[T]here’s a famous psychological test where a beautiful young woman and a haggard old lady are contained in the same picture. Which one you see depends on how you look at the drawing, but if you look long enough, from different angles, you can make out both images.
To many Vermonters, Gov. Peter Shumlin presents that same ambiguity. After four years as governor and more than a decade before that under the Golden Dome, pinning down who Peter Shumlin is seems to depend on how you view him in different situations.
Is he the compassionate leader who could comfort an Irene-devastated Vermonter with an arm around her shoulder, who could cheerlead a washed-out community from the back of a pickup truck the way a bullhorn-wielding President George W. Bush stood atop the 9/11 pile, and who is known to place a well-timed call of sympathy to a Vermonter who’s suffered a loss?
Or is he, as some of his critics say, a leader who cannot be trusted, a politician who will say or do what is necessary to get a piece of legislation passed or advance his political career and whose personal ethics were widely questioned in a land deal with his intellectually challenged next door neighbor?
Perhaps, like the famous Two Lady test, is he both of those people.
While polls show Shumlin heading for another two-year term, his bigger challenge — and why who he is matters — may come shortly after the balloons and confetti hit the floor election night. In January, he is scheduled to lay out the details of his No. 1 priority, overhauling how health care is paid for and delivered. Shifting from premiums to taxes to pay for health care, what the Speaker of the House has said will be a “heavy lift” for lawmakers, will likely test Shumlin’s reputation as a skilled persuader, and also, according to observers, require that he secure the trust of legislators and the people of Vermont.
The toughest task lies ahead
[G]ov. Peter Shumlin is fond of saying he likes to “get tough things done.” His response following Tropical Storm Irene, which devastated large sections of Vermont in 2011, was applauded almost universally, including from some of his harshest critics.
Shumlin threw himself fully into the recovery effort. With Vermonters who had lost their homes and in a few cases, their loved ones, he was the soul of empathy. In his role as CEO, he directed his staff to focus on practical solutions to help Vermonters whose lives had been upended, their communities isolated, their homes filled with water and muck.
For example, he ordered the Agency of Transportation to restore access to a dozen communities that had been cut off and laid down a firm deadline, which was met. The flood also damaged 500 miles of roads in the Green Mountain National Forest region, and the governor, because of concerns the area would be isolated if roads and bridges weren’t opened before winter, pressed the AOT and independent road and bridge contractors to reopen town and state highways before December. Again, his order was carried out.
Within weeks of Irene, Shumlin and his administration began the planning to rebuild the almost completely flooded out Waterbury state office complex, “the nerve center of state government,” and set about to replace the ravaged Vermont State Hospital, the state’s psychiatric facility, as well as finding existing facilities capable of caring for the dislocated patients.
Three years later, Shumlin still touts the the state’s recovery from Irene in campaign speeches and television ads. In 2012, it was the centerpiece of his campaign and the election was seen in part as a referendum on how he handled the crisis.
Since then, the governor has seen his popularity slip. A recent poll had his approval rating at 45 percent — four points down from a poll conducted just last spring– with a disapproval mark of 41 percent. While analysts say governors naturally lose popularity over time, Shumlin’s numbers also appear to have been affected by several controversies and challenges: a disastrous roll-out of the state’s health exchange website, Vermonters with stagnant incomes, the land deal with his neighbor, and ever-increasing complaints about high property taxes.
Phil Scott, the Republican lieutenant governor who is friendly with Shumlin and serves in his cabinet, said he hears a lot of Vermonters raise the issue of trust about Shumlin.
“I hear constantly the anti-Peter Shumlin sentiment, and a lot of it is about trust or lack of trust, and it goes across party lines,” Scott said. “It’s a cumulative effect. Again, I don’t go into it when somebody tells me that, and not to puff myself up at all, but they’ll say something to the effect of ‘I just don’t trust the guy. I’m a Democrat, and I wish you were running for governor.’ ”
Scott says he’s also questioned whether he can trust Shumlin and whether the governor’s political ambitions have led him to break a personal promise. In 2012, for example, Scott said the governor assured him two days before the election papers had to be filed that no one from the Democratic Party would challenge him in the lieutenant governor’s race. Shortly afterward, Cassandra Gekas, a Progressive/Democrat, made a bid for the seat at the behest of Alexandra MacLean, Shumlin’s campaign manager at the time.
“It’s almost as though he reacts in different ways with different people,” Scott says. “I understand how he works, and I am never surprised because I half expect something to happen. He’s never threatened me in any way, but I’ve seen him in action. I’ve witnessed that, and it’s not the way I do business, and that’s why I keep one eye open and don’t let myself get completely sucked in.”
