Brian Dubie shakes hands with a supporter at his Barre City rally.
Much like the snow flurries that fell on Saturday morning, Brian Dubie stayed fleetingly in Barre City for a 10-minute stump speech on his way to scheduled events in St. Johnsbury, Bradford, Bethel and Rutland. He made the campaign sweep just three days before the General Election on Nov. 2.
Echoing many of the familiar refrains heard in recent weeks, Dubie told an audience of roughly 75 supporters in City Hall Park that jobs and honesty were the two key points of his campaign.
“At the end of the day, this campaign is defined by really two issues,” Dubie said. “It’s jobs, and it’s trust, and Vermonters want to elect a governor that they can trust.”
Dubie followed this statement by calling into question the trustworthiness of his opponent, Democratic candidate and Senate Pro Tem Peter Shumlin. Referring to reports of a recent “closed-door, secret meeting” in which Shumlin allegedly told attendees he would relicense Vermont Yankee if Entergy did not own the plant, Dubie stated that his opponent’s actions have left Vermonters wondering who they can trust.
The meeting, which took place in Sen. Dick Mazza’s garage shortly after the primaries, was reported on the blog Vermont Tiger. An attendee informed Geoff Norman, the author of the article, about Shumlin’s alleged back pedaling on the shut down of Vermont Yankee. The source of the allegations against Shumlin was anonymous. The story, which was picked up by WPTZ and WCAX, appears to be unsubstantiated, according to an Oct. 29 report from Burlington Free Press reporter Terri Hallenbeck.
On the job front, Dubie touted his NFIB endorsement stating that he was proud to have the backing of Vermont’s small businesses.
“The small businesses of Vermont are the lifeblood of our economy, they’re the jobs creators,” he said. “And more importantly, more specifically, women-owned businesses are the jobs creator of our economy. Once again, that’s why I’m so encouraged by them supporting our positive, 10-point plan to create more jobs and more opportunities for our state.”
That message resonated with the supporters who came out in the cold October drizzle to hear Dubie speak. Norma Malone, a Barre Town resident and owner of a residential construction business, said the economy was her primary concern this election year and that she felt Dubie projected a very positive message in that regard.
“He’s been supportive of small business owners,” Malone said. “He understands the demands that are being placed on small businesses.”
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The Terri Hallenbeck, Burlington Free Press report should be listed here, word for word, verbatim. For the record.
Shumlin and the garage meeting
4:21 PM Fri., October 29, 2010
vtbuzz / The Burlington Free Press
By Terri Hallenbeck
There was a meeting a little over a month ago in Sen. Dick Mazza’s Colchester garage. You might have heard about it in the last couple days because the blog Vermont Tiger published an anonymous account of the meeting.
In that account, Tiger publisher Geoff Norman says this unidentified attendee told him Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Shumlin said he would support the continued operation of Vermont Yankee if the nuclear power plant were sold to trustworthy new owners, offered Vermont utilities a good rate for power and the plant was deemed safe.
Interesting because that would be a reversal for Shumlin, who led the Senate vote against granting Vermont Yankee another 20 years and who has called this year’s discovery of a tritium leak at the plant the worst environmental disaster in state history. It would offer hope to those who support the plant and it would infuriate those Shumlin supporters who want it shut down.
Corry Bliss, campaign manager for Republican Brian Dubie, was eagerly promoting the story to the media Thursday.
So we set out to find out what happened. Because it is easy for anyone to say anything anonymously, we wanted to hear it from someone with a name attached.
Mazza, the moderate Democrat who recently endorsed Shumlin, said the meeting was about five weeks ago, on a weekday sometime shortly after the Sept. 24 primary election that Shumlin won. Mazza invited a few friends over to meet the candidate. Most of them are fairly well-connected business people.
Mazza said he was in and out of the garage getting food for the gathering from his store, but in the time he was in attendance he never heard Shumlin say anything like that about Vermont Yankee. Nor, he said, did any of the attendees say anything to him about being surprised by anything Shumlin said.
Shumlin said he doesn’t recall saying anything at the meeting about Vermont Yankee that he hasn’t said elsewhere. “This blog posting is such a puzzle to me,” he said.
He contended he’s been clear about his stance on Vermont Yankee. “We have an aging nuclear plant that was designed to be shut down in 2012 that is being run by a company that can’t tell the truth,” Shumlin said. “We need to shut it down in 2012″
Moe Germain, a neighbor of Mazza’s who was at the meeting and is on the board of the Greater Burlington Industrial Corp., said he never heard Shumlin say anything about supporting Vermont Yankee, new owner or not. He said he didn’t hear every fragment of every conversation at the meeting, but he didn’t walk away thinking Shumlin had opened the door to a future for Vermont Yankee.
“Peter is unwavering,” Germain said. “No way did Peter indicate his position was softening. That’s probably what people would have hoped at the meeting, but Peter’s position is very straight-forward.”
Germain said he explained that to Bliss when Bliss called him Thursday.
Germain described himself as a former supporter of Vermont Yankee who no longer sees a future for the plant. He also said he started out not knowing who he would support in the governor’s race, but he’s been turned off by Dubie’s campaign.
“He spends his time saying what’s wrong with Peter,” Germain said. “I think he’s hurting himself.”
Two other people Mazza and Shumlin said were also at the meeting — Glen Wright and David Coates — did not return phone calls. If they or others at the meeting have a different story to tell, we’d like to hear it.
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