(Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.)
[V]ermont Republicans are feeling pretty good this week.
Both of them?
No, of course not. Old joke, and a bit unfair. As it turns out, 46,383 Vermonters were Republicans on Tuesday, some 60 percent of them voting to make Lt. Gov. Phil Scott the party’s nominee for governor in November.
That’s what Republicans are feeling good about, and their confidence may be justified. Conventional political wisdom — which, remember, is more often than not correct (that’s how it gets to be conventional) — makes Scott the favorite over Sue Minter, who won the Democratic primary.
And that’s a lot of people, 46,000 and change. More than can fit into Fenway Park.
But it’s not nearly as many as the 72,995 who voted in the Democratic primary (all figures are unofficial until next week). More significantly, it’s a lot fewer than the 80,571 who voted in the last contested Republican gubernatorial primary back in 2000, when Ruth Dwyer defeated William Meub, only to lose to Democratic incumbent Howard Dean.
That’s a big drop, a decline of some 44 percent, quite possibly a sign of a party in decline.
Yes, it’s harder to get a good turnout on Aug. 9 than on Sept. 12, when the 2000 primaries were held. But the Democratic turnout this year was almost the same as in 2010, the last time that party had a contest for governor, also in September. That Republican fall-off can’t be attributed to the date.
“The party has been running on fumes for years,” said Garrison Nelson, the University of Vermont political science professor who has been observing Vermont elections for decades.
Nelson pointed out that “the last time a Republican represented Vermont in Congress” was 2001, before the late Sen. James Jeffords “flipped” (as Nelson put it) from the GOP. That’s a long time for a party to have no voice whatever in Washington. It isn’t unprecedented; the last Democrat in Congress from Wyoming, Teno Roncalio, left office in 1978. But no state party envies the status of Wyoming’s Democrats, who hold nine of 60 members of the state House of Representatives and four of 30 in the Senate.
The Vermont Republican drought in D.C. does not seem likely to end this year. U.S. Rep. Peter Welch doesn’t even have a Republican opponent. Sen. Patrick Leahy does — Scott Milne, who lost to Gov. Peter Shumlin in 2014. Milne lost narrowly, largely because of a personal — almost visceral — distaste many voters had for Shumlin. Leahy does not arouse similar passions, and with Hillary Clinton likely to carry Vermont easily, Leahy seems headed for an eighth term in the Senate.
Nor, outside of the governor’s race, do the GOP’s prospects for statewide office appear very bright. As in 2014, Treasurer Beth Pearce and Secretary of State Jim Condos will face no Republican opponent. Unlike 2014, Auditor Doug Hoffer will. Dan Feliciano, the Libertarian Party candidate for governor in 2014, is running for auditor. But Hoffer, who also has the backing of the Progressive Party, starts off as the heavy favorite.
So does Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovan, the Democratic candidate for attorney general. The Republican is Deborah Bucknam, a St. Johnsbury lawyer.
The lieutenant governor’s race could prove more interesting. Republican Randy Brock, who lost to Shumlin in the 2012 governor’s race, is a credible candidate. And it would be understating the case to say that some Democrats are not at all happy that Chittenden County Sen. David Zuckerman defeated House Speaker Shap Smith for their party’s nomination.
Zuckerman is a Progressive Party leader who has often been critical of Democrats. Some Democratic Party officeholders and activists, as soon as they are assured they will not be quoted, bluntly say they neither like him nor trust him and don’t intend to vote for him.
But they are not likely to oppose him in public, and the average voter probably cares rather little what Democratic (or Republican) leaders and activists think. Zuckerman probably will be on both the Democratic and Progressive lines on the November ballot (write-ins seem to have given him the Progressive nomination ahead of perennial candidate Boots Wardinski, the only candidate on Tuesday’s ballot). Zuckerman has the support of Sen. Bernie Sanders, by all observable evidence Vermont’s most popular politician. He is known and apparently liked (he keeps winning elections) in Chittenden County. It will not be easy for Brock to beat him.
If Scott wins by a large margin, Republicans could also pick up a few seats in the Legislature. But they are now so badly outnumbered — 53 of 150 House seats, nine of 30 in the Senate — that they have almost no chance of taking control of either house.
So the Scott candidacy looms as the one GOP bright spot. If he wins, Republicans could use his governorship to rebuild their strength. The governor appoints scores of officials. An incumbent governor can raise lots of money. With Scott as governor, Vermont Republicans could build an effective fundraising, organizing, and get-out-the-vote operation.
If they do, they could start winning some more local elections and legislative seats, preparing the way to becoming a truly competitive party.
But the challenges confronting the GOP remain formidable. There is no party registration in Vermont, so no exact count of party loyalty. Eric Davis, the emeritus professor of political science at Middlebury College, estimates that about 25 percent of the state’s roughly 450,000 registered voters consider themselves Republicans and 35 percent are Democrats.
That might understate the Democratic advantage. The results of recent elections indicate that what the computer nerds would call the default position of most of those 40 percent who are independents is to vote Democratic unless given some reason to do otherwise.
Scott, who is down-to-earth, affable and moderate, might provide that reason. But his victory is by no means certain. Sue Minter is an energetic and appealing candidate. She has the challenge of separating herself from the Shumlin administration, which she served as transportation secretary. But that can be done, and she and her advisers quite possibly know how to do it, though no doubt Scott and the Republicans will make it as hard for them as possible.
As Davis pointed out, perhaps 300,000 voters will come to the polls in November, roughly 100,000 more than voted in the primaries. “There are a lot of people who will vote in November that didn’t vote (Tuesday), and these people will be the ones to decide the governor’s race,” he said. “I don’t think you can infer anything about the general from the primary election.”
Democrats hope Clinton might have coattails that will help Minter. Both Davis and Nelson doubted that. Especially when it comes to voting for governor, Nelson said, Vermonters tend to be ticket-splitters. Otherwise, Democrats Tom Salmon and Madeleine Kunin would not have been elected despite Richard Nixon’s landslide in 1972 and Ronald Reagan’s in 1984, and Republican Jim Douglas would not have withstood Barack Obama’s big Vermont win in 2008.
But — as has been said so often of late — this year might be different. A voter can’t split a ticket without going to the polls, and many Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, repelled by Donald Trump’s candidacy, could decide to stay home.
And the Vermont Republican dilemma transcends any one election. A state party can only stray so far from its nationwide base, and on most issues a substantial majority of Vermont voters reject the national Republican political outlook. A Phil Scott victory would make Republicans in his state feel better. It will take more than that to make the state GOP a potent political force. Vermont Republicans are a long way from the time when their primary voters can fill the Rose Bowl.