On the guber trail: Brace for a bumpy ride

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Hold on to your seatbelts. Despite what the gubernatorial candidates say when asked whether they intend to run positive campaigns — the one-word refrain both used on the WDEV debate last Friday was “absolutely” – the truth is, Sen. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, and Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, a Republican, have blithely disregarded their promises to run “positive,” “issue-oriented” campaigns.

In the first 10 days of campaigning, the two candidates have embraced negativity with whole-hearted abandon. Accusations fly between the two campaigns 24/7 in the form of a constant barrage of e-mails to the press corps, dueling press conferences and relentless repartee in the debates.

In addition, the two parties have piled on with e-mail blasts, and negative ads are cropping up from organizations that are not directly affiliated with the campaigns but serve as surrogates for the two candidates. Green Mountain Future has launched two television ads assailing Dubie on his support of Vermont Yankee; the Republican Governors Association is taking Shumlin to task on his tax record. In addition, an underground entity, “anyonebutdubie”, has launched YouTube video that excoriates Dubie, Saturday Night Live style, for what it terms misstatements made in last week’s debates.

Shumlin and the Democratic Party latched onto perceived Dubie gaffes from the first debates on WVMT and VPR, in which Dubie referred to “housewives” who could make better budget decisions than the lawmakers in Montpelier and said he would “target the most vulnerable” for state budget cuts.

In addition, Dubie referred to Dr. William Hsiao as the “doctor from Taiwan.” Aki Soga, the editorial page editor for The Burlington Free Press, wrote a blog post in which he pointed to the lieutenant governor’s faux pas – Hsiao teaches at Harvard and is a U.S. citizen – as a less-than-politically-correct remark.

Photo by Lisa M. Boucher. George Clain, left, stands with Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie at a "Democrats for Dubie" press conference.

Dubie’s agreement to meet with Sengalese President Abdoulaye Wade last Sunday was met with questions about the president’s human rights record (he is accused of perpetuating torture in his country) and protests.

In an e-mail titled, “Sham Democrats for Dubie Won’t Fool Vermonters,” Paul Tencher, the head of the coordinated campaign for the Vermont Democratic Party, accused the Dubie campaign of taking a page out of the Jim Douglas “playbook” for holding a press conference with “Democrats for Dubie” yesterday.

For his part, Dubie has reminded reporters on a daily basis that Shumlin has not yet released information about his financial assets. It has also sent out daily missives attacking Shumlin’s plan to cut $40 million from the Corrections budget, which the Dubie campaign says is “reckless.”

Kate Duffy, Dubie’s campaign manager, sent out an e-mail in which Dubie and Gov. Jim Douglas say the Shumlin’s most recent ad is misleading. They also take the opportunity to blast the senator’s tax record.

Chris Graff, former chief for the Vermont bureau of the Associated Press and a frequent political commentator, said the two candidates went negative too early.

“I think it started on the wrong track,” Graff said. “They were both too aggressive and too hot. They both need to settle down. If they spend all their time calling each other liars … it will turn off more people than it will turn on.

“Part of running for governor is sounding statesmanlike,” Graff said. “If you sound like a 2-year-old arguing with your brother, it doesn’t help. This campaign is incredibly short, and they will be incredibly frustrated at times. The best thing they can do is keep their frustration to themselves.”

Graff, who is now an executive at National Life, an insurance firm, said the pressurized environment of the campaigns has increased markedly with the advent of instant communication.

Peter Shumlin, Sept. 13, 2010

“When I started covering politics, candidates might have a press conference and the next day the opponent would respond,” Graff said. The pace picked up with the invention of the fax machine, he said. “Now you have this instant world where candidates are not only monitoring what others are saying, but responding in real time and reading the other candidate’s Twitter feed. This is actually an outgrowth of what’s happened in national politics. The Clinton campaign created a war room in which no accusation went unanswered. Now candidates have to respond in real time. It’s almost at times like nuclear war — it’s been ratcheted up to an unsustainable level.”

