The Vermont Democratic Party has filed a second complaint in a month against the Republican Governors Association with the Vermont attorney general’s office.
Paul Tencher, coordinated campaign manager for the Democrats, has asked the AG to investigate the RGA for allegedly coordinating efforts with the “Friends of Brian Dubie” — this time for sharing the results of an internal poll in September.
Under Vermont campaign finance law, political groups are allowed to make unlimited expenditures on behalf of a candidate as long as their activities aren’t coordinated with the candidate’s campaign. If an entity works with a campaign, its expenditures are limited to $6,000 per election cycle.
The RGA and its political action committee, Green Mountain Prosperity, have spent more than $500,000 on behalf of Dubie in this election cycle, according to mass-media filings and campaign finance reports from the Vermont secretary of state’s office.
Tencher alleges that Friends of Brian Dubie paid Public Opinion Strategies $25,500 for a poll on Sept. 27. The RGA, a 527 group not covered by campaign spending limits, reported a $25,500 in-kind expenditure and a contribution of the same amount to and from the pro-Dubie group in a report filed on Oct. 15, according to Tencher.
Polling data are crucial to a campaign’s ability to strategize, and sharing that information with a 527 like the RGA is a form of coordination, Tencher alleges.
The Dubie campaign says sharing polling information with the RGA is “100 percent legal.”
Kate Duffy, communications director for Dubie, said in an interview at the Statehouse Thursday, where she had decamped during a VDP press conference: “If it wasn’t legal, we wouldn’t have reported it.”
“A poll is your game plan,” Tencher argued. “We poll so we can ensure that the issues Vermonters want us to talk about are what we put on television or radio or in the mail. To share that information is a coordinated expense. It’s not a coincidence that the Dubie campaign and the RGA are running scare campaigns that mirror each other. Both ads are closely related — probably because they’re reading off the same poll.”
Tencher was referring to two ads: the RGA commercial “Peter Shumlin can’t be trusted” and a new ad out just this week from the Dubie campaign, “Ethically challenged.”
Sam Hemingway, of the Burlington Free Press, broke the story Wednesday. He turned up the $25,500 figure on state campaign finance reports filed by the Dubie campaign and found the RGA’s in-kind expenditure on the organization’s IRS 8827 form.
Tencher previously alleged that the lieutenant governor, who does not publish a public schedule, had coordinated schedules with the RGA in order to shoot footage for a TV commercial for Dubie that ran in August and September.
Last week, Attorney General William Sorrell’s office dismissed the first complaint filed by the VDP. The deputy attorney general determined that the accusation of coordination wasn’t “frivolous,” but there was “insufficient evidence to warrant an enforcement action against either the RGA or the Dubie Campaign.”
Tencher says with only 12 days left before the election, time is of the essence.
“We’re pursuing all legal strategies to expedite this,” Tencher said. “We’re going to do everything in our power to hold Brian Dubie accountable before this election takes place. It’s not just about this election, it’s about ensuring RGA doesn’t continue violating the law. … It’s in the public’s interest to make sure they don’t keep spitting in the face of campaign finance law.”
In his letter to Sorrell, he referred to the Vermont Democratic Party’s request for a temporary restraining order against the Republican Governors Association in 2004. That year, the RGA bought ads to boost Gov. Jim Douglas’ campaign and didn’t register as a political party in Vermont. The AG determined that the RGA had been ill-advised by the secretary of state’s office, according to Chittenden County Superior Court documents.
The court asked the 527 group to halt the ads a day before the election, Tencher said.
“This appears to be part of an ongoing pattern of disregarding Vermont’s campaign finance laws dating back to the 2004 election cycle,” he wrote in the letter addressed to Sorrell.
Corry Bliss, Dubie’s campaign manager, said the complaint is “a complete waste of time and taxpayers’ money.”
“This is a frivolous suit just like the first suit they filed last month,” Bliss said. “The AG and the Democrats are desperate to remove the ethical cloud over Peter Shumlin’s head. It’s amazing that the AG’s office has time to investigate this, but refuses to investigate Peter Shumlin’s pay-to-play politics with David Blittersdorf. If Secretary of State Deb Markowitz and Paul Tencher have so much free time on their hands, perhaps they should get a hobby.”
CORRECTION: We originally reported, based on handwritten notes, that Kate Duffy said: “If it was illegal, we wouldn’t have put it in our campaign finance reports.” We have corrected her quote, based on a taped recording. She said: “If it wasn’t legal, we wouldn’t have reported it.”
