In case you are wondering, this story is not an obituary. The Vermont Progressive Party is not moribund, according to political observers. Nor is it mortally wounded by the Election Day results in Burlington.
That said, voters dealt the Progressives, particularly the Queen City faction, two body blows; a third wound came from a disgruntled Democrat.
The fourth was self-inflicted on the party by one of its own leaders.
• Instant Runoff Voting, which opponents, namely Republican Kurt Wright and several prominent Democrats, had tied to Mayor Bob Kiss’ unpopular administration, was repealed, 3,972 to 3,669. (On Thursday, Mayor Kiss told Vermont Public Radio that the IRV issue should be brought back to the voters in the next election cycle.)
• For the first time in more than 20 years, both seats in Ward 2 were captured by Burlington Democrats, despite the best efforts of two tireless young Progressive campaigners. They each lost by fewer than 13 votes in a very low turnout at the polls. Though the Progressives hold the same number of seats on the City Council – two – as they did in the last election cycle, over time their numbers have dwindled from a high of seven council seats (out of 14 total).
• Ed Adrian, a Democrat who trounced his Progressive contender in the Ward 1 City Council race, told viewers in a live interview on Channel 17 on Tuesday night that Mayor Bob Kiss should resign.
• The elephant in the room was Burlington Telecom. Mayor Kiss and his administration have been plagued by accusations of fiscal mismanagement of Burlington Telecom. The utility, which serves 4,800 telephone, Internet and cable television customers, has been involved in an expensive build out of fiber optic cable to homes in the city and has not been able to obtain outside financing for $17 million in debt it incurred in the process. The Kiss administration tapped a “cash pool” fund, or excess monies in the city’s checking account, to pay for unanticipated costs for Burlington Telecom without advertising the situation to the public for a year and a half. In February, the public utility was not able to make an interest payment of $386,000 to CitiLeasing for $33.5 million of additional debt. The next payment of $386,000 is due in April, according to Burlington City Council President Bill Keogh. In August, Burlington Telecom will have to pay out $708,000. Keogh didn’t know how much the fourth payment for the year would be.
Is all of this bad news for the Progressive Party? You bet. Does it spell the end for this bastion of left-wing idealism and ideology begun by the inimitable Bernie Sanders in the early 1980s — the party state Democrats can’t help but resent, if not loath? Definitely not, academics and politicians say.
“The pendulum has swung many ways,” Keogh says. “Now it’s the Progressives who are in the wings rather than in the front portion of the stage.”
“This is not their death knell,” says Garrison Nelson, a political scientist at the University of Vermont and longtime observer of Burlington politics (he was present at now-U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ mayoral election in 1981).
Prominent Progressive Anthony Pollina, who tied with a Democrat in the race for governor in 2008, said it was a “bad night for Burlington, and anyone who tells you otherwise is dreaming.” Pollina said it was a setback for the party, but not a “major blow.”
Kurt Wright, a newly elected Republican City Council member and IRV repeal proponent, calls the election results a “clear rebuke to the mayor” and a “low-water mark” for the Progressive Party, but he also doesn’t see the party going away anytime soon.
The Progressives’ loss of power is a temporary phenomena, according to Keogh, who has served on the City Council for 14 years.
“The pendulum has swung many ways,” Keogh says. “Now it’s the Progressives who are in the wings rather than in the front portion of the stage.”
If Instant Runoff Voting’s defeat was a referendum on the mayor’s performance, should he step down?
The consensus is no, although City Councilor Ed Adrian appears to have gone out on a limb on this one, and wasn’t about to back down the morning after his televised statement on election night. “The longer the Progressives continue to back the mayor,” he said on Wednesday, “the worse it’s going to get for them. I think they should call for him to step down.”
The state’s most respected political scientists, The Burlington Free Press, and even a member of his own party disagree with this assessment, though John Franco, co-chair of the Burlington Progressive Party committee, says Adrian’s candor was useful. Kiss did not return calls for comment.
“Ed tends to puff up like a blow fish once in a while and make provocative statements, and in this case he did everybody a service,” Franco says. “He articulated a question on a lot of people’s minds and agendas. He put out on the table what people were thinking.”
“Ed tends to puff up like a blow fish once in a while and make provocative statements, and in this case he did everybody a service,” Franco says. “He articulated a question on a lot of people’s minds and agendas. He put out on the table what people were thinking.”
Nelson says Kiss shouldn’t step down because of IRV. “Every reform rationale is done in the name of democracy and is intended to keep the party in power in power,” Nelson says. “It worked the first time in 2006 — Bob had a comfortable majority over Hinda (Miller, a Democrat).”
Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College, reiterated Nelson’s stance. “My sense from 35 miles away is that in many ways the vote on IRV was a referendum on Bob Kiss,” Davis said. “His name wasn’t on the ballot, but a lot of people don’t like him either, because they didn’t vote for him in the first place or they don’t like what’s going on with Burlington Telecom. Voting against IRV was a way of voting against Bob Kiss.”
Pollina saw the IRV vote as pure politics.
“Kurt Wright made it a part of his campaign,” Pollina says. “I don’t think it was a referendum on Bob Kiss, maybe it was a show of support for Wright in a sense. He was able to articulate and make the most of issue politically.”
Kiss’ critics, many from his own party who tried to distance themselves from him in the election, say that’s one of the mayor’s main problems: He isn’t able to communicate to constituents effectively.
Pollina, who calls Mayor Kiss a friend, softens that characterization: He says Kiss has allowed himself to be misunderstood. “When you’re looking at Burlington Telecom as an issue in a campaign, you have to be able to continue to refine the message in a way people can understand and articulate a message that people need to hear.”