People outside the campaigns – that is, voters – aren’t paying attention to the hothouse environment of the campaigns, Graff argues. He expects that the “housewives” gaffe, for example, generates outrage among Shumlin supporters and probably no one else outside the echo chamber of politics.

“I don’t think a single gaffe turns an election,” Graff said. “A pattern can turn an election. An effective campaign ad can turn an election. It’s important not to get caught up in a few days of a campaign.”

Graff estimates that 10 to 15 percent of Vermont’s electorate is undecided – contrary to the Rasmussen poll last week, which asserted that 3 percent of Vermonters hadn’t picked a candidate yet.

“Peter Shumlin has every Democratic vote, and Brian Dubie has every Republican vote in the state,” Graff said. “The people in the middle are not as focused on this campaign as we are.”

So why has Vermont’s gubernatorial campaign suddenly become an all-out jugular attack? Because going negative can work – if a candidate taps into voters’ perceptions about issues, Graff says. In Vermont, going negative is especially risky, Graff said, because Vermonters have a low tolerance for mudslinging. In other states, attacks are often personal; here, when a campaign goes after another candidate’s record on the issues, that’s perceived as negative.

“Voters say they’re turned off by negative ads,” Graff said. “But they do work in many cases, if voters feel the information is relevant.”

Chris Graff

If an advertisement delves into a candidate’s personal life, for example, and voters sense that a campaign is wallowing in the mire and focusing on something that’s irrelevant, they won’t pay attention, Graff says, but if they hear an ad that might be a negative attack against a candidate’s tax policy, or plans for corrections or a stance on a nuclear power plant, “they will be influenced by that” – even if some of the specifics are glossed over or don’t square with the facts.

“The problem is, the details don’t always help in the heat of a political campaign — it’s the perception that matters,” Graff says. “If people feel overtaxed, and Brian Dubie is telling them they’re overtaxed, they’re going to listen to that — they’re not going to listen to (arguments) that it’s not exactly true.”

There is a price, however, for going negative. The attacking candidate can lose stature for lobbing dirt, Graff said. “But the negative ads can have a payoff, and if the payoff is greater than the loss of stature, they can end up raising someone.”

Will the attacks get uglier? “Absolutely,” says Garrison Nelson, a political scientist from the University of Vermont.

“Absolutely, it will get nasty,” Nelson said. He rattled off a list of the governors who have held office for six or more years: Dick Snelling, Howard Dean, Madeleine Kunin and Jim Douglas. “This is a 10-year contest. They’re going to hold the job for 10 years; that’s why the stakes are so high.”

Nelson said that it wouldn’t get as down and dirty as the Rich Tarrant – Bernie Sanders contest for the U.S. Senate in 2006, however.

“Neither (Dubie nor Shumlin) is a polarizing figure,” Nelson said. “Brian’s strength is that he’s not seen as a polarizing figure.”

Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College, says the Vermont gubernatorial fight is very competitive, but the ads are far less negative than in other states. He pointed to New Hampshire. According to the Associated Press, American Crossroads, a group formed by Karl Rove, a former Bush strategist, is targeting Paul Hodes, the New Hampshire Democrat running for Judd Gregg’s Senate seat. The ad campaign questions Hodes’ anit-pork barrel spending stance in Washington. Hodes purports to be a fiscal conservative.

According to Hotline on Call, a National Review blog, American Crossroads, a 527 campaign organization, has bought $643,000 worth of Hode attack ads.

How the candidates are faring on the trail

Despite the Rasmussen poll last week that showed Shumlin slightly ahead, within the margin of error, Nelson said it’s going to be a close race.

Eric Davis

Davis gives Dubie the edge. The lieutenant governor is better funded (he has six times more cash on hand than Shumlin does at the moment) and his let’s-limit-government-spending message may play better with the public right now – given its recessionary mood, Davis said. In addition to riding Douglas’ coattails, Dubie arguably provides the balance of political power Vermonters tend to prefer, Davis said. The Legislature, he predicts, will likely be held by a Democratic majority again.

