[H]ow many times have we seen this scene play out? A politician stands at a podium and declares they are not running for office or are dropping out of a race to “spend more time with my family.” And it just so happens, their poll numbers are in the single digits or a scandal is about to break or maybe just did. Irrelevant, they say, it’s all about the kids, it’s all about the family.
Cue the eyeroll.
But in some cases, the need to spend time with family is the genuine reason, as it was this week when Speaker Shap Smith dropped out of the race for governor, giving up a goal he’s had since early in his tenure as the leader of the Vermont House of Representatives.
Smith said he needed to be there for his two children and his wife, Dr. Melissa Volansky, while she undergoes further treatment for breast cancer.
“This is a time when Melissa and the kids need me most. Throughout this political partnership and throughout my career, Melissa has been my partner. We are partners in everything we do and I intend to be by her side as she gets better,’’ Smith said in a slow, measured tone announcing his withdrawal from the race.
“Our experience is one that many Vermonters share and I think that we’re dealing with what a lot of Vermonters have to deal with and balancing priorities that are important. At the end of the day, my wife and kids are what’s important to me,” he said. The couple has two children, Eli, 13, and Mia, 10.
To Elizabeth Miller, Smith’s decision was completely in character with the friend she’s known for more than 15 years. Smith is a partner at Dinse Knapp McAndrew, a Burlington law firm where Miller also once worked.
“It was heartbreaking,” said Miller, also former chief of staff to Gov. Peter Shumlin (who is not seeking re-election). “He just has so much concern for his children and his wife. It’s what you’d expect from anybody, I guess, but he did not – and knowing him would not – think of it in political terms. It was all about his time, his family’s time and realistically what his family could bear and what he could bear.”
When the couple got the diagnosis in September, a month after Smith entered the race, they had hoped surgery would be the only treatment required. When the news first came in, the campaign essentially stopped, with questions being raised, including not only would Smith stay in, but whether he should continue raising money? Smith and aides quietly told inquiring reporters of his wife’s condition but said he planned to stay in the race. After the surgery at the beginning of November, they received the news any cancer patient and their family dread: that more aggressive treatment was required. Smith’s wife, a Stowe family physician, continued to encourage him to run, but Smith, known for being a well-organized and analytical thinker, was clear on his decision.
“It was obvious to him he couldn’t do everything,” said Miller.
One politician who can relate is Congressman Peter Welch, who stepped away from politics for more than a decade – after losing the governor’s race in 1990 – in large part to care for his wife, Joan Smith, a University of Vermont dean who had a rare form of cancer and underwent 15 surgeries. She died in 2004, a few years after Welch re-entered politics. Friends of the couple have said Welch was a devoted caregiver.
“You know, I have so much respect for Shap and Melissa,” Welch said. “Life has its challenges and when those challenges come, it’s according to its timing and its schedule and not your timing and your schedule. This couldn’t have been at a more inconvenient time. Melissa is a much-loved community physician. Shap is a respected lawyer, speaker of the House and a very strong gubernatorial candidate, but you know, they decided they couldn’t control the timing, but could control the response and they put their family first.”
Welch echoed Smith’s comments that many Vermonters have had to overcome challenges and that sometimes dreams are interrupted.
“We all have our goals. We have our ambitions and we want to work hard and we want to do well,” Welch said this week, “but you know what, there are bumps along the way, and the test a lot of us face, every Vermonter faces, is when those things happen, how are you going to respond. And it requires an ability to step back and have an assessment of what matters, what do I have to do to keep the things that are really enduring?”
“It’s a disappointment,” Welch said. “You’re on the cusp, you’re running for governor, you have this chance, it’s right there within your grasp, but you have to make an assessment.”
For Smith, a low-key man who often chooses his words with lawyerly care, who has sharp political skills but is not an outgoing extrovert nor as charismatic as the governor he wanted to replace, yet is always animated when talking about his wife and children, the decision was cut and dried – it came down to family first.
“This is a time when Melissa and the kids need me most,” he said. At his August campaign kickoff, Melissa said she’d been swept off her feet by “his wit and his candor and his charm” when they met in 1997. They’ve been married 15 years.
A few hours after his announcement on the capitol steps, Smith shared this reflection.
“We are settling in with all the news. We are blessed in many ways. This wasn’t one of them. Thankfully, after treatment, we will continue on, much wiser for it,” he wrote in an email.
At the end of the week, Smith said he was certain he’d made the right decision and was still trying to take it all in, including an outpouring of support.
