Former Govs. Howard Dean and Madeleine Kunin led a get-out-the-vote rally for gubernatorial candidate Sue Minter on the Burlington waterfront Monday, the day before voters go the polls to choose the candidates for the November ballot.
Dean said he rarely endorses in Democratic Party primaries but said Minter was clearly the strongest of the three Democrats and two Republicans running. He called Minter “progressive and pragmatic” and said she had shown guts taking on gun control as an issue.
In a shot at Republican candidate Phil Scott, Dean questioned Scott’s call to limit state spending. Scott says the state has an “affordability crisis” and has pledged to limit growth in the state budget to the same rate as the economy expands.
“I don’t want to go backwards to make the state affordable,” Dean said.
Kunin said women running for office are different from men because they have “a certain passion” from experiences that include finding day care for children more often than their husbands do, getting paid less than men for equal work and having to go back to work within weeks after delivering a child.
“I may be the first, but I’m not the last,” Kunin said of her distinction as the state’s first and so far only female governor, elected to three terms beginning in 1984.
Author Chris Bohjalian spoke of Minter’s “courage, authenticity, integrity and vision” and said he trusts her “moral compass” and respects “her moral authority.”
Meanwhile, Republican candidate Bruce Lisman highlighted at a rally his campaign themes of holding growth in state budgets to 2 percent, dropping the state health care exchange and joining the federal one, and auditing Medicaid.
At his campaign headquarters in Williston, Lisman rejected calls by Vermont Republican Party Chair David Sunderland to retract his claim that Scott’s campaign was behind phone calls giving voters the wrong date for the primary. Lisman said he had provided evidence and voters who had heard the calls. “It’s not a court of law we’re in,” he said.
In a statement Sunday, Sunderland said that “without solid evidence, these accusations have no place in a political campaign.” Scott’s campaign has denied any effort to misinform voters.
“I think it’s a close race,” Lisman told the crowd, but he said if he lost the primary, he would support Scott in the general election.
Minter said her campaign was “feeling a buzz” and has the momentum in her race against fellow Democrats Matt Dunne and Peter Galbraith.
