the plant shut down, compared to 39% that want it to stay open. 17% were undecided.
Since that time of that previous posting from Dennett, the plant has been found to be leaking again. Radioactive steam has been seeping from a pipe that is part the plant’s emergency cooling system. This is in addition to recent revelations that the tritium which was found to be leaking some time ago has hit at least one drinking water well, despite assurances that this wouldn’t happen. These assurances, of course, came from the Entergy Corporation, which previously couldn’t find the leak, and which turned out to be coming from pipes which a spokesman had testified before the legislature didn’t even exist.
The track record on transparency and honesty from the Entergy Corporation is not good.
The plant was only meant to function for 40 years (an expiration date now coming due), and the push is on from the corporation and its political allies to relicense the plant for another 20, which would be unprecedented. This push comes despite its history of leaks, dramatic structural collapses, and even a fire, along with other mishaps and embarrassments.
And despite its location: right on the Connecticut River, roughly where the borders of Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts meet. Just upriver from Connecticut.
This puts the citizens of those other three states subject to the mood of the Vermont electorate this coming Election Day.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is, of course, supposed to preside over a regulatory regime for plants such as Yankee which — as a federal agency representing all Americans — is theoretically the great equalizer from on high. But as anyone active in these issues can tell you, their record of enforcement is lousy. In addition, the Obama administration has made a renewed federal commitment to nuclear power as part of the national energy portfolio and has already seemed loathe to meaningfully engage in any regulation that could negatively impact public support for such an expansion of the industry.
All of which is to say that the matter of the fate of this plant in the hands of Vermont lawmakers — and ultimately, with an election approaching, that puts it in the hands of Vermont voters. The Vermont legislature has granted itself authority on the relicensing question, and a vote by the state Senate earlier in the year has put a stumbling block in Entergy’s way — at least for now. But the fact is that votes can be re-held, and the issue is a controversial one within the legislature, and between the two major party candidates for Governor; Republican Brian Dubie supports relicensing, Democrat Peter Shumlin does not.
But the fact is that nature abhors a vacuum, and the NRC’s historic refusal to live up to its regulatory responsibility has created a regulatory and political vacuum.
So, whether they realize it or not, 260,000 voters in Vermont are filling that vacuum. They are about to make a decision that could prove to have an impact on the health and livelihood of many of New Hampshire’s, Massachusetts’, and downriver Connecticut’s citizens — and by extension could financially impact all those states’ citizens.
Somehow, that just doesn’t seem right.
Visit votegreengov.org and take the pledge to vote green in 2010!
A candidate for governor “shall not accept contributions totaling more than $2,000 from a single source, political committee or political party in any two-year general election cycle.” 17 V.S.A. §2805(a).
A “related campaign expenditure made on a candidate’s behalf shall be considered a contribution to the candidate on whose behalf it was made.” Vt. Stat. §2809(a). “Related campaign expenditure made on the candidate’s behalf” means “any expenditure intended to promote the election of a specific candidate … if intentionally facilitated by, solicited by or approved by the candidate or the candidate’s political committee.” 17 V.S.A. §2809(c).
“If it was illegal, we wouldn’t have done it,” Dubie campaign manager Corry Bliss
The evidence Assistant Attorney General Michael) McShane is studying includes a 260-page document filed recently by the Republican Governors Association with the Internal Revenue Service showing an in-kind contribution Sept. 22 from Friends of Brian Dubie valued at $25,500 and identified as “polling.”
Papers on file at the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office show that Friends of Brian Dubie, the name of Dubie’s campaign organization, paid $25,500 for a poll Sept. 27.
Under state campaign-finance law, political entities can spend unlimited amounts of money on behalf of a candidate so long as they do not coordinate what they’re doing with the candidate’s campaign. If the activity fits the coordination definition, spending is limited to $6,000 per election cycle.
This is not, as he says a “new” issue, but rather a re-opening of the matter of routine illegal campaign contributions from the RGA to the Dubie campaign, originally broached regarding this Republican Governor’s Association advertisement in a complaint since rejected by the Attorney General. The new information was simply too much for the AG’s office to ignore – even after their irresponsible and legally reckless dismissal of the complaint initially.