“I’m still processing all of this and know that I do view things differently but can’t articulate how yet,” he said Friday.
Smith will turn 50 next year. Melissa is 48. Her months-long treatment will begin after they return from a family vacation. Smith remains hopeful his wife will get better and that the saga that started when he got a worried phone call from Melissa while campaigning in Vergennes in September, followed by a confirmed diagnosis, will be over.
He told reporters that even if the treatments go well, it was unlikely he would re-enter the race.
The impact on the gubernatorial race
Meanwhile, the race for governor continues. Theories about the impact on the Democratic primary of Smith dropping out run from the more simplistic, that former state Sen. Matt Dunne will gain being the only male currently running, to the more nuanced, that former Transportation Secretary Sue Minter might benefit from her four terms as a House representative and pick up some of the legislative support Smith had wrapped up.
Clearly, both will stand a better chance having the candidate with the highest name recognition among the Democrats, who never lost a vote in his history as speaker, out of the race, giving them more of the spotlight.
Will another candidate emerge? Former state Sen. Peter Galbraith has said he wants to run, but anyone else considering a bid has to show why Dunne or Minter isn’t an acceptable alternative.
“You can’t make that argument,” said political analyst Eric Davis. “They’re both credible candidates.”
The timing was different then when Barbara Snelling suffered a near fatal stroke while running for governor in 1996 against Gov. Howard Dean. Her medical emergency happened in April, seven months before the election, and the state Republican Party scrambled, with the nominee John Gropper receiving 22.5 percent in the general election. Davis says this time another candidate could easily enter in January and have time before the Democratic primary in August.
Three news organizations called Welch’s office after Smith’s withdrawal on Tuesday asking if he was rethinking his decision earlier this year to run for re-election to Congress instead of coming back to Vermont and running for governor in 2016. Welch hasn’t changed his mind.
Davis said Smith could have definitely won the Democratic primary, but the former Middlebury College professor wasn’t convinced Smith would have been the strongest candidate for the party to field, presumably against Lt. Gov. Phil Scott. (Davis says the other Republican, former Wall Street executive Bruce Lisman, is a “better and stronger” candidate than he had initially believed, but still sees Scott as the prohibitive favorite.)
Smith, a key power broker in passing legislation along with the governor and the Senate president pro tem, might have had baggage if he’d made it as the Democratic nominee, according to Davis.
“In the minds of the much larger electorate in the general election, there are many voters who wouldn’t be able to make much of a distinction between Shap representing the Legislature and Shumlin. And we know how unpopular Shumlin is right now. Any candidate that’s seen as close to Shumlin goes into the fall campaign with a big liability,” Davis said.
Neither Dunne or Minter, he said, have that liability, even though Minter worked in the administration, but Davis said she was not associated with failures like the health care website or controversies like the siting of wind projects.
Davis and others said it’s too early to tell who will benefit from Smith’s withdrawal.
“I think it’s going to take a while to sort itself out,” he said.
Dunne, he said, will have to prove he’s learned from his two previous statewide losses, in the 2006 lieutenant governor’s race and in the 2010 governor’s race, where he came in fourth in a five-way primary. He has higher name recognition than Minter and has proven he can raise money, Davis said.
The analyst’s take on Minter is that it’s rare for a politician to win their first statewide bid (Sen. Pat Leahy and Howard Dean, running for lieutenant governor, were exceptions) but he noted her impressive resume, and he believes she’ll gain by being a female candidate.
“I think there will be people who look and say it’s been 30 years since a woman has been governor of Vermont and I think she’ll benefit from that,” Davis said. Gov. Madeleine Kunin served three terms from 1985 to 1991 and encouraged Minter to run.
Davis believes Phil Scott will likely be the Republican nominee and that unlike past years, the Republican National Committee will pour money into this race because the seat is winnable. Davis says the GOP would love to take back a seat held by Shumlin, who recently served as the head of the Democratic Governor’s Association. The fact that there are also fewer gubernatorial races this year for the RGA to invest in, 12 nationally, also gives the Republicans an advantage.
“They want this race badly,” Davis said.
Whether this is the end of Smith’s political career or just an interruption remains to be seen. He said he will not run for his current House seat next year, but Davis and other observers said he is still young and with his political experience would be considered for any political openings that come up in the future, whether for governor or a post in Washington.
For now, the focus is on the family.
“I just feel like this is the right thing to do,” Smith said. “It’s what I would hope she would do for me if I was in that position, and it’s what I’m going to do for her.”
