[J]ulie Feliciano spent her 10th birthday trailing her dad around the Underhill Harvest Market festival last month.
It’s not what she wanted to do on her special day, but her father is running for governor and she believes he’d make a good one.
Dan Feliciano needs a lot more than Julie’s support and he was out to get it on a crystal clear fall morning, marching in the parade and chatting with voters as they browsed through the food and wares behind the Underhill United Church.
The self-described business turnaround expert faces a steep climb. Not only does Feliciano lack name recognition, he carries a party label that makes some Vermonters nervous. Feliciano is a Libertarian, whose ideology of small government is championed by former Republican Ron Paul, who ran for president as a Libertarian in 1988 and has been called “the godfather” of the Tea Party movement. His son, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is a leader among Tea Party Republicans and is seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2016. These ideals have not enjoyed a large following in Vermont, one of the nation’s most liberal states.
Feliciano says big government creates more dependence and less community involvement in social issues. He will tell you, repeatedly, that he believes in people, that he trusts people to make the right decisions and that everyone should be allowed the opportunity to fail. “How else do you learn?” he asks.
“I believe in you more than you believe in you,” Feliciano says. “The things that drive me more (than political ideology) is the ideas that people are good.”
He doesn’t back away from Libertarian principles of individual freedom, however, and jokes about the dire perceptions some people have of the party’s platform.
“Those crazy Libertarians,” he says, “they want to take over the world and leave everyone alone.”
That perceived extremism has affected Feliciano’s ability to raise money. With fewer than 10 days until the election, he has not run a television ad but said Friday there will likely be one coming.
He has raised only $40,994 and $30,000 of that has come out of his own pocket, his wife/treasurer Carol Feliciano said Friday.
Summer surprise
[F]eliciano emerged from a pack of seven gubernatorial candidates by seizing on Republican Scott Milne’s slow start. His definitive positions on health care, property taxes and trimming state government catapulted a minor candidacy into a third-place showing in a recent WCAX poll (47 percent of those polled supported Gov. Peter Shumlin; 35 percent said they would vote for Republican Scott Milne; and 6 percent said they would back Feliciano.
While the media were waiting to hear from Milne, Feliciano held news conferences and told them he would scrap Vermont Health Connect, stop pursuing a single payer health care plan, and eliminate Efficiency Vermont, the state’s energy-savings utility.
He also antagonized some members of his own party — and Republicans, too — by mounting a late write-in campaign against Milne in an attempt to hijack the GOP primary. He won about 15 percent of the vote.
Feliciano has received the most attention for his health care stance, but he says it is rising property taxes that motivated him to run.
“When my wife and I moved back here from Connecticut … I was shocked, quite frankly, at the taxes. The taxes were just crazy,” said the 51-year-old father of three who lives in Essex.
He ran, he said, because he’s worried about whether his 16-year-old son, Daniel, will be able to stay in Vermont.
Feliciano, a business efficiency expert at Keurig Green Mountain, believes the state is spending too much and that it doesn’t get its money’s worth from social programs. He has spent his career streamlining business processes and believes there’s plenty of waste to trim in state government.
“People balk at the idea of being able to cut the budget 5 to 10 percent, but they don’t balk at the idea of the budget going up 5 percent year after year,” he says.
Feliciano says he’s met many longtime Vermonters who say they can no longer afford to keep land that has been in their families for generations.
“One man in his 60s actually started crying. He said he had 30 acres and his dad had 60 acres when he died. The estate tax wiped out a good part of it and then he got the tax bill and he can’t afford it,” Feliciano said. “It’s one thing to lose it irresponsibly by choice, it’s another thing to be chugging along and have your taxes go up 10 to 15 percent a year and eat away at it.”
Dan, the man
[D]an Feliciano was born in New York City and grew up in Monroe, New York, about 20 miles south of Newburgh.
His parents divorced and his mother left the family alone when he was about 16. He dropped out of high school to support his sisters, who were 15 and 11.
Feliciano said he has never resented his parents for their actions and speaks with his mother regularly. He sees opportunity in every situation and takes advantage of every challenge, says his wife, Carol.
“He’s had some bad things happen in life but he didn’t ever let it bring him down,” Carol Feliciano said.
The former Carol Aja, daughter of Montpelier dentist Joseph Aja, was working in Norfolk, Virginia, when she met the ex-Navy man.
“Dan was the first guy to challenge me intellectually,” Carol Feliciano said. “He didn’t have a degree but he was successful, but not in a traditional way … he had taken care of his sisters, he had traveled the world.”