In addition, Shumlin’s relationship with the Legislature, the body where he honed his political skills, has been strained at times. Lawmakers complained when he proposed cuts to Human Service programs without consulting them, when he unilaterally pulled the plug on tax reform and when he has chided them for spending too much. Shumlin highlights that while he has been governor, he has aggressively fought against any proposal to raise broad-based taxes as he defines the term.
His toughest assignment, however, lies ahead: the implementation of a first-in-the-nation, single payer health care program in which the Legislature plays a key role. The governor’s ambitious plan to shift $2 billion worth of premium payments into a publicly financed system will require lawmakers to approve a series of taxes, and perhaps make them politically vulnerable.
Political observers say getting the Legislature to raise that much in taxes will be nearly impossible, and that in addition, Shumlin will have to convince taxpayers that a dramatic change in financing health care will help Vermonters and not hurt Vermont’s economy. Already the governor has missed several deadlines to present a funding plan and critics, and even some supporters, say his decision to hold off until after the election was political and created distrust. Shumlin says the plan simply wasn’t ready, and at one point, after the media repeatedly asked, he said the new plan would be financed with “lollipops and bubble gum.”
Whether Shumlin can pull off single payer is an open question, according to Kevin Ellis, a longtime communications director and lobbyist in Montpelier who recently left KSE Partners to start his own firm.
“When he was in the Senate he was always three steps ahead of everybody else, he always had a solution, he always had a grand route to the deal,” Ellis says. “And on this one, I don’t know if he does because this one is hard. This is gay marriage, plus $2 billion. Gay marriage was a cakewalk compared to this because it didn’t cost anybody anything.”
Hamilton Davis, a journalist and health care policy expert, says the governor’s plan for single-payer aims “at the stars,” and it could dramatically shift health care policy in United States. The public confidence issue for Shumlin, however, “is a killer.” The question, he says, is whether people trust the governor to “get this thing arranged and whether he can manage it into the future.”
When problems happened with Vermont Health Connect, which was mandated by the federal government and is supposed to provide the technical framework for the new system, Shumlin was initially dismissive, calling the problems a “nothing burger.” Since then, he has acknowledged the issues and called the rollout “the biggest disappointment” of his tenure. He has also dismissed suggestions that the VHC complications mean that government is incapable of handling the larger reforms he plans. “It’s just a website,” he frequently says of Vermont Health Connect. Actual health care reform, he acknowledges, will be much harder.
Higher goals
[C]ritics say Shumlin is using health care reform as a stepping stone for national office. They point to his time out of state as the chair of the Democratic Governors Association. Since January 2013, he has spent 141 days away from Vermont on national business or vacation, Seven Days reported, causing him, his opponents say, to lose focus back home.
Shumlin’s staff said some of those days out of state have included meeting with President Barack Obama. He has also spent time raising money for other gubernatorial candidates in his role as DGA chair, but Shumlin has repeatedly denied that he has any interest in national politics.
Garrison Nelson, a congressional historian and professor of political science at the University of Vermont, says national aspirations have been the undoing of at least five Vermont governors.
“Progressive ambition is the doom of many successful politicians seeking the next office,” Nelson says.
Too often, Vermont politicians have an “Icarus problem.” “They fly too close to the national sun and their wings fall off,” he says.
Nelson and others, some of whom did not want to be quoted by name for this story, say Shumlin is also suffering the lingering effects of distrust that grew out of a land deal he had with a neighbor in East Montpelier. While the governor maintains he was trying to help Jeremy Dodge, Dodge and his family, who says Jeremy is intellectually challenged, felt Shumlin took advantage of the situation.
While Shumlin has been out of state, some of his major policy initiatives have come under fire. The governor has been a strong supporter of large-scale wind projects. The Kingdom Community Wind project in Lowell and another turbine farm in Sheffield have engendered a slow-burning resentment among constituents in the Northeast Kingdom.
Poor media relations have also contributed to Shumlin’s drop in popularity. The governor tends to circle the wagons instead of getting ahead of negative publicity, according to Nelson, Ham Davis and a handful of other sources interviewed for this story.
Nelson says Shumlin has become “very distrustful of the press” in part because he felt “beaten up” by reporters on the land deal with Dodge and the health care exchange rollout. While his predecessor, Gov. James Douglas, held a weekly news conference in Montpelier, Shumlin rarely does that now, and his media events are heavily scripted and largely outside the capital.
