You know it’s a slow campaign season when the only hot race is the contest for No. 2. The lieutenant governor’s matchup between incumbent Phil Scott, a laid-back Republican, and Dean Corren, a Progressive firebrand, is pretty much the only competitive race going this election cycle.
The primary on Aug. 26 is expected to be the biggest snoozer in decades. The governor’s race has been crawling along at a snail’s pace, Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., is a shoo-in, and there are no other contested statewide offices this year. And traditionally, the House and Senate races barely heat up until after Labor Day.
The sparks that are flying this election season have been precious few thanks to the weakened state of the Republican Party and the lassitude of one party (Democratic) rule.
The Scott-Corren contest is the must-follow race for political junkies this year, and not just because there is nothing else going on. Corren has tapped the public financing system for the first time since 2006, and with $200,000 at the ready, he has a fighting chance to beat Scott, a successful Republican incumbent who hasn’t taken a strong stand on issues like single payer health care that have galvanized Democrats.
Corren, a Progressive, is also hoping to capture the Democratic nomination — and the devotion of the party faithful — in a primary write-in campaign. As he has the support of Gov. Peter Shumlin and prominent Dems (with the notable exception of state Sens. Dick Mazza, Dick Sears and John Campbell), the primary isn’t much more than a formality, as he only needs 250 write-in votes.
At his official launch on Saturday at at the Vermont Statehouse, Corren talked about how much the position of the lieutenant governor matters at a time when the state is in the final stages of adopting a single payer system. The Shumlin administration is expected to introduce a financing plan for the program in time for the Vermont Legislature to take up relevant tax policies in January.
Corren accused Scott of foot-dragging on single payer. “It’s much easier to undermine single payer by spreading fear and uncertainty than it is to actually figure out how to do this,” Corren told a gathering of 83 supporters in Room 11.
“We have to take our heads out of the sand and work hard and make it happen and when it needs fixing we need to fix it,” Corren said. “Skepticism is great, but when it goes on for too long, it’s no more than foot dragging, and Vermont can’t afford that.”
Corren introduced the first single payer bill when he served as a Progressive House representative in the early 1990s. Over the course of his four-term career in the House, Corren made his mark as a liberal representative before he left to return to the private sector. (He is an engineer by trade.) Corren was an early proponent of gay marriage, end-of-life choice, and renewable energy policies. As a member of the Burlington Electric Department board, he pushed the utility to adopt efficiency programs and renewable sources of power. In 1980, as a student at New York University, he wrote a thesis on the connection of manmade carbon emissions and climate change. He holds a patent on a turbine that uses tidal moon cycles to generate power.
It’s been 14 years since Corren held office, and at first he wasn’t sure whether anyone remembered him or whether he had a shot at the No. 2 spot. But after he looked at Scott’s website, realized how weak the Republican Party is and thought about how important single payer is to the state’s economic health, he said he decided to run.
“In case anyone is nostalgic about losing the last statewide Republican office, Vermont cannot afford to be a museum for moribund political parties,” Corren told his supporters. “The Republican Party that many of us knew had a whole different relationship with — that had a Dick Snelling, George Aiken and Jim Jeffords who was forced to leave the party because it left him — that party is long gone.”
“Everybody knows our current lieutenant governor is a nice guy,” Corren said. “Nice isn’t enough anymore if you want action on health care, if you want action on expanding sustainable local renewable energy and the jobs it brings to Vermont instead of being rolled over by global warming. Nice is no longer good enough.”
Corren praised the small audience of Progressive and Democratic supporters — including Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Melinda Moulton, a developer who helped to transform the Burlington waterfront, and Deb Richter, the state’s most prominent single payer advocate — as Vermont’s biggest overachievers. He urged them to help him get elected.
The race, he says, is winnable in part because the Democrats have embraced him as a candidate and because Scott has given him a “terrific issue” that most Vermonters really believe in — campaign finance. Scott has said money should not come out of the budget to fund political campaigns.
“He thinks it’s a bad idea to take large private contributions out of our democratic process and let the voters pay for their own elections,” Corren said. “Vermonters know money is not speech and big money in elections is the opposite of democracy.”
His race, he said, will cost Vermonters 29 cents per capita for the two-year cycle. For a “measly” $2 to $3 each the people of Vermont could finance the whole election, he said. Corren aims to prove that a candidate can win with public financing and a good grassroots campaign.
“With that kind of money, we can own our elections completely, and then when we make a decision about financing health care that is worth $2 billion, we will have owned a democracy to make that decision,” Corren said. “It’s the greatest bargain there is.”
