[D]espite a number of political setbacks, a recently released poll has ranked departing Gov. Peter Shumlin as one of the nation’s most popular governors, raising the question of how heavily the Democratic Party candidates seeking to replace him will use him on the trail or run on his record.
Like the sprouting of red clover after a hard winter, the glowing numbers were a bit of good news for the governor after several dark months.
The results were released by Morning Consult, a national polling agency that gave Shumlin a 55 percent approval rating after collecting data online between January and May. Shumlin jumped nearly 10 points from the last time Morning Consult polled Vermonters, in November, when 46 percent of respondents gave him a thumbs up. A local pollster questioned the validity of the results.
The Vermont Democratic Party quickly pushed out the poll to the press, asserting it was a strong sign that voters are eager for another Democrat in office.
“What the poll showed is that voters are supportive of Democratic values,” said party spokeswoman Christina Amestoy. “In this election we will be able to promote the progress that was made under Gov. Shumlin’s leadership.”
While the governor has achieved a number of goals in his nearly six years in office, lawmakers and observers said he failed to score many victories in the most recent two-year legislative session.
He has also recently been put on the defensive to explain his administration’s relationship with two Northeast Kingdom developers and what efforts his administration made to stop the “Ponzi-like” scheme the developers are accused of perpetrating through projects funded with the federal EB-5 visa program. Shumlin was a major supporter of the projects and traveled overseas to help seek investors.
A number of the legislative priorities the governor lobbied hard for in the most recent session — including marijuana legalization and state divestment of fossil fuel investments — failed.
The Vermont Health Connect online exchange continues to face chronic problems, and the state is grappling with the presence of the suspected carcinogen PFOA in drinking water in southern Vermont.
The polling suggests Shumlin could serve as a strong surrogate and supporter of the eventual Democratic gubernatorial nominee.
All the Democrats in the race — Sue Minter, Matt Dunne and Peter Galbraith — expressed a willingness to have Shumlin campaign for them should they emerge as the general election candidate.
Campaign aides for Minter and Dunne said their candidates have talked with Shumlin periodically throughout the campaign regarding policy and politics, while Galbraith said he hadn’t spoken to the governor since 2014.
“I would welcome support and advice from Gov. Shumlin,” said Galbraith, although he’s been the Democratic candidate most vocal in criticizing Shumlin. “He has been at the helm of our state for nearly six years and has been thrice elected. Obviously, I have policy differences with the governor on some major issues, but we also have positions in common.”
While perhaps a sign of shifting public sentiment, there are reasons to question whether the Morning Consult poll represents how the state feels about Shumlin, or whether it’s wise to feature him in the race.
The sample size in the poll was only 220 people, and the margin of error was 6.6 percent, meaning his actual approval could be anywhere between 48.4 and 61.6 percent. It is also difficult in online polls to receive nuanced answers or engage a representative sample of Vermonters.
“It’d be pretty amazing to imagine that in the 220 people polled they have more than one or two people from the Northeast Kingdom,” said Rich Clark, who directs the Castleton Polling Institute. “If you hit the one liberal in the Northeast Kingdom, you’ve got that whole region wrong.”
A Vermont Public Radio poll conducted by Castleton earlier this year had a sample size of 895, with a margin of error of 3.27 percent. That survey had less rosy results for Shumlin, with just 37 percent of respondents approving of his tenure. When Democrats were isolated, Shumlin’s approval did increase, to 52 percent.
The VPR poll had other troubling news for Democrats hoping to replace Shumlin. In a sign of economic anxiety, just 33 percent of respondents thought their financial situation would improve over the next year.
So far this campaign, Republican gubernatorial candidates Bruce Lisman and Phil Scott have seemed driven by the assumption that state government is unpopular, consistently criticizing Shumlin on a number of issues, including the state’s cost of living, its growing health care costs and the size of the budget.
On the Democratic side, the rhetoric has differed little.
The three Democratic candidates have been more willing to slam Shumlin than defend the past six years of Democratic rule in the state.
“Every election is about the guy who is already in office,” said Castleton’s Clark. “Shumlin is not the guy on the ballot, but 2016 is all about Shumlin, whether he participates or not.”
All of the Democratic candidates have bemoaned Shumlin’s flawed rollout of the Vermont Health Connect website as well as the stalled efforts to bring high-speed broadband Internet to the entire state. They acknowledge the governor backpedaled on single-payer health care, and they have all called for the establishment of a state ethics commission, citing mistrust in today’s political system.
Galbraith, who entered the race in late March, has perhaps been harshest in his critique, hitting Shumlin on additional issues, like his support of industrial wind projects.
Minter, who served as transportation secretary under Shumlin, has been the most restrained, often highlighting the state’s effective recovery work after Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
But Minter seems determined to distance herself from the administration she once served.
“The governor and I are very different people,” Minter said after her campaign kickoff last fall. “I think we will have a very different leadership style. Certainly we didn’t agree on everything.”
Shumlin said this week that he hoped the campaign would shift away from casting blame on state government, and he called attacks on his record an example of “revisionist history.”
“I probably talk to more Vermonters than just about anyone in this state. I run around the state in circles all day long,” Shumlin said. “They don’t say, ‘I don’t trust Vermont’s government.’ They say, ‘I’m glad we are making progress on big issues.’”
“They don’t say, ‘I think there should be an ethics commission,’” he continued. “That might be on their low-down list. They are thinking about jobs, affordability, affordable health care, a good education for their kids, the environment, quality of life, and clean water and clean lakes. There’s all kinds of things that drive them. But a big bureaucratic ethics commission is not probably at the top of the list for them.”
Eric Davis, a retired professor of political science at Middlebury College, said it may be a politically risky move to associate with Shumlin during the general election.
“I’m not sure how much any of these candidates will want to be seen doing events with Shumlin,” he said. “Maybe the best thing Shumlin can do is not to appear at public events or hold press conferences, but instead talk at county party committee events and urge the people at those events that it’s important they turn out and vote Democratic.”
The 52 percent approval Shumlin retained among Democrats in the VPR poll suggests the governor may be effective at rallying the base in 2016.
Among independents, Shumlin faces sharper disapproval, and his negatives are highest in central and northern parts of the state, according to the VPR poll.
Shumlin remains eager to plug results such as expanding renewable energy and guaranteeing paid sick leave.
“We have delivered on an incredibly energetic and ambitious agenda,” he said. “And have we gotten it all done? No. Have we gotten done more than most governors in America? I would argue that we have.”
According to Morning Consult, Shumlin is right.
