Editor’s note: Trail Tidbits is an occasional political column.
Correction: Deb Markowitz has 167 Twitter followers — not 0 as originally reported. The number of others she is following in the Twitterverse is 0. We apologize for the error.
Making “friends” on the campaign trail
There are lots of ways to judge candidates – by the issues they espouse, the company they keep (endorsements), and by the amount of money they raise (sorry folks, no word there until July 15th).
Does tech savvy-ness count now, too?
In the race to win a view of the Golden Bubble from the 5th floor of the Pavilion Building, none of the candidates has been as aggressive about touting his social networking skills as Brian Dubie, the sole Republican gubernatorial contender. Last week, his campaign trumpeted that he had 7,500 Facebook fans. This morning, he had 8,097.
Dubie is ahead of the five Democratic primary contenders on that score by a factor of six or seven.
In a press release, Dubie said: “Facebook is like a daily town meeting. I check it every day, and I see real dialogue about the issues our state is facing – the economy, jobs, taxes – real people talking about real concerns.”
When you click on the Facebook icon on Dubie’s Web site, it takes you to an FB welcome page. I signed up the first time – and became a fan – and every time I logged onto the page, it put up the welcome, login page. I signed up accidentally a second time and then went to see if I was listed under the “you like this” gallery – but there is no “see all option” so I couldn’t determine if I’d been counted twice.
Are there other duplicates in the system? From the outside, there is no way to tell, though Kate Duffy, communications manager for Dubie assures me that “as far as I know these are individual fans.”
Matt Dunne, one of the five Democratic contenders, also uses the fan option. Though he beats out all his primary challengers (he is a Google executive, after all), he still lags way behind Dubie with a fan club of 1,851.
None of the other Democrats in the primary race solicit fans – they all collect “friends” who can be verified to an extent through FB, and this provides a certain level of transparency.
Here are the numbers from highest to lowest: Doug Racine, 1,743; Deb Markowitz, 977; Peter Shumlin, 931; and Susan Bartlett, 192.
As for Twitter, Dubie wins again with 632 followers, and Shumlin is nearly neck and neck with a total of 628. Dunne has 359; Markowitz has 167; Racine has 114; and Bartlett has 93. Racine and Markowitz tend to deliver tweets to followers a few times a month; Shumlin’s tweetage runs to four or five posts a day.
So does any of this mean anything? Maybe like half the journalists in the state you think Twitter and Facebook are passing fads and wonder why anyone gives a damn. Or maybe, given your predilection for online news, you are a social networking butterfly. If you are, tell us what you think.
Have you missed them yet?
No, probably not. After all, our five Dem gubers hit the Fourth of July parades pretty hard last weekend, but you might have noticed a certain pleasant silence on the airwaves and in print. (Dubie tends to be quieter than the others, since as he faces no primary challenger himself, he has declined to participate in the Democratic talk sessions.)
Yes, ladies and gentleman, it’s been almost two weeks since the last forum. (God help us, when ARE the Dems going to hold an actual debate?)
The only sound the candidates have been listening to lately is the potential ka-ching, ka-ching in the final fund-raising push before July 15, the campaign finance reporting deadline.
They’ve been too preoccupied with house parties all over the state to deliver soliloquies en masse. But no worries. On the very day the reports are due they’ll be baaaack for a forum held by Onion River Cable Access in Montpelier.
The flurry of fundraising is par for the course, observes Garrison Nelson, professor of political science at the University of Vermont. Soon, the candidates will have to spend more money as they shift from a “retail politics event to a wholesale politics event,” he said.
“They need money for fliers, for a ground team. You may not have to pay them anything, but you need money for gas and to ring doorbells,” Nelson said. “And because these people are not philosophically different at this point, they’ve been calling up the same people for money. And I think those people are sick of getting these phone calls.”
Nelson said Markowitz and Racine have a distinct advantage over the other Dems because they were able to build up reserves early on. Typically, he said, “the more early money you have, the more (easily) you can drive your opponents out of the race. That apparently has not happened in this race.”
Shumlin laid down the TV ad gauntlet yesterday with placements on WPTZ, WVNY, WCAX and WFFF, the local Fox News affiliate. He’s spending $70,000 for a two-week blast on all four stations, and he expects to reach a half million viewers, according to Alex MacLean, his campaign manager. In addition, his campaign is sending out direct mail and hitting the phone banks to identify likely and undecided voters.
Here’s the ad:
Ponying up for the party
Speaking of greens, did you know that each of the five Democrats has been asked to give the Vermont Democratic Party $3,500 before the primary?
Candidates down the ticket have to put in their two cents, too, in order to gain access to the Voter Activation Network, a voter database, and other services the party provides.
The winner of the primary is to pay the party $50,000 before the General Election.
Endorsement inflation?
Ever since Racine pulled away from the pack with endorsements from the triumvirate of union leaders – Vermont State Employees Association, Vermont-NEA and the AFL-CIO – Shumlin and Dunne have been playing catch-up. (Racine had 26 endorsements from lawmakers back in May.)
Last week, Racine also garnered the backing of the Vermont League of Conservation Voters with its coveted 7,000 environmental activists and 30,000-person mailing list.
Both Shumlin, who helped to pass legislation to close Vermont Yankee and to invest in renewable energy, and Dunne, who has elicited backing from green business leaders, worked hard to get the endorsement. Though both candidates downplayed the blow, Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College, said, “My sense is both Dunne and Shumlin were disappointed.”
