This week's issue of Seven Days has a story on Lenore Broughton, the mysterious Burlington woman who is bankrolling the conservative super PAC Vermonters First to the tune of $682,500 — singlehandedly boosting the electoral fortunes of two down-ticket Republicans and a selection of legislative candidates.

While we learned quite a bit more about Broughton's background than had previously been reported, we were not able to get a photograph of her. Broughton is notoriously private and would not agree to be interviewed for the story, much less photographed.

As the story notes, there doesn't appear to be a single picture of her anywhere on the web — a rarity in this digital age. (If you know of one, by all means, email us.)

On Tuesday, we tried — and failed — to capture the elusive GOP funder on film. This picture was pretty much all we managed to get (explanation below). Here's how it went down. 

A Burlington bakery was transformed into a post-debate spin room Wednesday afternoon, when Sen. Patrick Leahy dropped by for a round of Romney bashing.

Vermont's senior senator called a press conference at August First Bakery and Cafe on South Champlain Street to offer his own postmortem on Tuesday night's presidential debate. Leahy was joined by bakery owners Jodi Whalen and Phil Merrick, who said their small business has thrived during the Obama presidency.

"We opened our bakery in 2009 with a staff of five and I'm happy to report that today we now employ 23 people, many of them full-time," Whalen said.

Leahy said the Obama that showed up to last night's debate was "the Barack Obama that we know." He was clear, concise direct and honest, the senator said. Romney, Leahy said, only gave "slogans, tested catch phrases and no substance."

He wasn't so enamored of the president's first debate performance. "This was not the Barack Obama I know so well. And it worried me that ... I think he was, he saw some things that were patently untrue being said by former governor Romney."

Leahy made one thing clear: He apparently received the Democratic talking points memo. He hit Romney for his "binders full of women," for opposing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, for saying he'd let Detroit go bankrupt, and for not revealing the deductions and loopholes he'd eliminate to balance his $5 trillion tax plan.

Each Friday here at Off Message headquarters, we bring you the week's winners and losers in Vermont news and politics. This week, we were a little light on winners — but there's always plenty of losers to go around.

Without further ado, we humbly present you with The Scoreboard, for the week of October 12:

Winners:

Tiki Archambeau — The Burlington Progressive Party chairman put to rest the weenie liberal stereotype last weekend when he did his damnedest to beat the shit out of a thief he spotted rifling through his car. The bad guy got away, but not before the Archambeau broke the dude's nose.

Staycations — Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock managed to lodge his first coherent hit against Gov. Peter Shumlin Thursday by releasing the results of a public-records request showing that Shummy spent 119 days out of state during his first 21 months in office. Granted, that includes time the gov was on state business. And, you know, the guy's entitled to a little vacay — or to cross the Connecticut River to save a few bucks on a pack of cigarettes. But still. You gotta give Brock credit for trying! Maybe next time Shummy will stick around and just go biking with Lt. Gov. Phil Scott.

David Zuckerman — It's real hard to get attention from us media types when you're running for the legislature, but Hinesburg's ponytailed Prog managed to extend the life cycle — and news cycle — of his "Democrats hate me" psychodrama for yet another week. After being spurned by Senate Democratic leadership for being too Prog-y, the Chittenden County state Senate candidate held a press conference Monday with prominent Dems who back him, including former governor Phil Hoff, former House speaker Gaye Symington and Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan. And, of course, a couple of us media sheep attended.

Losers:

Vermont Leads — Say what you will about the conservative super PAC Vermonters First, but the decision by the single-payer advocacy group Vermonters Lead to picket outside the Burlington home of the super PAC's sole funder, Lenore Broughton, was pretty shabby. There are better ways to make your point than to hassle someone at their house. It only drives home the point that while the conservative super PAC appears to be solely funded and operated by Vermonters, the single-payer group isn't.

Television viewers — New ads released this week by a liberal super PAC and Republican AG candidate Jack McMullen are, well, kind of bad. The former — an ad by Priorities PAC backing Democratic State Treasurer Beth Pearce — has terrible production values and keeps saying something about Pearce going to Wall Street. Which is weird. The latter, meanwhile, features a peculiar photo of Fred Tuttle and never actually says the name, "Jack McMullen" in the script.

Voters — The city of Burlington screwed the pooch this week, sending out some 523 faulty ballots to early voters with an incorrectly worded ballot question. Whoops! Separately, the U.S. Department of Justice is suing Vermont for failing to get 20 percent of ballots requested by members of the military and others living oversees in time to meet the 45-day federal deadline. Double whoops!

Astroturfers in the comments section — Green Mountain Daily's John Walters on Sunday picked up on some rather hilarious comments left below a VTDigger.org article about Shumlin's real estate doings. In what appears to be a rather clumsily coordinated campaign, several commenters used nearly identical language to hate on Digger. One even said he'd "no longer be buying your paper at local stores which will hurt the local economy." We're guessing the online-only Digger is pretty worried about that.

The news stories you'll find in this week's print-and-ink version of Seven Days...

• Several former employees say the new head of the Vermont State Employees Association is doing big damage to the organization.
• A convicted sex offender stole an active-duty soldier's identity and registered to vote, got a job and made friends in Vermont.
• Rutland is still reeling from the death of teenager Carly Ferro at the hands of a drug-impaired driver. How should the city respond?
• A crowdfunded, Twitter-hyped local film project had a very public breakdown last week when social network users fought back against an alleged con artist.
• It's also the winter preview issue of Seven Days this week. One place you won't be able to ski this winter is Ascutney Mountain Resort.
• In this week's Fair Game column, Paul Heintz reports that there could be a new majority leader — and possibly a new President Pro Tem — coming to the state Senate next year.

