[R]epublican candidate for governor Bruce Lisman said Wednesday he has severed ties with the Jackson-Alvarez Group after a report by Vermont Public Radio found the firm’s owner, Gary Maloney, was conducting opposition research on Lt. Gov. Phil Scott.
“Frankly, I’m no longer using his services or his firm,” Lisman told VTDigger on Wednesday. “I’m all done.”
The Jackson-Alvarez Group filed two public records requests in Vermont – one seeking contract information at the Agency of Transportation and the other asking for dates and names of meetings held by Gov. Peter Shumlin, according to Peter Hirschfeld of VPR.
The records requests were presumably meant to detect whether DuBois Construction Inc. – a company of which Scott is vice president – was given an unfair advantage in state contracts.
Lisman told Hirshfeld that he had hired Maloney to perform a background check on Lisman himself. Lisman said Tuesday he was unaware that Maloney was part of the Jackson-Alvarez Group, a conservative political research firm, or that Maloney was conducting research on Scott.
Scott, who is flirting with a gubernatorial run in 2016, praised Lisman’s experience early Tuesday. But in Hirschfeld’s story on Lisman’s opposition research, Scott told VPR: “I would rather run on the merits of my candidacy rather than the deficiencies of others.”
Lisman announced his gubernatorial run in a news release Tuesday, pointing to his experience as an executive at Bear Stearns as qualification for running a government free of political posturing. In his announcement, Lisman placed importance on government accountability and ethics, among other issues.
“I’m running for the people of this state,” Lisman told VTDigger on Tuesday. “I don’t think much about politicians generally.”
Lisman also said Tuesday that rancor in politics was often misplaced, and said politics can “get in the way of doing things.”
But while he has never held political office, Lisman’s policy group Campaign for Vermont has been an outspoken voice on political topics in Vermont over the past few years. The organization is largely funded by Lisman. In 2013 the Campaign for Vermont spent nearly $400,000 on advocacy efforts in 2013, according to IRS tax forms. On Wednesday, Cyrus Patten told VTDigger that Lisman would be resigning from the board of the organization.
Eric Davis, a retired professor of political science from Middlebury College, said Tuesday that while Scott may now be better liked in the state than Lisman, the former Wall Street executive would likely put up a strong fight in the primary.
“Lisman is a wealthy man,” Davis said. “If he runs a high-budget primary campaign, that’s going to force Scott to spend more money next summer than he wants to.”
