Patrick Winburn, a personal injury lawyer from Bennington, launched his campaign for governor last week with a $100,000 infusion of his own cash.
Winburn, a Democrat, said Monday he’s already spent some $75,000 on television ads (about $60,000), social media ads (about $10,000) as well as flyers and yard signs (about $5,000).
In one of those ads, he promised to reshuffle the proverbial deck of cards to deal people a new hand in 2020; in another he explains that his dog, Alphie, features in his ad campaigns because Alphie is better looking than his owner.
Winburn, 64, said he thinks former education secretary Rebecca Holcombe and Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, the other candidates for the Democratic nomination, are perfectly good candidates, but that he brings a fresh perspective to the major issues facing Vermont due to his three decades as a trial lawyer, often representing Vermonters against insurance companies.
“I think they’re very nice people, I’ve met both of them, I don’t know them,” he said. “I think I bring a different set of skills.”
The attorney named the opioid crisis and climate change as two of Vermont’s most pressing challenges. He said he’s not a “one-man solutions making machine,” but would engage the Legislature in a “deliberative process” and then take action.
“We’ve talked and talked and talked, and we’ve talked enough,” he said. “I wanna get things done.”
Winburn said Gov. Phil Scott has been standing in the way of good ideas coming out of the Legislature — paid family leave and a $15 minimum wage among them — and that one of his selling points is his support for those proposals.
“Gov. Scott is like a water bottle, all these good ideas, it’s all bottled up inside a water bottle and waiting for somebody to do things,” he said, “to pull the water bottle stopper and just let the ideas flow.”
Winburn said that on the issue of opioid addiction, which he believes is the biggest problem facing Vermont, universal health care coverage — including mental health treatment — was an important part of helping Vermonters recover. He said the financing for expanded health coverage could come from a range of sources: a slight increase to the sales tax, higher taxes on the rich, and perhaps some of the marijuana sales tax revenue.
Winburn’s TV ads are light on policy, but his website lists government transparency as another priority, along with paid family leave, climate change and the opioid crisis.
He criticized Scott for vetoing the Legislature’s latest minimum wage proposal, which will raise the minimum wage to $12.55 over two years (the veto was overridden in the Legislature), and said he would work for no more than $15 an hour if elected governor.
Winburn said that the self-financed jump-start to his own campaign was necessary to make up the head start that Holcombe and Zuckerman have in name recognition.
“If I don’t put my money where my mouth is and make some effort on advertising and doing the things I’m doing now — going around shaking hands — I will be at a disadvantage,” he said.
The campaign of Rebecca Holcombe, a former education secretary running for the Democratic nomination, has raised more than $300,000 since July.
Campaign finance filings are due for statewide races by the end of this week, and will give a full picture of where Holcombe’s money is coming from, and whether Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman is catching up after launching his gubernatorial bid in January.
Gov. Phil Scott, who remains the presumptive Republican nominee, but says he won’t officially announce his plans until May, has $106,053 left over from his last campaign.
Winburn, who announced his candidacy on March 4, said he spent Friday campaigning in Danby, East Dorset, Pittsford, Middlebury, and Shelburne, along with his dog and his daughter, Sunrise, who is volunteering as his campaign manager. He said he planned to spend the weekend in the Burlington area, meeting voters and shooting some new ad campaigns.
Holcombe’s campaign manager, Cameron Russell, said Holcombe is glad to hear another candidate is joining the Democratic field.
“In the same vein that we welcomed Zuckerman to the race we’re just excited that people are going to join the chorus of folks who are putting themselves forward and wanting to hold the administration accountable for lack of action on behalf of all Vermonters,” Russell said.
Russell said that Holcombe doesn’t have a “comprehensive platform” on the opioid crisis but that she’s consistently addressing the issue on the campaign trail.
“We’re talking about criminal justice reform, housing, cost of living. We’re talking about wages, access to health care, I think there are many issues that layer with the opiate epidemic and substance use disorder,” he said.
Zuckerman also welcomed Winburn to the race. “To me the more people and more ideas that we all get to talk about the better, that’s democracy,” he said.
The lieutenant governor said that part of his strategy to address the opioid crisis would be to bolster affordable housing in the state.
“Other folks who are struggling with substance abuse disorder are having a hard time making enough money to pay their bills and that kind of stress and challenge often leads to more folks slipping into the problem in the first place,” he said.
Zuckerman said that he doesn’t believe the approach of self-financing a political campaign is “typically successful.”
“My campaign is going to be based on grass roots and connections all over the state that I’ve built over many many years,” he added.
Winburn said that he also hoped to shift to a more crowd-funded campaign as he spreads the word about his candidacy.
“I will do it the Vermont way,” he said, “if you have lots and lots of supporters who are contributing $15 or whatever you can afford, that’s where your power comes from.”
