The Scott Milne campaign responded Monday to a PAC attack on his voting record that circulated on Twitter late last week.
Milne, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, has called allegations made by the Alliance for a Better Vermont Action Fund — specifically that he failed to vote in seven elections since 2008 — false and misleading.
On Friday the Alliance for a Better Vermont Action Fund posted screenshots of Milne’s voting record in his town of residence, Pomfret.
The file does not include Milne voting in the primaries for 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2018, while also indicating that he missed the general election in 2010.
Ashley Moore, the director of Alliance for a Better Vermont, wrote a press release Friday stating that Milne had misled the public about his voting history during the Tuesday VTDigger debate in which he criticized Gray’s failure to vote in four election cycles between 2008 and 2018.
“Taking the opportunity to lie about his own record in an attempt to disparage a candidate is appalling and Vermonters deserve better,” Moore said in her Friday statement.
However, the Milne campaign released an email Monday sent by Becky Fielder, the Pomfret town clerk, to Moore, which disputes the claims made by Alliance for a Better Vermont.
Fielder writes that the electronic records disseminated by the PAC do not include all the votes, and that after she manually checked Milne’s record — at his request — she found that he did vote in the 2010 primary and general election, as well as the 2012 presidential and state primaries.
Fielder added that Milne had requested an absentee ballot for the 2018 primary but that the town clerk’s office received it after it could be counted.
In a statement Monday, Moore said that Fielder never gave her any indication that there were paper records of voting between 2008 and the present.
“Both candidates have incomplete voting records, and it’s time to move on to more substantive matters,” she said.
Milne has since called on Gray to renounce the PAC and its accusations.
“Not only is Molly Gray lying about her own voting record, but now she has her supporters lying about mine,” said Milne.
Samantha Sheehan, Gray’s campaign manager, declined to comment on the back and forth between Milne and the Alliance for a Better Vermont.
On Friday, Sheehan had also decided against giving comment to Seven Days — who covered the allegations at the time — on Milne’s voting record.
“We’ll let others do the talking,” she told the alt-weekly.
Alliance for a Better Vermont registered as a political action committee (PAC) with the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office on Sept. 22 — allowing it to work on behalf of the candidate but without coordination with the official campaign.
Since going live on Twitter and other social media platforms, the PAC has posted pro-Gray content including a Sept. 24 poll that had Gray leading Milne by 23 points.
A recent Vermont Public Radio/Vermont PBS poll shows the race for lieutenant governor in a dead heat — the Democrat has a slight lead of 35% to Milne’s 31%.
While Milne and Gray are competing to see who will receive more votes come Nov. 3, their own voting histories have become the key point of contrast between the two candidates.
The recent attention to Milne’s voting history comes the day before a VPR/Vermont PBS debate between the lieutenant governor hopefuls.
During last Tuesday’s debate, Gray said she was “grateful” for the opportunity to discuss why she had failed to vote regularly over the past decade — a part of her candidacy that has drawn criticism from Vermonters across the political spectrum since it became public knowledge during the primary campaign.
Gray said she voted for former President Barack Obama in 2008 and for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. Gray claims she sought an absentee ballot in 2016, didn’t receive one, and then inquired about voting in an email to her town clerk the day before the election.
“Between that time I was an inconsistent voter — in 2010, 2012 and 2014,” Gray said. “That is not something I’m proud of,” she added.
Later in the debate, Milne pressed Gray on the issue, asking why she deserves the vote of Vermonters when she failed to cast a ballot in several recent elections.
Gray responded by asking whether Milne has voted in every election that he has been eligible to cast a ballot in.
“No, but I have a consistent record over my lifetime of being a voter and you have a consistent record of not being a voter,” Milne said.