“Peter is much more wary, guarded and less approachable,” Nelson said. Those traits have “put a lid on Peter Shumlin’s popularity,” he says, because Vermont is the “quintessential retail politics state.”
Shumlin, however, appears to have taken a page of out Jim Douglas’ playbook, engaging with Vermonters directly at public events. He is essentially in constant campaign mode, but Nelson says in a state where retail politics is the key, Shumlin isn’t as naturally approachable as other Vermont politicians.
“The two best politicians in the state — Jim Douglas and Bernie Sanders — engage everybody and have no filter, no staff interference. There is no distance between them and the constituent,” Nelson said.
Despite his waning popularity, most observers say Shumlin will easily best his opponents, including Republican Scott Milne. The only question in doubt, they say, is whether Shumlin will break the 50 percent threshold and avoid the necessity of the Legislature rubber-stamping his election.
More important, those observers say the governor needs to have a mandate coming into the next legislative session starting in January. Otherwise, it will be difficult for Shumlin to persuade lawmakers on the political left and the right to press ahead with single payer.
Two years ago, Shumlin defeated Republican Randy Brock with 57 percent of the vote. The only major poll conducted this election season had Shumlin at 47 percent. While it’s typical for governors to lose three points with each successive term, according to Eric Davis, a retired professor of political science at Middlebury College, a potential drop of 10 points in one term is unusual.
In 2010, Shumlin gambled on television ads and beat out his competitors in a five-way Democratic primary and his Republican contender Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie in the General Election. Four years later, the governor is using that strategy again, and he has already spent more in this General Election on television ads — $400,000 — than he did in 2010 (reports show he spent $323,000 that year).
The ads highlight his non-controversial achievements — the Irene recovery, support for early childhood education, solar energy buildouts, scholarships for Vermont students and new opiate addiction treatment programs. Not a single ad mentions his push for single payer health care or renewable energy policies. The governor’s own voice is also absent.
Shumlin’s numbers could suffer on Nov. 4, experts say, not only because of his wavering public support but also because of an expected low voter turnout. This election is in a non-presidential year and, with no U.S. Senate race and Rep. Peter Welch facing little challenge, the focus is on the governor’s race. In off-year elections like this one, voters tend to turn out for the challenger, not the incumbent, experts say.
“You need fewer votes to win,” Nelson says. “And they can mobilize support more effectively.” An upset, though unlikely, is possible, according to Nelson.
“Time is the enemy to the executive,” Nelson said “You lose friends and make enemies. The longer he remains in office, the more problematic his hold on that office becomes.”
Fulfilling campaign promises
[F]ormer Sen. Vince Illuzzi, a Republican from the Northeast Kingdom, worked with Shumlin for more than two decades in the state Senate. He characterizes the governor as a natural-born leader who is willing to be out front on issues that no one else will take on.
“He is leading Vermont, and Vermont is leading the nation on a number of controversial issues — GMO labeling, death with dignity, single payer, renewable energy. And those who lead get shot.”
“He is leading Vermont, and Vermont is leading the nation on a number of controversial issues — GMO labeling, death with dignity, single payer, renewable energy,” Illuzzi said. “And those who lead get shot. When you’re leading the way on a number of controversial or policy issues, you expect backlash.”
Campaigns are about ideas, Illuzzi says, and in 2010 Vermonters wanted a single payer health care system, promoting renewable energy, and they supported Shumlin’s rallying cry to shut down Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, which was leaking tritium at the time.
Shumlin’s drop in the polls, he says, is tied to fulfilling those commitments.
“He has done everything he promised in that campaign — he has delivered or attempted to deliver on those promises — and as the details have sunk in, it has caused a backlash,” Illuzzi said.
Illuzzi said closing Vermont Yankee could lead to higher electricity rates, for example, and the GMO labeling law could cost the state $8 million to defend in court.
Those policy decisions may have alienated some voters, particularly independents and Republicans who say they are too progressive, but the issue that has generated the most visceral and genuine anger is large-scale wind, which Shumlin has assiduously backed, Illuzzi says, at his peril.
When Green Mountain Power blasted parts of the Lowell Mountain ridgeline to build a turbine farm, locals felt betrayed by Shumlin, Illuzzi said. There was a sentiment that the governor was looking out for corporate interests, not those of the people. Many residents resent that the turbines can be seen from a dozen or more vantages from Westmore in the east to Elmore to the west.
“There is a sense that no one would think of putting a wind turbine on Mount Mansfield because that’s sacred ground, well Lowell Mountain is sacred ground in the Northeast Kingdom,” Illuzzi says.