Why was the original dismissal irresponsible? It’s quite simple, actually. An appropriate entity can make its own expenditures in an election season. If that entity coordinates with a specific political campaign, it becomes an agent of that campaign directly, and its work on behalf of the candidate – in kind or otherwise – is therefore a contribution. And as a contribution, it’s subject to campaign contribution limits.
Anyone paying any attention to the RGA ad at all can tell it coordinated with the Dubie campaign? Why? Because its obviously staged. Dubie is clearly being directed, in an ad produced by the RGA for upwards of $30,000. Hence, a violation, and a significant one. Not a technicality, not some legalistic interpretation, a direct and flagrant violation. The evidence after the flip.
Here’s a link to the ad. If you haven’t yet watched it, take a look. It doesn’t simply have static images or news clips of Dubie. It’s a slickly produced bit with scenes showcasing the candidate – scenes which only a moron would suggest weren’t directed, quite frankly. The RGA claims to have collected the footage used by following Dubie around at public events.
The ad was shot on AUgust 14th of this year (which is when Dubie’s Facebook page placed him at Jay Peak – Jay Peak owner Bill Stenger appears in photos from the day and is in the same clothes as in the ad). Scenes were taped at the Jay Peak Ice Haus facility and the ice rink.
Her’s the thing: Dubie’s calendar made no announcement of any public event at Jay Peak at the time. A campaign website blog post the day before the shoot refers to an upcoming stop at Jay Peak, but there was no schedule or press release indicating when – and yet somehow, the professional camera crew knew precisely when to be there.
Now let’s look atthe ad. Obviously, as these screen shots indicate, the camera was right there at Brian Dubie’s side:
He doesn’t seem all that concerned about who these guys with the camera in his face are, does he?
And this looks pretty private for a “public” event that the RGA cameras were following him around on. He’s speaking to a businessperson privately in their place of business – and apparently the two of them are the only ones in the room:
It was an insult to the Attorney General’s intelligence to suggest that, in this case, Dubie would just let some anonymous professional cameraman follow him into such a meeting if he didn’t knowexactly who they were and exactly what they were doing. The camera is positioned behind the counter for a framed shot. Clearly staged, and clearly both knew what they were doing.
Here is another from the same ad:
Still not enough for you? Then get a load of this:
Dubie’s going to sit in a small circle of kids with a professional camera right there in the circle with him, face to face with a little girl – and he’s going to stand for this if he doesn’t know exactly who they are? If that’s true, just think for a minute how creepy and reckless of him that would be.
And it’s bunk. Once again, this is no shot froma crowd at a public event. He knows who the cameraman is, and that makes it corrdination, which makes it illegal.
And Dubie – once again, has chosen to simply lie and lie and lie about it, over and over again. The guy is truly shameless.
So where did the Dems go wrong with the initial complaint? Well, first of all the AG had no business dismissing it in the first place, but the complaint made it easy. Politically, it didn’t even register among the public because the complaint and the announcement of the complaint were made on the precise day everyone knew the primary recount would be completed. This guaranteed that the story would get second billing in he papers at best, and that it wouldn’t be what anyone was talking about at the water coolers that day (or the next day, which was Saturday when no one pays attention to the news). That was a shockingly amateur mistake, and may be an example of Senator Shumlin’s legendary impulsiveness getting in his way. If they’d waited 3 days, this could’ve created solid buzz.
But also, the complaint depended on a leak from a witness, who anonymously reported that he saw Dubie at Jay Peak during this day outside a private reception with a full camera crew. The witness reports seeing Dubie leave with the camera crew amidst a fleet of SUVs. The pictures seem to corroborate this. From the facebook link:
Again – a private reception, not on the calendar, that a fleet of RGA SUVs knew to be at.
But the problem is that the witness was never going to come forward, clearly. The complaint hung its case on the witness who wasn’t going to step forward – which made the case flimsily, allowing it to be dismissed for lack of evidence. Instead, the complaint should have focused on a screen-by-screen examination (as I’m doing) which would have provided enough evidence for an investigation involving sworn depositions.