Whether the issue is style or substance, it’s inappropriate to ask Kiss to step down at this point, Davis says. “Kiss can serve out his term from my point of view; calling for him to resign is sort of going too far,” he said. This sentiment was echoed by newly elected City Council member and Republican Wright and City Council President Keogh.
Kiss will continue in office under tremendous pressure
No one interviewed for this article expected the mayor to resign, but questions about whether Kiss would make a run for a third term in 2012 elicited varying responses. Members of his party expect him to campaign again; political analysts give the idea a thumbs-down.
The mayor’s office, however, may well be the last stop for Kiss’ career in politics.
Nelson said when 71 percent of voters don’t support the incumbent mayor, and “you end up with the job because of a gimmick” (IRV), that doesn’t engender trust with the public.
“Jonathon Leopold (the chief administrative officer for the city) is the power behind the throne for Bob Kiss, and he made a series of decisions that have been unwise,” Nelson says. “That’s what turned the town against him.”
Nelson said when 71 percent of voters don’t support the incumbent mayor, and “you end up with the job because of a gimmick” (IRV), that doesn’t engender trust with the public.
“Bob will run again, of course, but he may end up like Gordy Paquette,” Nelson says in reference to the Democratic mayor who was in office through the 1970s and ultimately lost to Sanders.
Davis was just as definite about the mayor’s prospects: “If Kiss were to run for re-election, I’m sure he would not be re-elected.”
Progressives dismayed by Kiss’ handling of Burlington Telecom
In an interview, John Franco struck a note of contrition on behalf of the Burlington Progressive Party. He repeatedly used the word “heartsick” to describe members’ feelings about the Kiss administration’s handling of Burlington Telecom and said party members need to recognize that the election results were “an unfavorability vote,” and if they don’t, they are just deluding themselves. He added: “It’s time for concession and penance.”
Franco says the lumps the party took in the election were understandable.
“Is there a royal mess here, and do we have a huge piece of blame? Yes. The City of Burlington has been good to us for 30 years. The good of the City of Burlington is more important than the good of our party. We owe them (city residents) a debt of gratitude, not this.”
The Progressive Party needs to issue a public apology to city residents for the problems associated with Burlington Telecom, Franco says. The Kiss administration’s original sin, he says, was its unwillingness to take the utility’s financial problems to the City Council when they first surfaced.
The utility initially borrowed $2.2 million from the city’s cash pool in late 2007, according to Franco. After that, the utility used $11 million in 2008 and $4 million in 2009 from city funds, he says.
“We don’t want to be apologists for the Kiss administration; we are heartsick about what happened,” Franco says. “One of our candidates who lost said, ‘who can blame them?’”
There is plenty of blame to go around. Franco said the first order of business for the party ought to be “fixing Burlington Telecom.” He says the “circular firing squad,” the public excoriation of the mayor by city politicians, including members of the Council, has to stop. Franco says Kiss’ opponents wanted to “believe this was a screw up,” and “that’s very different from a financing problem,” which he says was caused by the recessionary credit market freeze.
Franco said it would have been possible to rescue Burlington Telecom had the Council agreed to pursue financing with Piper Jaffrey and a marketing campaign to increase the utility’s customer base. Franco says the negative publicity has ruined other financing options, and he holds Democrats responsible.
“Anyone interested in financing this project is going to Google this thing and say there’s no frigging way,” Franco says. “(The Democrats) couldn’t have done it better if Comcast had scripted it. It was so emotionally satisfying and so counterproductive.”
He said the city now has no choice but to find an investor who would take an ownership stake in the nonprofit, public utility.
That’s the arrangement recommended by a Blue Ribbon Commission that produced a proposal that several City Council members have said they support. Keogh, a Democrat, and Wright, a Republican, are both interested in finding a business partner who would buy up the telecommunication company’s debt. Keogh said they will talk to Reboot IT, a local group that wants to take over management of Burlington Telecom, but he has concerns about Stern Brothers, the investor that would finance the deal.
On with the Party
Burlington is the birthplace of the Progressive movement. Bernie Sanders, one of the founders and the most prominent former member (he is now an Independent U.S. Senator) put the movement on the map when he became mayor in 1981. The Progressives have dominated city politics ever since. (The
Progressives didn’t become a major party, though, until 10 years ago.) Consequently, the movement’s outsider status is no longer a badge of honor because, by virtue of its success, it’s become a form of the establishment, even though it tends to be out front on left-leaning issues, such as universal health care, shutting down Vermont Yankee and workers’ rights.
“The Progressives love to act as though they’re some kind of persecuted minority,” Nelson says. “They’ve been in power for 30 years. They are the establishment, and they don’t get that.
UVM’s Nelson says members are ambivalent about the party’s successes, at least when it’s convenient to be so.
“The Progressives love to act as though they’re some kind of persecuted minority,” Nelson says. “They’ve been in power for 30 years. They are the establishment, and they don’t get that. It’s their shtick. But they’ve won every election except for one in a generation; they have a sitting U.S. senator who is the architect of their party.”
Pollina says the party has to move on after the last election and see the outcome as an opportunity to re-engage Burlington residents.
“Instead of saying woe is me, we should see it as a wakeup call,” Pollina says. “We have to hold some public meetings, get the message out and regain control of the debate. It would serve us well, and it would be good for the city. I think the debate has gotten a little lopsided.”
Davis, the political scientist from Middlebury, thinks the party needs to consider making more strategic alliances with the Democrats. He cited Sen. Tim Ashe and former Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle, both of whom ran as Progressives on the Democratic ticket.
“My sense is when the next mayoral election comes, when we’re back to the 40 percent rule, the Democrats and the Progressives really need to get together to come up with a fusion candidate. Otherwise there is a possibility that a Republican could end up winning with 40-42 percent of the vote,” Davis says.