Democrats, some of whom supported the governor, interviewed for this story fall into two camps: people who loathe the governor for allowing the 420-foot lighted windmills in Lowell, and will never vote for him again, and people who believe that renewable energy is worth some aesthetic sacrifices.
But the harshest criticism Shumlin and the administration have endured has been on health care reform, one of Shumlin’s signature issues in 2010. The pushback initially revolved around the governor’s unwillingness to publicly discuss options for replacing the current premium-based model with payroll and other taxes until after the election.
Instead of floating trial balloons for public consumption, the governor’s staff is developing a tax plan in secret, and a group of business leaders, who have sworn to keep the information confidential, is charged with reviewing the proposals. Rep. Cynthia Browning, a Democrat from Arlington, sued the governor for staff records about the plan; the Shumlin administration has claimed the executive privilege exemption and has refused to release the information.
The secrecy around single-payer has generated criticism, but no one could have predicted the fallout from the failed Vermont Health Connect website, which still doesn’t work, $100 million and a year later. Late last month, state officials took Vermont Health Connect down because of a security vulnerability.
Shumlin doesn’t seem to manage bureaucratic problems well, Ham Davis said. “He’s used to achieving results by political action and maneuvering,” he says. “The exchange required real management skill.”
While the governor is an adept politician who understands policy, and he’s “gutsy about risk,” Shumlin has no experience managing large operations. On that score, Davis says, “he has no idea what he’s doing.”
“The failure on the managerial side, the failure to watch quickly enough and move quickly enough has cost his political momentum and has cost him support,” he says.
Davis says the question going forward is whether Vermonters trust him to make single payer happen. He believes Shumlin should have used this political campaign season to attack the public relations problem head on and force Scott Milne, his Republican opponent, to defend the current health care system.
The framework for Shumlin’s single payer plan as spelled out in Act 48 is “far-reaching,” Davis says, and the early structure has worked well. The Green Mountain Care Board, for example, has already reduced the growth in health care costs.
Davis gives Shumlin credit for addressing health care costs first, before embarking on the enormous shift to universal health care. “People got the right plan, and they got started down the road,” Davis says.
The governor has also come under fire for failing to aggressively address a crucial issue that has been top of mind for voters this election season: Property taxes.
Vermonters are absorbing two back-to-back annual increases in the statewide property tax that sugar off to a 12 cent hike per $100 of assessed value. While a variety of tweaks to the formula have been entertained in the Statehouse, Democrats who dominate the Legislature have not yet floated a proposal for overhauling Act 60 yet. It appears that Shumlin will leave that job to House Speaker Shap Smith.
Republicans in House district fights have made reform of the property tax system their major cause and, as they have gained traction with constituents, Democrats have begun to react. At a news conference this month, the House Democratic caucus pledged to introduce an income tax component to the formula that would lower the statewide property tax rate.
Illuzzi says property tax rate increases have “reached a crescendo.” The issue has festered during Shumlin’s tenure as governor, and he will need to take innovative steps to change the formula and address education spending increases, Illuzzi says.
“I think he’s spent the first four years leading the charge on his initiatives, and now he’s going to have to retool his administration and take care of problems that have developed over last several years,” Illuzzi says.
A very private life
[G]ov. Peter Shumlin, 58, grew up in Putney, the son of George and Kitty Shumlin. While he had a happy childhood, he struggled with dyslexia.
Shumlin has said he was shaped by the experience, and “still can’t spell.” He writes his official annual addresses using voice-translation software.
In his 2011 state of the state address, he remembered “in second grade being called into the principal’s office with my parents to have them be told what I already knew, but hoped beyond hope that they would never find out. That with all the good efforts of my teachers they could not teach me how to read; that the prospects of my being a successful student and going onto college were unlikely.”
Shumlin eventually learned to read thanks to the patient and creative tutoring of Claire Oglesby, a local teacher who worked with him one-on-one.
The learning disability not only affected the way he communicates, it also left him vulnerable to the ridicule of his classmates. In a 2012 speech to graduating seniors at a college prep school for dyslexics in Massachusetts, Shumlin recounted what it was like to be taunted by other kids, and he urged the students to channel the pain they experienced into compassion for others.
Like many dyslexics who learn to read a little later than their peers, Shumlin made up the difference by becoming a skilled speaker. He told Kevin O’Connor, a reporter for the Rutland Herald: “Some people have said I come off as sounding kind of slick. The fact of the matter is I’m not — I’m able to very quickly express thoughts because it’s how I survived.”
