Former Transportation Secretary Sue Minter won a decisive victory in the Democratic primary for governor Tuesday, easily defeating two former state senators.
With 265 of 275 of the precincts reporting, Minter had a 14 point lead over Matt Dunne, a former Google executive. Former Ambassador Peter Galbraith finished a distant third. Minter said both Dunne and Galbraith had called her to concede before she spoke to supporters a little after 9:40 p.m.
An exuberant Minter thanked more than 100 supporters at a rally in Burlington, making special note of former Gov. Madeleine Kunin, the state’s first female governor, elected 30 years ago.
“I’m pumped,” Minter told a supporter after her victory speech.
Kunin was among those who said Minter, 55, will face a difficult race against the popular Phil Scott, the lieutenant governor and winner of the Republican primary, but that the race is winnable.
“She’s energized and has a vision for Vermont. I’m really proud to help her in any way I can to win,” a euphoric Kunin said. “She’s up on the issues and is articulate, but it won’t be easy. He’s well-known and well-liked but she’s become well-known and well-liked, and I think her hands on experience with the Agency of Transportation gives her credibility.”
Minter expressed confidence about taking on Scott, saying she had more experience to be governor because of her tenure running the state’s second largest agency, with 1,300 employees and a budget of $600 million.
“I’m the person who has the experience actually delivering,” Minter said. “I don’t think anyone else has close to that kind of experience that Vermonters can count on.”
Supporters, including her husband, David Goodman, attributed Minter’s victory to her vision, her hard work on the campaign and a strong network of volunteers. Goodman said many Vermonters recognized Minter on the trail for her work after Tropical Storm Irene, when she served as the state’s chief recovery officer. Asked if she could beat Phil Scott, Goodman said: “I would never want to run against her.”
Minter’s win was decisive. Dunne barely beat Minter in Norwich, a key town in his backyard, by a margin of 481-423. Minter won every district in Burlington and the suburb communities, as well as defeating Dunne in Montpelier and Rutland.
The mood was festive at Minter’s event throughout the evening with big cheers from the crowd — which included her mother, Evelyn, brothers, and several members of the Shumlin administration — when new election results were flashed on a screen and Minter’s lead widened. Among those attending were Shumlin Chief of Staff Darren Springer, Sue Allen, a special assistant to the governor, Tax Commissioner Mary Peterson and later, Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Deb Markowitz, who ran and lost in 2010 to Gov. Peter Shumlin, who opted to not seek re-election this year.
In her speech, Minter likened the campaign against Dunne and Galbraith to the “tussles” she had with her three brothers growing up, who also tested her, but in the end, she said, the Democrats are “one family.”
Afterward, speaking with reporters, Minter attributed her win to hard work and having the right position on key issues, including revitalizing downtowns and equal pay for women. She deflected whether Dunne’s last week of the campaign, where he was criticized for changing his position on wind tower siting and breaking a campaign promise to not loan his campaign personal funds, had played a large role in her win, nor would she comment on whether she was surprised by the margin of her victory.
“Typical Matt Dunne” was the comment of one Minter supporter about the Hartland candidate’s final week on the trail. Dunne also lost in the 2010 Democratic Party primary for governor and lost the 2006 race for lieutenant governor to Brian Dubie.
Minter’s 16-year-old son, Jasper, attributed the win to a “good ground game” of canvassers and phone callers but said it was mostly his mother’s hard work that paid off.
“The days and the hours she put into this were unbelievable,” Jasper Goodman said. “I would have collapsed if I were her.”
He admitted: “There were a lot of nights my dad and I ate by ourselves.”
Former Department of Environmental Commissioner David Mears, now at the Vermont Law School, said Minter worked every corner of the state in living room gatherings and meet and greets with voters.
“I have to think that made a difference,” said Mears, an early supporter.
The campaign said staff made calls to 100,000 Vermonters in the past several weeks. Minter and volunteers knocked on 5,000 doors.
Volunteer and friend Lisa Scagliotti said she picked up a shift a few weeks ago when she was making calls. Some mentioned they respected Minter for taking on gun control as a top issue.
“In the beginning, the biggest challenge was people getting to know her,” Scagliotti said. “The last few weeks, there was a tipping point where she’d met enough people and connected with enough people.”
