Doug Racine, one of five Democratic candidates for governor, is the triple-crown winner: He beat out his four primary election contenders for his third union endorsement in a week.
The 5,000-member Vermont State Employees Association announced Tuesday that it would back Racine in the Aug. 24 Democratic primary. Brian Dubie, the lieutenant governor, is the only Republican candidate in the gubernatorial race.
Last week, the AFL-CIO, a consortium of labor groups, and the Vermont-NEA both threw their support behind Racine. In all, the three unions represent roughly 25,000 Vermont workers.
As a result of the union backing and other factors, political observers are now putting Racine in a dead heat with Deb Markowitz at the head of the Democratic pack.
Racine said the endorsements, and especially the volunteer support that comes along with the official backing, will give his campaigns a “good boost.”
“They’ve had eight years now where they feel they haven’t been respected for the work they do,” Racine said. “Jim Douglas has made them the enemy of Vermonters in some way and suggested that their work isn’t important and sort of devalued what they’ve done.”
Bob Hooper, VSEA president, said in an interview that Racine “has a demonstrated ability to work effectively on the issues we think are important to Vermonters.” Hooper said he worked on a government efficiency commission with Racine in the 1990s when he was lieutenant governor.
“Doug’s longstanding relationship with us is what tipped the scale in his favor,” Hooper said.
Over the last three years of the recession, the Douglas administration and the Vermont Legislature have downsized state government. Since 2007, as tax revenues have declined dramatically, the state has dropped 650 positions.
“I’ve fought back on their behalf on what I call gratuitous personnel cuts of the administration,” Racine said. “VSEA is realistic. They know we’re going through tough times, they know there are going to be some cuts, and they’ve been understanding and accepting of that, but where it looks like the cuts are indiscriminant, where they see that the administration has been cutting federally funded positions — just setting targets and just going for numbers rather than being smart about it — they have fought back, and I have fought back with them.”
In fiscal year 2011, the state faced a $154 million deficit; the Douglas administration and lawmakers managed to balance the budget without significant layoffs in the last legislative session. They were able to avoid more cuts, in part, by adopting a new restructuring plan known as Challenges for Change that is designed to make government more efficient and permanently reduce state spending by $37.8 million. Next year, the Challenges are supposed to save the state $72 million.
Hooper said Racine was instrumental in helping VSEA sort out what the reorganization would mean for state workers. So far, no mass layoffs have been announced.
VSEA also endorsed the following Democratic statewide candidates: Steve Howard for lieutenant governor; Jim Condos for secretary of state; Doug Hoffer for state auditor. The union’s slate for the Senate includes: Tim Ashe, a Democrat/Progressive from Chittenden County; Matt Choate, a Democrat from Caledonia County; and Anthony Pollina, a Democrat/Progressive from Washington County.
VSEA’s lineup for the House is: John Moran (Windham-Bennington-1); Paul Poirier (Washington-3-1); Tess Taylor(Washington-3-2); Bob South (Caledonia-3); Susan Hatch Davis (Orange-1); Kevin “Coach” Christie (Windsor 6-2); Edward Clark (Essex-Caledonia); Chris Pearson (Chittenden-3-4).
Hooper said the union will assign staff to help with campaigns, and VSEA volunteers around the state will work directly with the labor and teachers’ unions to get out the vote.
Eric Davis, a retired political science professor from Middlebury, says the three endorsements put Racine in a dead heat with Deb Markowitz for the top slot. Davis said Matt Dunne is trailing the duo, and Peter Shumlin and Susan Bartlett could be falling behind now.
Davis puts Racine in the top tier because of the endorsements and the good press coverage he has received as a result of the union support and the health care reform bill he spearheaded in the Vermont Senate.
Racine came in second in the fund-raising reports for July 2009, after Markowitz, and this early support also boosts his position, according to Davis.
“Dunne has the potential to get there,” Davis said. “He has the most energy, and he might be best positioned for a closing push. He needs to be close to Racine and Deb in July in order to have a realistic chance in August.”
Davis has not changed his earlier assessment of the Dems primary: He thinks all five will battle to end. But he said, “My sense is that Shumlin and Bartlett will begin to fade.”
Though he expects Shumlin to do well in Windham County, most of the votes are in Chittenden and Washington counties, where he isn’t a real contender.
Bartlett is doing well in the debates, Davis said, but as this is her first statewide campaign, the “name recognition gap is just too great for her to make up.”
Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont, says Racine’s advantage has to do with his statewide name recognition and his longtime involvement in state politics. As lieutenant governor, Racine went toe to toe with Barbara Snelling and beat Brian Dubie to keep his seat.
“Doug’s been around a long time and the feeling of a number of Democrats is that he would have won eight years ago (in his first race for governor against Jim Douglas) if Con Hogan had not run and scrambled the race,” Nelson said. “He’s been a credible candidate for a long time.”
Davis expects that voter turnout in the primary will be dominated by the public sector workforce.
Support from the unions, however, is a double-edged sword, according to Nelson. The endorsements will work for Racine in the primary when partisans tend to turn out, and against him in the General Election when more moderate voters cast ballots.
Racine could be perceived as being too close to the unions after the primary, Nelson said. “This is not a union state as we know.”
