Jon Margolis is a VTDigger political columnist.
As an otherwise bland if not inconsequential primary campaign nears its end, Vermont’s Democratic voters could help answer a few interesting political questions: How important is campaign money? How much is too much? Are television commercials decisive? Do voters value experience or prefer newcomers?
And should candidates – who seek the support of voters — have voted themselves?
Questions worth exploring. But first an explanation of why the campaign has been bland and perhaps inconsequential.
Bland first of all because not one of the candidates is exciting or charismatic. This is not a character flaw. All the candidates seem capable. Each in his or her own way is impressive. None arouses passion.
Bland also because they barely disagree. Oh, there are some wonkish differences over how to achieve their shared goals. But the goals are shared. These are Vermont Democrats. They all want to raise the minimum wage, expand health care coverage, fight global warming, enhance social justice.
Hence also inconsequential. Any Democrat who gets elected will follow similar policies. And most Democrats who win their primaries will get elected.
Except the candidate for governor, who will run against Republican Gov. Phil Scott, an incumbent with astronomical approval ratings. And perhaps, depending on the primary results, the candidate for lieutenant governor (elaboration below).
Not to mention that the lieutenant governorship itself borders on being inconsequential.
The questions about money and television arise because three candidates who were considered underdogs just a few weeks ago have transformed themselves into solid competitors by buying lots of TV time while their opponents have bought less or none at all.
Or so it seems. There is no polling, or at least no public polling, so the only way to assess the race is by how it “feels,” on who has “the buzz.”
Talk about amorphous. Besides, who has “the buzz” depends on whose TV ads get seen. Talk about circular reasoning.
However solid the evidence, it at least suggests that:
— Former Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe is giving Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman a real contest for the Democratic nomination for governor;
— Assistant Attorney General Molly Gray is mounting a major challenge to Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe in the race for lieutenant governor;
— Former Burlington City Councilor Adam Roof could well win one of the six Chittenden County State Senate nominations.
All three surging (if they are) candidates were not nearly as well-known as their opponents before their TV ads appeared. Now they are, and they are in contention.
Not necessarily because Holcombe and Gray have been on TV far more than their opponents, or because no other state senate candidate has bought TV time at all. Correlation is not causation.
Except when it is.
Nobody is “buying” a nomination here. Holcombe and Gray have raised quite a bit more than Zuckerman and Ashe. But Roof has raised less than two of his opponents – former Rep. Kesha Ram or South Burlington City Councilor Thomas Chittenden. They’ve just made different decisions on how to spend their money.
“TV is actually a cost-saving for us,” Roof said. The $15,000 he said his campaign spent on television ads meant it could do fewer mailings, saving both money and paper.
Based on their expenditure reports, Ram has the biggest campaign staff. Based on visual observation, Chittenden has the most lawn signs. If he wins and Roof loses, would that indicate that lawn signs are more effective than TV ads?
On the other end of the fund-raising scale, long-time incumbent Virginia Lyons has spent only about $6,000. Challenger Dylan Giambatista, now a House member from Essex Junction, raised about $21,000 before he said he stopped fund-raising after the pandemic hit, and is running what he called a “scrappy, grass-roots campaign.”
Holcombe has not only out-raised and out-spent Zuckerman; she has attacked him in a TV ad, saying he once “questioned the science behind vaccines,” and “the anti-vaxxers called him their hero.”
Zuckerman said Holcombe is distorting his record and insists that he is not an “anti-vaxxer.” He is not. But his votes and statements during a vaccine debate in 2015 when he was in the Senate were at least confusing enough to validate Holcombe’s critique.
And they demonstrate that her political progress owes as much to Zuckerman’s vulnerabilities as to her strength or her TV ads. Zuckerman won his first election to the House in 1996 as a Progressive who was often critical of Democrats. Many of those Democrats have not forgotten. Any challenger who could raise enough money to seem credible had the potential to challenge him. Holcombe has done that.
The questions about experience and voting records arise in the race for Lieutenant governor. Ashe, a senator since 2009 and the Senate leader for the last four years, clearly has the most experience in government and politics. But he is being challenged by Gray, who has never before run for office before, but who has raised almost twice as much money.
Gray has extensive and impressive experience – in Washington, in academia, and overseas. She has used the connections she made in those places to help her raise that money.
Because she lived out of the country so recently, the question has been raised over whether she’s constitutionally eligible to be lieutenant governor. It’s the wrong question. She’s eligible unless a court rules otherwise, and no case is pending. The problem is not where she lived; it’s where she voted.
She didn’t. Not in the 2012 or 2016 presidential elections or the 2010 or 2014 mid-terms. She could have. It’s easy for Americans living abroad to vote from their last U.S. residence. Voting is both the first responsibility and the first privilege of citizenship. Gray chose not to exercise it.
If nothing else, this might pose a problem should she win the primary. In what looms (aside from the governor’s race) as an overwhelmingly Democratic year in Vermont, Ashe would be all but unbeatable in the general election. Probably so would the other two Democratic contenders, Sen. Debbie Ingram and activist Brenda Siegel.
Gray’s failure to vote provides some political ammunition to the likely Republican nominee, Scott Milne. He has said he would use it.
That’s why politics is fun. Even the blandest and least consequential primaries have their complications.
