Editor’s note: Trail Mix is an occasional political column.
Most politicians bow out within days of losing an election. Scott Milne, however, has apparently adopted the it-ain’t-over-till-it’s-over philosophy of electoral politics.
Monday, more than a month after Milne lost to Gov. Peter Shumlin, the Republican candidate for governor finally announced that he has no intention of conceding and that he holds out the hope, however slim, that lawmakers will overturn the election results and vote him into office.
Voters cast roughly 2,400 more ballots for Shumlin, the incumbent Democrat. And while Milne’s near upset of a seated governor shocked politicos and Shumlin alike, this pesky fact remains: Shumlin got more votes.
Milne, however, sees it differently. Despite the fact that he lost and didn’t ask for a recount, he believes the preponderance of Democratic lawmakers in the Statehouse should overturn the election results and vote against the will of plurality and their own party leader on Jan. 8. (Because neither candidate got more than 50 percent of the vote, the Legislature will determine the winner under the Vermont Constitution. Traditionally, lawmakers vote for the top vote-getter, with very few exceptions.)
And while Milne insisted at a news conference on Monday that he won’t twist the arms of lawmakers, he launched into a post-election campaign speech at the Statehouse that was apparently designed to shame them into voting against Shumlin. He went into an attack on the governor’s performance in office and he urged them to “place the best interests of Vermont ahead of what is good for themselves or their political interests.”
If lawmakers choose Shumlin over him, Milne said, they will live with the consequences, and the “Legislature must accept responsibility for the results.”
“Our problems are a result of poor leadership from our governor from his headstrong administration,” Milne said. “It’s an administration that’s short on facts and follow through while long on politics, agendas and opinions. Our problems are greater because of our trusting nature as a people. We tend to believe our leaders and what they tell us.
“The No. 1 message of the 2014 election is that many Vermonters are distrustful of him,” Milne said. “They see his continued presence in the executive office as a detriment to getting our state back on track and moving positively into the future.”
Milne then insisted that “most voters agree with me” — even though he received fewer votes.
When reporter Paul Heintz of Seven Days asked if that was really true, Milne flew into a constitutional diatribe.
“You should read the Constitution,” Milne snapped back. “The Constitution says when nobody gets 50 percent, it doesn’t say the Legislature gives deference to the person who got the most votes. It doesn’t say the Legislature gives deference to the person who won nine out of 14 counties. It doesn’t give deference to the person that won 60 percent of the precincts in Vermont. It doesn’t say the Legislature should give deference to the person that won Burlington. It doesn’t say the Legislature should give deference to the person who won all the precincts, except for Burlington. It says they should decide who should be governor of Vermont.”
In the event that Milne manages to persuade the 80-plus Democrats in the House and 21 Democrats and Progressives in the Senate that he’s the man for the job, he has prepared a short inaugural address. He is also prepared, he says, on the fly to select members of his Cabinet. (Typically, the transition from one governor’s administration to another takes two months.)
Budget plans, however, not so much. When asked whether he could produce a state spending plan the second week of January, Milne joked, “It’s right here on the back of my speech.”