That ability to marshal and articulate thoughts almost flawlessly has been a key element of Shumlin’s success, but it’s also his ability to think strategically that puts the governor ahead of his peers in politics and business. He is frequently referred to as a chess player who has mastered the game, while everyone else is playing checkers.
Kevin Ellis says Shumlin is Vermont’s Bill Clinton.
“He’s a brilliant visionary with the ability to see far ahead of everybody else,” Ellis says, and he has a tendency to act as though he can run the whole government by himself. “The problems get bigger when you’re governor, and they’re harder to solve, you can’t solve them on the fly.”
Shumlin also has a different style than previous Vermont governors, Ellis says.
“Shumlin is a tactile politician,” Ellis says. “He literally governs by touching people. He puts his arm around them. He kisses them on the cheek, and, again, that’s Clinton-like. He thinks he knows everybody personally, and he’s looking for that piece of the relationship in the room that allows him to make a connection and that’s transactional, but it’s transactional for every governor. I think Peter Shumlin gets a bad rap for being superficial.”
When Peter and his brother, Jeff, took over the family business, Putney Student Travel, in 1985, they increased revenue by 30 percent in 15 years. In 2010, the company generated annual revenue of $8 million to $9 million. Through a variety of real estate deals and stock investments, Shumlin has become wealthy with assets of $10 million. He owns 16 properties worth $3.8 million, and has $6.5 million in retirement funds, $1 million in Putney Student Travel stock and other investments, according to his tax filings.
His initial rise in politics was meteoric. He was appointed to the Vermont House in 1989 by Gov. Madeleine Kunin and was elected to the Vermont Senate in 1992. Two years later, Shumlin was elected majority leader. A decade later, he ran for lieutenant governor and lost. He went back to the family business, and then returned to the Senate in 2006 where he served as president pro tempore. In 2010, he narrowly won a five-way Democratic primary and went on to also best Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie.
Over the course of his political career, he has seen enormous changes in his personal circumstances. After he became governor, he and his wife, Deborah, who had long been separated, filed for divorce; his daughters went off to college; and he left Windham County to take up residency in central Vermont.
“We look at other people and think they’re together, but don’t forget he’s gone through a personal evolution since he’s been here,” Ellis said. “He lived in Putney, he was driving back and forth with a family back home, and he gets elected, moves here and his whole personal life changes. He builds a house, his father dies. You know, we in the political world forget that these people are human beings.”
Through it all, Shumlin has continued to foster loyal friendships, notably with Sens. Dick Sears and Dick Mazza, and David Coates, who has served on several advisory councils for Shumlin. Coates, who has worked in a voluntary capacity for several governors, said he had retired from public life, but “it’s always hard to say no to him.”
Coates said when his wife, Margaret, died this summer, he got a call from Shumlin within 10 minutes of her death.
“How he found out about it, I don’t know,” Coates said. “It was a time of major grief for me and that the governor thought so much to call me and say he was there for me, his doing things like that builds up a lot of trust. And then he called five times after that during the first month. There is a very human side of him people don’t see. He feels other people’s pain.”
Sears says he has known Shumlin for more than 20 years and says the governor has a deprecating sense of humor and “very much connects with people.”
“I think it takes time before he trusts people,” Sears says. He chalks up Shumlin’s guardedness to a holdover from covering up his dyslexia as a kid. “Because of his brash nature and speaking before he thinks, some people get a different opinion of him, but he’s very genuine, he’s a caring guy,” Sears said.
Sears has met Shumlin’s steady girlfriend, Katie Hunt, several times, and this summer spent an afternoon at Fenway Park for a Red Sox game with the governor, Hunt and and his friend, John Murphy. He posted a photo of the group on Facebook.
He and Illuzzi, who has also spent time with Hunt, describe her as a very smart, “very shy person” who isn’t interested in politics.
Hunt, 30, is an undergraduate student at Mount Holyoke and has been the governor’s companion for several years. Recently, she decided to accompany Shumlin at several events. She was present at his state of the state and budget addresses in the House chamber and attended Shumlin’s campaign kickoff and the David Curtis Awards dinner. She has been described as the “governor’s full partner.” One insider said Shumlin seeks her advice on “everything,” including matters of state.
If Vermonters re-elect him to deal with the challenges facing the state over the next two years, Peter Shumlin will need all the sound advice he can get.
DISCLOSURE: Kevin Ellis is a member of the Vermont Journalism Trust board. VTDigger is a project of the trust.