Dunne supporters posted up at Arts Riot in Burlington’s South End.
Dunne showed up at the campaign party at around 8:30 p.m., by which time preliminary results were already showing him lagging behind Minter. As the night wore on, Dunne mingled with supporters while a projector showed the latest tallies behind a stage festooned with Dunne paraphernalia.
Minutes after the AP called the race for Minter, one Dunne supporter said simply, “the movement continues.”
Dunne addressed a room full of supporters shortly before 10 p.m. He said that he had just gotten off the phone with Minter congratulating her.
Several supporters, some sporting campaign t-shirts, watched the candidate’s final speech with their arms wrapped around their fellow campaigners.
After thanking a slew of people, including his family and his campaign manager, he turned to the campaign “fellows.”
“What’s powerful is not whether or not you succeed in that particular moment, but whether or not you leave a legacy of people who believe in a cause, who have felt like they are more powerful than when they started, that they can make a difference in the world in their own way,” Dunne said.
Cal Hale, 16, of Hartland, mingled with other supporters as the party died down. A volunteer on the campaign, Hale got involved with the campaign because he believed he was the best candidate. Just yesterday, talking to undecided voters, he thinks he helped sway a few voters to support Dunne.
“I can’t vote, but I can volunteer my time,” Hale said.
Dunne told there’s no point in “second guessing” decisions the campaign made. Asked about the reactions to Dunne’s policy proposal on wind power siting, he said that it was “an interesting piece to have in the last 10 days.” He said he heard from people who were unhappy with his position and others who appreciated it.
“I was a little surprised about the reaction, although I think it’s healthy for Vermont to realize how much of a reaction there was and from various camps because it’s about the future of our state,” Dunne said.
Dunne said he will “work hard to ensure that Sue is the next governor of the state of Vermont.”
“These are very odd political times and we all need to come together,” Dunne said.
As an election-night gathering wound down at his West Townshend home, Galbraith, 65, said he believed his campaign had an impact in spite of the vote totals. Several times he declined to endorse Minter in the general election.
“It goes without saying that the election did not turn out as I had hoped,” Galbraith said. “(But) I think the campaign accomplished quite a bit. It absolutely shifted the Democratic primary in a far more progressive way. Before I entered the race, it was essentially a race without issues.”
For instance, he said, neither Dunne nor Minter “were taking about economic justice issues like raising the minimum wage” prior to his entry into the race.
He added that “I reignited the discussion of universal, publicly financed health care after Shumlin abandoned it.”
Large-scale wind turbines — and Galbraith’s adamant opposition to them — were a common theme during his campaign and among those who joined him to watch election results Tuesday.
“I made the issue of protecting Vermont’s ridge lines an important state issue, and I’m very proud of doing that,” Galbraith said. “Campaigns are also about public education. I’ve helped make Vermonters more aware of the ecological damage that large-scale wind industrial wind projects do.”
Galbraith cited the turbine issue as a reason he couldn’t commit to backing Minter’s campaign.
“I’d like to. I think she’s a person of character … but I am appalled by the entry at the very last minute, very cynically, of this Super PAC partly funded by the wind industry,” Galbraith said. “She had the opportunity to denounce it, and she didn’t.”
“I’d like to have a candidate … who’s going to say, ‘I’m not going to accept Super PAC money – that this is not the way I want to campaign,'” Galbraith said.
Minter addressed the issue of outside money coming into her campaign and others and said she hoped Citizens United, a court decision that has allowed large amounts of money to be put into political campaigns, would be overturned.
“I think outside money gets us further and further away from what our democracy is supposed to be about,” Minter said.
Reflecting on his own campaign, Galbraith said it’s well-known he has “substantial personal resources,” but “I was not prepared to try to run that kind of campaign. I wanted it to be a campaign on the issues. I just don’t think elections should be bought.”
“To be honest, I hated the fundraising,” Galbraith added. “I don’t think democracy is well-served by 18-month campaigns for 24-month jobs. I don’t think democracy is well-served by candidates being telemarketers.”
He also thought he may not have had enough time to connect fully with voters statewide. “Probably the biggest handicap was starting in March rather than last summer,” Galbraith said. “In the end, I just wasn’t as well known.”