The couple were married in 1992 at St. Augustine’s Catholic Church in Montpelier and returned to Virginia to earn their degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Dan’s first job out of college was as a performance consultant at the VCU Medical Center.
When Carol became pregnant with Daniel, their first child, in 1998, the couple decided to move closer to their Northeast homes, finding work in Connecticut.
Dan Feliciano then began a series of jobs building efficiency at insurance companies, including Cigna, Travelers and Aetna in Connecticut.
It was the birth of their second child, Jamie, that led the Felicianos back to Vermont. Jamie, 15, is autistic and severely disabled.
Carol Feliciano said she needed help from her family in providing the 24-hour care that Jamie requires. The family moved to Essex, where Dan Feliciano worked for the medical software company IDX (later for GE Healthcare when it acquired IDX) and for IBM.
They became advocates for Jamie, sometimes ruffling feathers in the Essex School District along the way, Carol Feliciano said.
They paid for special instruction and insisted that teachers at Essex participate so the training could benefit other students.
Carol Feliciano said she was devastated at first by Jamie’s challenges, “but Dan said ‘so what are you gonna do, love her any different?’ and that really helped bring me out of it.”
She said her husband offers an “unconditional love” and “would have a house full of kids if he could.” He says his dream job would be to teach middle school science.
Dan Feliciano said the people he met at a young age through work and in the Navy taught him to see his place in the world. He credits a superior officer for demanding that he earn a high school diploma while stationed in Hawaii.
“As a Puerto Rican kid in a blue-collar town, I couldn’t see that I had a way of seeing the big picture, and that I had this natural way of chopping things into smaller bits and reorder them to get things done.” Others noticed that trait and nurtured it, he said.
‘The Libertarian Moment’
[A] New York Times magazine story last summer examined the “mainstreaming” of Libertarian politics. It suggested that the party, which had previously been content to profess its ideals from outside the political fray, suddenly found itself drawing followers from the majority of Americans who now agreed with its positive stances on gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana.
This election may yet be the Libertarian moment in Vermont, but internal and external squabbles have made it more difficult.
— Dan Feliciano
The party has a statewide candidate in Feliciano who, if he gains 5 percent of the vote Nov. 4, will give Libertarians major party status in the next election.
They are running more Statehouse candidates than ever before – 13, including a full slate of six for Chittenden County Senate.
“This is the best representation we’ve had in Vermont,” said Travis Spencer, 38, one of the Senate candidates and the Milton party chairman. “There are more Libertarians on the (Chittenden County Senate) ballot than Republicans. (Party status) would help … people would see the Libertarian name on the ballot and that would lay a foundation to build on.”
But even as it was poised for a breakout season, the party became fragmented over Feliciano’s decision to seek the Republican nomination via a write-in campaign. What some see as a natural alliance between Republicans and Libertarians (a la Progressives/Democrats), others see as a weakening of the brand.
Vermont Libertarian Party chairman Jeremy Ryan publicly opposed a write-in effort by Feliciano, who is also the party’s vice chairman. The state committee even held a vote to decide whether the party should allow its candidates to appear on another party’s ballot in the future.
Seventeen of the party’s 37-member state committee voted and those who supported “fusion” candidates prevailed, 10-7, meaning the party will allow crossover campaigns, for now.
“Some members are adamant about not doing that,” said Spencer, who supports fusion. “In order for us to grow, we have to have a seat at the table. In order to do that, you have to win over someone else.”
Mainstream Republicans were equally annoyed by Feliciano’s attempt. Party chairman Dave Sunderland issued a dire warning about the dangers of “Libertarian extremism,” and its views on drug use and prostitution, among others.
“Let’s be clear about this: Vermont Libertarians would release all the heroin traffickers and professional dealers who have peddled their poison on our streets,” Sunderland wrote in an Aug. 10 commentary.
The state Libertarian platform does support the notion that nonviolent drug offenders, including opiate users, should not be prosecuted, but Feliciano said he would not advocate that position as governor.
Sunderland says Feliciano might have been welcomed as a GOP candidate had he come to them before the primary, but said there are fundamental differences between the parties.
“Republicans and Libertarians share a lot of common ground on the free market and individual freedom, but we differ with their view on illegal drugs, gambling, billboards …” Sunderland said recently.
