Vermont Progressives say they will likely back their own candidate for governor in 2016.
For the past three election cycles, the party has given Gov. Peter Shumlin tacit support. But the governor’s decision last week to scrap a single payer health care system in Vermont has raised the ire of Progressives. They say they are prepared to challenge the governor with their own candidate in the next election cycle, according to Morgan Daybell, the vice chair of the party.
“We had been giving Shumlin a pass because of his support for single payer, obviously that’s not going to be part of our calculation this time,” Daybell said in an interview.
The Progressives say the governor’s decision puts business interests ahead of working families. In a statement, party officials say Shumlin broke five years of campaign promises and is now sidestepping the political challenge of shepherding a single payer program through the Legislature. They characterize the decision as a betrayal of Vermonters’ hopes of a “just and accessible health care system.”
Shumlin who has characterized himself as the politician who gets “tough things done” has taken a great deal of criticism from his left flank over the past week. The Vermont Workers’ Center, for example, held a rally last Thursday in which demonstrators carried an effigy of the governor through Montpelier shouting “Down with Shumlin, up with the people.”
The year 2016 is a long way off. But there is no question that a challenge from the left could make Shumlin’s chances of beating a Republican candidate much slimmer. The governor kept his seat by fewer than 2,400 votes in the 2014 race against Republican Scott Milne, a newbie to politics.
Daybell in a statement says the governor was afraid of standing up for “what’s right.” Progressives, on the other hand, are “leaders who aren’t afraid of having these tough conversations.”
“Vermonters deserved better from Governor Shumlin,” Daybell said. “We aim to give it to them. It is clear that now, more than ever, Vermont needs a third party with a strong spine that will stand up where current political leaders have fallen down.”
The Progressives have not run a strong candidate for the state’s top race since 2008. That’s in large part because in 2010, Shumlin promised the Progressives that as governor he would push their three top platform issues: closing Vermont Yankee, implementing a single payer system and making budget choices that support working class Vermonters.
Daybell says the governor has failed on all three counts. The Vermont Yankee is closing next week, but he attributes that to economic factors — not the governor’s stance on the issue. Progressives are fed up, he said, with Shumlin’s reluctance to raise money from affluent Vermonters to help cover budget gaps. Instead, the governor has cut programs that help low-income people, Daybell says.
Shumlin’s decision to pull the plug on single payer is the final blow for many in the party, according to Rep. Chris Pearson, P-Burlington, the leader of the Progressive caucus in the Vermont House of Representatives.
“A lot of Progressives are quite frustrated and do feel burned given our sort of overt support,” Pearson said. “Our staying out of the way for the governor, there was a reason for that, and for him to turn his back on single payer it’s a problem.”
Pearson and Daybell say Progressives will continue to push for reforms that provide universal coverage for Vermonters this legislative session. There is “a lot of room to do substantial work,” Pearson says. The governor’s failure to move the issue forward he says gives the Legislature a “blank slate” to work from and the case for health care reform is “as strong as ever.”
“The way we pay for health care is so convoluted and illogical, shifting to a fair system (all at once) may be too much to swallow,” Pearson said. “That’s what he (the governor) concluded and what a number of us have been saying.”
But Pearson says he is struggling to understand why the governor made the decision when he did and the way in which he did. Shumlin originally said he would make an announcement on Dec. 29, and in the interim Pearson said he could have developed a stronger case for ramping up cost containment strategies and then looked to shift from an insurance premium based system to a publicly financed plan in a few years. He also questions the governor’s decision to use a 94 percent actuarial value for the benefits package, which is on par with insurance plans available to state workers, and likely pushed the cost of the program up by $300 million or more. Lawmakers specified an 87 percent actuarial value for benefits under Act 48.
“Usually when he makes a decision, it may not have been my decision, but I can understand why he did it,” Pearson said. “I’m really struggling with this. I’m not seeing how it helps him personally or helps the health care issue or his legacy or any of that.”
Whether the governor’s abandonment of single payer will give the Progressives a political edge is an open question. While Progressives gained a few reps in the House and kept Senate seats it’s not clear they have broad public support to win the Fifth Floor.
In 2008, Anthony Pollina, now a state senator, ran as a Progressive and beat out Democrat Gaye Symington. The incumbent, Republican Gov. Jim Douglas, trumped both Pollina and Symington that year.
Since that time, Progressives have sought the support of Democrats and have used a hybrid P/D label to gain more traction. That strategy has worked for Statehouse seats, but was less successful for the one statewide candidate who ran this year. Dean Corren, the Progressive candidate for lieutenant governor, lost by a wide margin to Republican Phil Scott in November, despite nominal support from the Vermont Democratic Party.
