Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
The 2014 campaign for governor of Vermont turned out to be Peter Shumlin versus Peter Shumlin.
Peter Shumlin lost.
Which means, of course, that Peter Shumlin won.
Or at least so it seems. At about 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, WCAX, which had 95.88 percent of precincts reporting, showed that Shumlin had 85,060 votes (46.6 percent) to 82,397 (45.14 percent) for Republican Scott Milne. If Dan Feliciano, the Libertarian candidate, had withdrawn and thrown his support behind Milne as Republican leaders had requested, Milne would most likely have been ahead of the two-term incumbent governor.
Since it’s unlikely that the remaining precincts have enough votes to overcome Milne’s deficit of more than 2,500 votes, Shumlin appears likely to be inaugurated for a third term in January.
But much diminished in power, image and reputation. Because this widely unexpected result was more personal than political. A two-term incumbent whose campaign spent $890,000 could barely beat an opponent who was barely competent (or perhaps not quite competent) as a politician and whose campaign spent $211,106.
If the tiny spread of less than 2 percentage points holds, it will be the smallest re-election margin of any incumbent Vermont governor in modern history.
And because his vote total will almost surely not top 50 percent, Shumlin will have to undergo the politically embarrassing spectacle of being officially crowned by a newly elected Legislature that features more Republicans than it has for many years.
The last time a sitting governor received less than 50 percent of the vote was in 1986 when Madeleine Kunin received 47 percent of the ballots cast in a three-way race with Peter Smith and Bernie Sanders. Under Vermont’s Constitution, if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, plus one ballot, the Legislature is obliged to choose who will be governor. The gubernatorial election has gone to the Legislature 23 times in Vermont’s history and will do so again in January.
There seemed little doubt that the Legislature would choose him. It has not put a second-place finisher into the governor’s office since before the Civil War. But getting re-elected this way was hardly what the proud governor envisioned.
Garrison Nelson, a professor of political science at the University of Vermont, said Shumlin’s poor showing “rules out any kind of fourth term unlike Dick Snelling or Jim Douglas.”
“It’s clearly going to be a sobering experience for Peter to face these kind of numbers and be thrust into the Legislature and have to be saved by the Democrats in the House,” Nelson said.
In the Hilton Hotel ballroom in Burlington where Democrats gathered to celebrate, they … well, they didn’t celebrate. They didn’t quite panic. But the crowd was sparse and the party faithful in attendance were stunned, even morose, as the reality sunk in over the course of the night that Milne was uncomfortably close. Early in the evening, Milne even ran ahead of Shumlin by a few hundred votes.
This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. This was supposed to be a blow-out. Hadn’t the one poll taken on the race showed Shumlin with a 12 point lead? Hadn’t all the “experts” (including the one typing this report) predicted an easy win for the governor?
“This is not our most upbeat moment,” said Senate Majority Leader Philip Baruth of Chittenden County.
Asked why the race was so unexpectedly close, as well as why Democrats seem to have lost at least eight seats in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate, Democratic Party communications director Ben Sarle had a one-word explanation: “turnout.”
And indeed the turnout was low, low even for a midterm election. Based on those vote totals above, it seems likely that fewer than 200,000 Vermonters bothered to vote yesterday, far fewer than the roughly 240,000 who voted in the last mid-term in 2010 when Shumlin was first elected. He beat then-Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie narrowly (by 4,331 votes). But not this narrowly. As of early Wednesday morning, Shumlin’s margin was a mere 2,663 votes.
Democratic officials acknowledged that the problem was not just turnout. It was also Shumlin.
“Some voters just don’t trust him,” said one, wondering whether most of the voters who stayed away from the polls were people who usually vote Democratic but simply did not want to vote for Shumlin.
Sen. Ginny Lyons of Chittenden County agreed that Shumlin’s reputation for trustworthiness had suffered, even though in her dealings with him, “when he gives you his word, you can take it to the bank.”
But Lyons acknowledged that Shumlin was “very political, which to some people can seem devious.”
Democrats listed the usual “suspects” to explain their problems: the disastrous performance of the health care technology, the children killed while under the aegis of the Department for Children and Families, the recent sharp rise in some property taxes. But these problems might have been less damaging politically if voters had more positive feelings for Shumlin personally.
Another Democrat said that many voters he spoke with during the fall campaign brought up “the Jeremy Dodge question.” Shumlin first bought Dodge’s neighboring house and land last year for a price well below the assessed value, then rescinded the sale under public pressure and allegations that he had taken advantage of a low-income, uneducated man.
How the disappointing – if still (apparently) victorious – outcome, will affect Shumlin’s next term is impossible to predict with any certainty. Perhaps he will have less clout with the Legislature, which in turn will be slightly less Democratic, though Speaker Shap Smith, while acknowledging his party’s losses were “no fun,” insisted he will retain a strong majority of some 85 of the 150 House members. One of the members who appears to have lost, Rep. Mike Fisher, was a key supporter of single-payer and served as head of the House Health Care Committee.
The most obvious speculation concerned whether a weakened Shumlin could or would continue to pursue his dream of creating a statewide universal health care financing system, and whether he could get it through the Legislature.
Nelson said people are “nervous about health care.”
“We’re all going to need health care at some point and anything that seems to jeopardize existing health care programs is going to create anxiety and that anxiety is going to manifest itself in the vote,” Nelson said.
“It really takes the momentum away from his single payer scheme, and I think that’s really going to be the policy consequence of this rather close election,” he continued. “He may still push for it because he’s a tough guy, but it’s going to be hard for the Legislature to go on along with him given the fact that there are more Republicans in the Legislature than before and the feeling is that he has lost his moment.”
Given the near upset, the governor’s chances of success with single payer seem lower.
On the other hand, it was a good night (and early morning) to avoid making firm predictions, always a hazardous business in politics.
“We knew it would be close,” Shumlin told an unconvinced crowd of supporters in the Hilton when he and his entourage finally repopulated the almost deserted ballroom at 11:20 p.m. He did not claim victory, though he said “the numbers … are looking good.”
The governor insisted that “we have a lot to be proud of in this state.”
“We’re heading in the right direction, but we’ve got a lot more work to do, so we will redouble our efforts,” Shumlin said. “We will work doubly hard to ensure that every Vermonter has a prosperous future.”
And there would be, he said, “better news tomorrow.”
He needed something to look forward to.