Find out who these people are and get them under oath – then we’d have all the answers quickly. No doubt not all of them can lie about it as easily and casually as our Lieutenant Governor.
Then there’s the matter of the RGA’s record in this business. They’ve been nailed for this sort of violation repeatedly: in Alaska, Texas, and even right here in Vermont in 2004!! (Hemingway, “GOP ads ordered off the air”, Burlington Free Press, 10/29/2004 – no link available) for example. These guys have a rap sheet. They are repeat offenders. That matters.
None of this even gets into the question of Jim Douglas himself, who narrates the ad and was quite active in the Dubie campaign at the time (he headlined a fundraising event on August 20th – just days after the shoot). Jim DOuglas (who also appears in the ad) seems to personify the revolving door between the RGA and the campaign.
So there was a violation, clearly. Dismissing the complaint was practically an act of malpractice by the AG’s office and refusing to meaningfully investigate and examine the evidence was an act of irresponsibility by the Vermont press.
But this new issue has reinvigorated the issue, giving the AG and the press corps a second chance – and giving the public another opportunity to find out about the illegal activities of the Dubie campaign before they go to the polls.
If there’s one thing everyone agrees on, it’s that the gubernatorial election in Vermont is going to be a squeaker, and could well be decided by a margin less than one percentage point.
The last three times Vermont had an Election Day without a presidential race on the same ballot, turnout has averaged in the neighborhood of 235,000 voters – sometimes higher, sometimes lower. If that total holds this year, your individual vote will account for a more than .0004% of the election total. You and your significant other, then, could count for .0009%.
Sound like a middling amount? Take a look at this election result right in our own backyard:
1974, New Hampshire: The election for US Senator concludes with a margin of .0009% – that’s two votes.
Want more two vote margins?
In 1839, the election for Governor of Massachusetts was won by Marcus Morton – by two votes.
Got a couple grown kids or friends that may or may not vote as well? The 1974 election in Indiana’s 8th US. House District was decided by four votes.
Or maybe its just you – no partner, no friends, no nuthin. One vote doesn’t matter, right?
Going right back to our own backyard, elections in Quebec to their National Assembly in 1994 and 2003 were tied.
Anyway you slice it, this election could turn on every single vote. If that vote is yours, wouldn’t you rather it turned on the fact that you showed up, rather than the fact that you didn’t?
(Take the pledge at votegreengov.org)
This is exactly what I was talking about.
Recently, I penned an uncharacteristically esoteric piece for the Huffington Post, discussing the need for a politics that promotes “fault tolerance” in our society. My basic thesis was this: people (individually and culturally) learn by adapting to crises, either those externally imposed, or those we bring about ourselves. The problem comes now that we have harnessed so many powerful technologies on such a grand scale that we can no longer afford to wait to learn from our mistakes, because of the scale of the consequences that arise from those mistakes. Climate change is the marquee example – we can’t simply learn our lesson after we do irreparable damage to our planet.
But for an example that hits more close to home, Vermont Yankee is a beaut. In case you haven’t heard, it’s leaking again. This time its radioactive steam into the air to go along with the tritium that’s hit the water table.
Does anybody seriously think this is going to get better? That an aging plant leaking and collapsing and belching toxins is going to stop aging? If common sense doesn’t answer that question, the second law of thermodynamics should.
There is no fault tolerance with this plant, and with our associated energy policy right here in Vermont. If we follow our pattern as a species, we won’t collectively get that lesson through our heads until we do serious damage – and the damage that will be done by our mistakes in not dealing with the danger of this plant is simply too high to absorb and casually walk away from.
We in Vermont need to approach our ballots this November with an eye towards breaking this cycle. We need to ask ourselves which candidates will look to preventing environmental disasters rather than waiting to deal with them after the fact. We need candidates who can build fault tolerance into our public institutions, because the cost of some faults is simply intolerable.
(Take the pledge at votegreengov.org)