Dubie also has the advantage of having a higher likability rating than Shumlin, and for that reason alone, Nelson said, “It may be Brian’s to lose.” In addition, Shumlin’s displays of ambition can turn voters off.

Nelson, who attended the Vermont Public Radio debate last week, said Dubie has some flaws he needs to overcome as a candidate.

“Peter Shumlin gets under Brian’s skin,” Nelson said. “Brian isn’t used to being challenged as an airline pilot; no one questioned him there. He wasn’t challenged in the Air National Guard. As lieutenant governor, he wasn’t challenged because he was presiding in the Senate, not making policy decisions. Over the last decade, Dubie has been making statements and they’ve gone unchallenged. He’s unsettled by (challenges).”

Nelson observed that Dean was unsettled by challenges, too, and he would get irritated. “Brian gets unnerved, and he starts to wave his hands,” Nelson said. Peter, on the other hand, in the VPR debate, was calm and sat with his hands folded, according to Nelson.

Dubie’s misstatements last week shouldn’t come as a surprise, Nelson said, because the lieutenant governor isn’t a “speechifier.”

Nelson said: “He’s got to be crisper in his answers. The longer he talks, the more potential there is for misstatements to occur, because as he tries to explain things, he gets off track.”

Garrison Nelson, UVM political science professor

Nelson says the role of lieutenant governor doesn’t prepare candidates for the job of governor. He said the part-time nature of the job (five months during the legislative session) “doesn’t demand much in the way of commitment.” Bob Stafford was the last lieutenant governor to be elected to the office of governor – in 1958. Kunin, Nelson said, won as a former lieutenant governor; Dean took the post of governor after Snelling died. Six lieutenant governors in recent history, including Doug Racine, have made a bid for the seat and lost, according to Nelson.

Graff agreed. “Everyone makes a lot of the fact that Brian Dubie has run four times,” he said, “The truth is … the public doesn’t pay close attention to offices below the rank of governor. There is no other office like running for governor. It’s a real pressure cooker. Vermonters pay more attention to the governor’s office than U.S. Senate and U.S. House. The governor is here all the time, and he affects lives more than a member of U.S. Congress.”

The downside for Shumlin, Nelson said, is “he really wants the job,” and that ambition can be perceived by the electorate as a flaw. “He can’t come across as being too self-satisfied, or he comes across as arrogant.” That said, humility never stood in the way of an election for Dick Snelling or Howard Dean, Nelson said, but Shumlin has to be careful in a race against a candidate who is so likeable.

Davis said Shumlin has the demographic advantage because more Vermonters trend Democratic than Republican. He is also a more aggressive campaigner who has a good “platform manner” and isn’t afraid to press the flesh.

“I’m waiting to see the asset statement to see whether he has the resources to put as much money into the General Election as he did in the primary,” Davis said. (Shumlin gave his campaign $225,000.)

The Republican Governors Association has $300,000 to $400,000 to spend on the governor’s race, while the Democratic Governors Association has about $200,000 to $300,000, Davis said. Both groups are concentrating their efforts on Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Neither candidate has presented plausible plans for resolving the $112 million budget gap in fiscal year 2012, Davis said, but Dubie “may be starting to score points against Shumlin on the tax issue.”

“One way Peter Shumlin can respond is to issue a policy statement,” Davis said. “If he can come up with a reasonable plan that doesn’t involve increases in income and sales taxes that could help him counter Dubie’s attacks on taxes.”

That’s because, Davis said, Dubie’s plans for solving the gap – cutting education funding and human services – were proposed by Douglas over the course of the last eight years and failed to gain traction with Democratic lawmakers. “Dubie’s talking about ideas that aren’t going anywhere in the General Assembly,” Davis said.