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WOODSTOCK– Rancor from a campaign that ended 2½ years ago resurfaced in the Windsor County Superior Courthouse on Tuesday, illuminating the difficulties Republicans face in challenging Vermont’s incumbent congressional delegation.
The campaign in question is the 2010 Senate race, in which Sen. Patrick Leahy trounced his Republican challenger, first-time political candidate Len Britton.
Leahy has no role in this fresh slew of mudslinging, though — the dispute is between Britton and his former campaign manager, Jeff Bartley, who alleges that he is owed roughly $30,000.
It’s not out of the ordinary for a campaign to accrue debts that outlive the campaign itself, but it’s less common for payment disputes to spawn lawsuits that expose the underbelly of intra-campaign squabbles.
During the two-day trial, which began Monday, both sides dissected the debris left over from Britton’s run at Leahy’s seat. Len Britton’s bid was beset from the beginning by financial duress and a fissure between the first and second in command, according to testimony.
Bartley, who is currently the chair of the Chittenden County GOP, quit the campaign in September 2010, and then sued a week before the election. He wasn’t the first disgruntled staffer — Bartley replaced Britton’s original campaign manager, Dan Riley, who also sued Britton. (Riley’s case was recently concluded out of court; his lawyer, Jack Welch, who also represented Bartley, said he could not comment on the outcome.)
Judge Robert Geret will rule on Bartley’s case this summer.
The defense and the plaintiff agreed on little in court Tuesday, but neither disputed that Britton’s campaign was a debacle. Even Welch described Britton, who operated a lumber company at the time, as “a fledgling, wannabe political candidate” whose chances were “grim” from the get-go.
The courtroom battle, which was technically waged between corporations — the limited liability corporation, Bartley Consulting, versus Len Britton for Vermont, LLC — centered upon who deserved the blame.
Britton, who has since relocated to Santa Monica, Calif., did not make the 3,000-mile trip back for the trial. Tom Farmer — who met Britton in 1979 when the two of them were students at Dartmouth College and who later asked Britton to be his son’s godfather — did.
Farmer traveled from Seattle to take the stand as a witness for the plaintiff, however. He testified that Britton solicited his help when he was first flirting with the idea of running, and Farmer says he did nearly $20,000 of work for the campaign for free. Later, his strategic communications company, Solid State Information Design, signed a $200,000 contract with the Britton campaign. Solid States subsequently terminated the agreement because, according to Farmer, his business was being put at risk by the campaign’s inability to pay its bills.
Farmer also testified that he drew up the contract that Britton and Bartley signed, and, furthermore, he watched them seal the deal. That was important testimony for the plaintiff because the defense disputes that the document was ever signed, and neither side has been able to produce a copy with signatures.
Taking the stand on Britton’s behalf was Bradford Broyles, who also stood in as the “de-facto case manager” after Bartley departed. Broyles is also the former Rutland GOP chair and managed Republican Wendy Wilton’s unsuccessful bid for state treasurer last fall.
Whereas the plaintiffs painted Britton as a heels-dragging fundraiser who wouldn’t pick up the phone to call donors and initially refused to accept out-of-state funds from political action committees (PACS), the defense described Bartley as a slovenly manager who shirked his duties, playing softball rather than heading up campaign events on the weekends.
Broyles testified that Bartley “exhibited erratic behavior on a regular basis” and he claimed that behavior blew Britton’s chance at bringing on board a wealthy Florida donor.
When the plaintiff’s lawyer asked him why they didn’t fire Bartley, Broyles said they didn’t want bad press, and, he added, “there’s a very shallow pool of talent in this state for political types.”
Farmer echoed that theme in an interview after the trial concluded. He said everyone started out with “the best of intentions,” but the campaign became unraveled by the external challenges it faced. “A, as Brad (Broyles) said, talent is thin on the ground in Vermont, so you get the people you get, and B, there was no capacity for fundraising. Sadly money is the mother’s milk of these kinds of operations and great intentions or magical thinking don’t get television ads on air.”
Richard Ferber, a witness for the defense who was also a paid staffer for Britton, testified that he was so disheartened by Bartley’s behavior during the campaign, that he decided to disengage politically from the Republican Party, and he hasn’t been involved in their activities since.
Jack Lindley, the chair of the Vermont Republican Party, said the lawsuit is a contractual dispute between two individuals and doesn’t have anything to do with party politics. Bartley took the same stance.
“This quite frankly this doesn’t have anything to do with the Republican Party,” he said “To insinuate that this lawsuit is in any way causing Republican infighting and so forth is preposterous.”
When asked whether it would impact the party’s image, Lindley acknowledged, “It’s not helpful.”
Broyles had a more damning assessment: “A Republican official engaged in a lawsuit with a man that ran for high office? There are no winners coming out of that for the Republican Party. There’s enough problems in the party without exacerbating them with this type of behavior.”
Correction: Len Britton is the godfather of Tom Farmer’s only son, not the other way around, as was originally reported. The name of Farmer’s company was Solid State Information Design, not “Solid States.” Story updated 9:57 a.m. June 5, 2013.