Seven of 17 Democrats in the Senate this year have crossed party lines to endorse incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Scott over Progressive challenger Dean Corren.
Their reasons for supporting Scott range from his policies to his personality to the fact that Corren is not a Democrat, although he won the Democratic nomination through a primary write-in campaign and has been endorsed by Gov. Peter Shumlin and the party’s State Committee.
Another factor that appears to be influencing their public shows of support, however, is an obscure but influential facet of the Senate known as the Committee on Committees.
That three-member group assigns senators to committees and chooses the chairs, positions that can have a tremendous effect on which bills are debated.
The three people who make up the Committee on Committees are the lieutenant governor, the senate president pro tempore and a third member, elected by the Senate, who for more than a decade has been Sen. Dick Mazza, D-Grand Isle.
Mazza and President Pro Tempore Sen. John Campbell are outspoken in their support for Scott, and Mazza hosted a fundraiser for Scott.
As a result, some senators this year feel pressure to endorse Scott, or at least to not endorse Corren, in order to get – or keep – a good committee assignment, said Sen. David Zuckerman, P/D-Chittenden.
Scott runs the Senate well, but there is a hint of an old boys network afoot, Zuckerman said.
“The maneuvering for committee assignments is a big deal … and all three members have publicly supported Scott,” Zuckerman said. One senator told him he or she was not endorsing anyone because of committee assignments, Zuckerman said.
Zuckerman, who supports Corren, said he believes the Committee on Committees will not make decisions based on endorsements, but it has an impact, he said, if people “silence themselves out of concern for retribution, even though there has been no explicit signal.”
“There’s tremendous power in the Lieutenant Governor’s Office because the person who’s elected lieutenant governor sends a signal to the rest of Senate leadership as to what the makeup of committees should be,” he said.
The lieutenant governor of Vermont is a part-time position with mostly ceremonial power. The lieutenant governor presides over the Senate, casts a vote in the event of a tie and stands in for the governor when he is out of state.
Scott is good at quelling the emotional turmoil that can erupt in the Senate, Zuckerman said. But he has not been in line with the majority of Vermont voters on major issues, including assisted suicide, GMO labeling and wage issues, he said.
Scott said Thursday that committee assignments have to do with leadership style and scheduling, not politics.
“It has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with whether they endorse me or don’t endorse me,” he said.
Corren said the Committee on Committees definitely plays a role in senators’ endorsements and for that reason he has not sought endorsements from state senators.
“People that are concerned about their committee seats and don’t know how it’s going to come out and who can blame them,” he said, mentioning the names of others who support him.
“I’m content with (former governor) Madeleine Kunin and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch and Gov. Peter Shumlin and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. I’m pretty happy,” Corren said. He added U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy to that list Thursday afternoon.
Mazza echoed Scott and said chairs do not solely determine which bills committees discuss, Mazza said.
“I have yet to see a bill that’s been left on a wall because a chair says it’s not going to move,” Mazza said.
Mazza, a friend of Scott’s who has worked with him in the Legislature for 10 years, said Scott is honest and fair.
Campbell called Corren a “one-issue candidate” and disingenuous for seeking the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor even though he had hard feelings for Democrats when he served in the House from 1993 to 2000.
In the August primary, when Corren won the right to have his name on the Democratic ballot for the general election on Nov. 4, Scott won half as many Democratic votes as Corren via write-ins, 1,895-3,874.
The lieutenant governor’s role in appointing committee chairs has become an issue this election cycle because of a controversy last session, when Sen. Bob Hartwell, D-Bennington, who chaired the natural resources committee, told Seven Days he was not convinced that humans are largely responsible for climate change.
Hartwell is not running for re-election, leaving that chairmanship vacant and several senators angling for it. Zuckerman is one of them. One of the current committee members, Peter Galbraith, is also leaving the Senate.
“I would like to chair a committee but ultimately my personal interests should not get in the way of the large interst of the state,” Zuckerman said.
Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden, would like to return as committee chair. She headed the committee for ten years, but was removed by the Committee on Committees in 2012. She is one of three Chittenden County senators who chose not to endorse anyone. Corren is also from Chittenden County.
Lyons said originally she chose to stay away from endorsements because of committee assignments but at this point she is not endorsing Corren because she believes in a two-party system, she said.
“As much as we support the Progressive concepts and ideas, when you’ve got three people running it splits parties up,” she said.
Sen. John Rodgers, D-Essex-Orleans, said he also wants to be chairman of natural resources. He pledged his aid to Scott before Scott’s first run for lieutenant governor, he said.
“We’re both moderate,” he said.
Sen. Michael Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, is running for his first term after he was appointed last year to finish his late wife Sally Fox’s term. He is too fixated on his own race to endorse, he said.
“I am just focused on getting elected,” he said.
Sen. Mark MacDonald, D-Orange, a member of the natural resources committee, said he would like to be chair of the finance committee if Sen. Tim Ashe, P/D-Chittenden, left his post. He did not endorse either candidate until Corren called him Thurdsay night. MacDonald said Friday he now supports Corren.
“Phil Scott’s a nice guy. His word is good. Dean Corren is a competent and experienced fellow,” he said. “I’m not interested in self-promotion in this kind of stuff.”
All seven Senate Republicans have endorsed Scott. There are three open seats.
Zuckerman and fellow Progressive Anthony Pollina, P-Washington, endorsed Corren along with three Democrats including Claire Ayer, D-Addison, who chairs the Health and Welfare committee. Ashe did not respond to requests to know why he is not endorsing. (See table at end of story.)
Other Democrats who endorsed Scott include Dick Sears, D-Bennington, Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, and Chris Bray, D-Addison.
Ayer, D-Addison, had not endorsed but when asked by a reporter, threw her support behind Corren.
“Progressives and Democrats are different. We share a lot of the same goals and I was hoping for a Democrat to come out of the woodwork someplace but it didn’t happen so he’s my choice,” she said.
Sen. Robert Starr, D-Essex-Orleans, endorsed Scott because he has worked with him for 14 years.
“Why would you trade a good horse for one you’re not quite sure on?” he said. He never considered committee assignments, he said.
Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, didn’t endorse because she didn’t want to enter “the fray,” she said.
“I really like Phil Scott. I really like Dean Corren’s stand on health care reform,” she said. “It’s a wussy way out. I’m focusing my attention on my race.”
Sen. Alice Nitka, D-Windsor, said she doesn’t endorse, adding “I’m not worried about a thing for not doing or doing it.”
Hartwell, the retiring senator who created the opening for natural resources chairman, said senators are surely sidling up to the Committee on Committees for good assignments.
“I always angled for them but I waited until after the election,” Hartwell said.
But the swell of support behind Scott has less to do with assignments and more to do with a broader concern among Democratic senators that policies are shifting too far to the left, he said.
“There’s too much spending, there’s too much social engineering, going on. Our party is getting out of line,” he said.
Galbraith, D-Windham, who is also retiring, said Corren’s progressive policies, not retaliation, is motivating endorsements.
“This election is a referendum on the single payer (health care) plan. That’s what Corren is campaigning on and I think a number of Democrats have questions about its feasibility,” he said.
He also said it’s about the fact that Corren is not a Democrat.
“If you’re not going to run as a Democrat, you’re not going to get the Democratic endorsement,” he said.
Editor’s note: Sen. Mark MacDonald endorsed no one in an earlier version of this story. MacDonald said Friday he endorses Corren.