Todd Bailey, executive director of the league, said it was important for left-leaning groups to “get on the same page.”
“It was not the deciding factor, but it was a factor,” Bailey said.
Here’s a video clip from the press conference.
Late last week, Shumlin announced the endorsement of the Teamsters Union.
So far, he also has the backing of state Treasurer Jeb Spaulding and Jeffrey Hollender, CEO of Seventh Generation. Shumlin is picking up legislative support county by count. Today two VIPs from Bennington County – Sens. Dick Sears and Bob Hartwell – will publicly endorse him and tomorrow is Windham County’s turn (the candidate’s home turf).
In a second attempt at bolstering his legislative support, Dunne held a press conference to declare that six lawmakers had thrown him their backing: Sen. Matt Choate, Caledonia County; Rep.Chip Conquest, Wells River; Rep. Anne Mook, Bennington; Rep. Bob South, St. Johnsbury; States Attorney Robert Sand, Windsor County; former state Rep. and Brattleboro Selectboard member Daryl Pillsbury. This brings his total up to 15.
Dunne upped the ante yesterday with an announcement that 26 business leaders, including Will Raap of Gardener’s Supply and Will Patten, of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, endorsed him.
Maybe it’s a girl thing, but Markowitz and Bartlett don’t seem too hepped up about the endorsement arms race. Markowitz hasn’t had a major endorsement since December when she announced that EMILY’s List and Gov. Madeleine Kunin would support her.
Ironically, EMILY’s List, which supports women candidates doesn’t even list Bartlett as one of Markowitz’s challengers. The Web site bio for the Secretary of State says: “Before she can face Dubie, Markowitz must come out on top of a crowded field of Democrats that includes state Senator Doug Racine, who ran for governor in 2002 and lost to Douglas; state Senator Peter Shumlin, who ran for lieutenant governor in 2002 and lost to Dubie; and Google executive Matt Dunne, a former state legislator who also lost to Dubie in 2006.”
Bartlett doesn’t appear to have any big backers yet. “We have a problem moderates don’t like to put their names out there,” said John Bauer, campaign manager for Bartlett. “We’re going for the endorsement of the voters and we’re finding good pockets of support.”
Do endorsements matter? Groups’ endorsements do, but individual endorsements not so much, Nelson said. An organization can transfer money and infrastructure to candidates, while the payoff for individual support is far less clear, he said.
“Doug’s endorsements are what he’s going to use as his substitute for a ground operation by having these people ring the doorbells of their neighbors,” Nelson said. “Once again, getting group endorsements, in a low-turnout event with five candidates, … can make a difference.”
Davis said Racine and Markowitz are “separating” from the rest of the pack now – Racine because of the union and VLCV backing, and Markowitz because of her good ground operation.
“If Susan Bartlett is trying to portray herself as moderate, all she can hope for is 20 percent (in the primary),” Davis said. “There aren’t so many so-called moderates – they’re mostly activist Democrats (who are) liberals or progressives. Her only hope is if the other candidates split the vote equally, and that’s unlikely.”
Surveyor says
J. Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc., wrote in to give Vtdigger.org some background on the Racine-Douglas-Hogan poll in 2002 in which Racine polled 10 points higher than Douglas just two days before the election. Douglas went on to win by a three-point margin. The following is from an e-mail he sent yesterday:
“I wanted to give you a little more perspective on the poll we did for The Burlington Free Press and WPTV in November 2002. First of all, I make no excuses – we screwed that one up. From that screw-up, however, I learned several valuable lessons.
“The first mistake was even taking on the project itself. The poll was not planned, but rather the clients called us Thursday morning to see if we could squeeze it in.
“This was the first cycle we worked for The Free Press (prior to that, we polled for The Rutland Herald for about 10 years) and in trying to please/impress a new client, I decided to take it on.
That caused several logistical problems, the first being that we had only two nights to do the poll – Thursday & Friday. Friday night, historically, is not a good night to conduct election polls – I should have known better.
“Second, we had already booked up all the call center time with our primary vendors.
“Availability is tight, and we have to pre-schedule most projects 2-3 weeks in advance of major elections – in this case there were no slots open with the call centers we preferred to work with. We ended up going to a call center that we had done only limited business with, which was another bad decision. There is an old saying in this business that pollsters can only be as good as the people they have making the phone calls. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way.
“In any case, if you look at our track record in Vermont over the 10 years prior to that election, it was spotless. I have the old results I can show you if you want me to back it up. Secondly, the Vermont miss was the only one we made in 2002, and we polled in about 20-25 states. Our record in subsequent elections has also been pretty solid, and we have added some pretty large newspaper clients and NBC News along the way.
“Everybody has a bad day from time to time – in Vermont that was one of ours.
“Full disclosure. I did one other “last minute project” in 2002 – for the St. Paul Pioneer-Press & Minnesota Public Radio on the Coleman-Mondale U.S. Senate race, which was on the heels of Senator Wellstone’s death and politically-charged funeral service. That race turned around fast and late and I was the only one who called it right.
“Sometimes, pushing your limits pays off, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m almost 10 years older & wiser now, so I have learned to better control my impulses. Now I always stop polling on the Thursday before the election no matter how hard they beg me.”