Sunderland agreed with the prevailing view that Feliciano would siphon more votes from Republican Scott Milne than from Democrat Peter Shumlin in the general election, but said he is confident that Milne is “poised for an upset.”
Other party leaders have asked Feliciano to bow out of the race and support Milne. He refused.
Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, said last week that he urged Feliciano to step aside to give Milne a better chance at defeating Shumlin.
“He and I share a lot commonalities,” Benning said. I have a Libertarian streak and I think if we (Republicans) are going to grow the only way is if Libertarians and Republicans figure out how to have a bridge to each other.”
Benning said Feliciano was committed to staying in the race. “It looks like we’re going to have a three-way race, and that’s too bad,” Benning said.
Feliciano said a group of Republicans approached him about running in the GOP primary after Randy Brock, who lost to Shumlin in 2012, decided not to run again this year.
He declined at first, he said, not certain what the motive was behind the idea. He turned to a politically savvy neighbor for advice, a neighbor who narrowly lost a governor’s race of his own.
“I called Brian Dubie up and said ‘Brian what’s up with this, is this some sort of trap?’ He said ‘I can’t give you any guidance but there’s no malfeasance there,’” Feliciano said.
Encouraged by Brock’s former campaign manager Darcie Johnston, Feliciano decided to launch a write-in campaign against Milne.
Johnston, who runs the anti-single payer organization Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, said she was told by GOP leaders that Milne was “going to come around on health care.”
When Milne failed to openly oppose Shumlin’s plans for single payer, Johnston said she urged Feliciano to launch his primary challenge and has been guiding his campaign – without pay – ever since. Others in the more conservative faction of the GOP supported Feliciano’s bid, including state party vice chairman Brady Toensing, party treasurer Mark Snelling and former candidate for state treasurer Wendy Wilton, according to an article in Seven Days.
“If the GOP is going to grow in Vermont, it has to embrace its Libertarian wing,” Johnston says. “(Opposing Feliciano) was a tactical mistake. The party should support its nominee but without trashing its potential supporters.”
Feliciano earned nearly 2,100 write-in votes in the primary while Milne, who was on the ballot, won about 11,500. Despite the margin, Feliciano managed to keep his name in the media throughout the primary process and gained a forum for his stances that no other candidate could claim.
The homestretch
[F]eliciano, energetic and optimistic, moves easily through the crowd at the Harvest Festival. He stops to visit with a mixture of older people and young couples. Mostly they want to talk about taxes and how Vermont can afford single payer health care. He can’t answer their questions, for the most part, but listens closely and rarely criticizes Gov. Shumlin directly. The phrase “Vermont Health Connect disaster” comes out frequently.
Julie, the birthday girl, eventually tires of the grownup talk. She finds some friends and disappears, but her father continues to greet voters and spread the gospel of personal rights and responsibilities while paying little mind to his long political odds.
“I do want to win,” Feliciano says. “I met Carol Paul and Ron Paul in D.C. (this summer) and Carol Paul said ‘Oh, you’re running for governor in Vermont, great. Just make sure you get the message of liberty out and ensure that people understand what’s at risk and what can be had. I doubt you’ll win, but make sure you keep a good positive message about what’s possible.’”
Voters he spoke with at the festival seemed impressed and a bit surprised by Feliciano’s ideas.
“He seemed down to earth,” Underhill luthier Jesse Cowan, 34, said after talking with the candidate. “He seemed to want to focus on one or two things and fix them, to get something done.”
Another man, who asked that his name not be used, said he was very concerned about property taxes and worried that a single payer would add another tax on top.
He wasn’t sure if Feliciano would get his vote, however, but found the discussion “refreshing.”
Feliciano says big government inhibits problem-solving and that community organizations, religious and secular, do a better job of providing social services.
“I believe there is a whole opportunity for better models for public service, models that will help kids do better,” he said, citing the Boy Scouts an example.
He says state bureaucracy creates too many layers and causes employees to become disillusioned.
“I believe the government actually kills passion,” he says. “Everything becomes a budget line item and then the mission is lost. In a business, when you lose your mission then you lose your bottom line. (Leave it to) organizations that have the burning desire to fix the problem.”
Feliciano said that no matter how he finishes in the Nov. 4 general election, he very well could be back for another run.
“That’s kind of how it works, right?” he says. “First you get your name out there then …”
If that’s true, Julie Feliciano might have to hold off on making plans for her 12th birthday.
Correction: An earlier version of this story said Feliciano was a first-time candidate for governor. He ran as an independent in 2010.