My smartphone was safely stowed in my pocket this morning as I walked in to work, which is probably why I noticed these new stencils on the sidewalk in downtown Burlington. Naturally, I took my phone out after I saw them and snapped some photos.

The paint looked pretty fresh. Anyone know who put them there or why? I took these at the intersection of Main Street and South Winooski Avenue, Main and Pine streets., and Main and South Champlain streets.

Update: Mystery solved! Not surprisingly, the people-powered transportation advocates at Local Motion are responsible for these sidewalk safety messages. Thanks to alert reader Liam Griffin for the tip on our Facebook page.

Happy Rocktober! I trust everyone had a good Zep-tember?

Here's what's happening this week in the world of Vermont news and politics. Think you got something newsworthy for next week's calendar? Email us by Friday to submit.

Monday, October 1

• Lt. Gov. Phil Scott kicks off a publicity stunt — er, campaign tour — today with his "Cycling Vermont's 14" excursion. That's right, the lite guv will pedal all 14 counties of this brave little state. Guess he finally ran out of other people's jobs to do. Follow the epic journey here.
• At 10:30 a.m. at his Burlington office, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) holds a press conference to announce an energy efficiency grant that will let Burlington electric ratepayers finance energy conservation projects through their utility bills. Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger and Vermont public service commissioner Liz Miller will join him.
• Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock has scheduled a press conference on economic development — a departure from his almost singular focus on attacking Shumlin-care. 1:30 p.m. at ipCapital Group in Williston.
• The three candidates running for attorney general — incumbent Democrat Bill Sorrell, Progressive Ed Stanak and Republican Jack McMullen — will debate at Johnson State College at 4:30 p.m.in the library. Sen. Bill Doyle will moderate.

Rest of the week after the jump...

Maybe you've seen the lawn signs — bright blue placards with white letters imploring you to re-elect someone named "Phil Baruth" to the state Senate this November.

We definitely remember a guy named "Philip Baruth." He was an author, English professor at UVM, political blogger, VPR commentator and was elected to represent Chittenden County in the state Senate in 2010. It appears that Philip Baruth still works at UVM. And the state's official 2012 candidate roster lists a Philip Baruth, but no Phil.

So who is this Phil Baruth? Seven Days launched a resource-intensive investigation to learn the truth. But after numerous public records requests, dozens of scathing editorials and many nights of digging through Philip Baruth's trash, we were no closer to an answer.

So we picked up the phone, dialed Philip Baruth and asked him.

What to look for in this week's dead-tree edition of Seven Days...

• Yesterday, Kathryn Flagg wrote a post about the new "outdoor classroom" at Burlington's Sustainability Academy. This week she writes more about the school's new changes — both cosmetic and otherwise.
• The lawyer representing anti-abortion protesters in a lawsuit against Burlington's no-protest zone around reproductive health clinics has a history of litigating "buffer zone" cases around the country.
• More and more Progressives are running for office with both a "P" and a "D" next to their names. Are "fusion" candidates good for the future of the state's third party?
• This week in "Fair Game": The election ad blitz has begun, and it's led by conservative super PAC Vermonters First. Plus, Senate Democrats won't support David Zuckerman, Bernie makes waves in New Hampshire, and Jay Peak is set to announce more EB-5 funded projects.

One final note: Friends and family of former VTDigger.org reporter Alan Panebaker, who died in a kayaking accident last week, will hold a celebration of his life at Eagle Park in Bristol this Saturday at 2 p.m. Donations can be made in Panebaker’s name to American Whitewater, where he last worked, at P.O. Box 1540, Cullowhee, NC 28723.

Illustration by Torrey Valyou

Football fans have spent September crowing about "replacement refs" — temporary referees the NFL is employing while it's embroiled in a contract dispute with the union that represents the league's usual officials. After just three weeks, the scabs have already gained a reputation of laughable incompetence, coming to a head last weekend when they potentially screwed the New England Patriots out of a victory and definitely screwed the Green Bay Packers.

What would happen if utterly unprepared "replacements" took over other stuff? Well, our Google searches wouldn't be very useful, as Replacement Google shows us. Type whatever you want to search for into Replacement Google — for example, "Vermont" — and watch as it returns a stream of results that's completely useless (for example, "A DVD of Cool Runnings.")

This fun diversion is the brainchild of Winooski developer and sports fan Erik Johnson. Johnson's also the man behind Just Enjoy!, an online travel site that organizes trips to big sporting events (we wrote about it in its previous incarnation as Vermont Baseball Tours in the sidebar here). The site went viral within hours — it's been spotlighted by BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times and Deadspin, just to name a few, and Johnson says it attracted 104,329 unique visitors just yesterday. Not bad for an hour's worth of work. 

And now that we've seen the dark side of a world with broken search, let us hope that Google doesn't lock out its algorithms.

Photo © Cory Thoman | Dreamstime.com

Superior Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford today threw out a lawsuit two former city councilors filed against the city of Burlington seeking repayment of $17 million in taxpayer money illegally loaned to Burlington Telecom during Bob Kiss' tenure as mayor.

The lawsuit by Gene Shaver and Fred Osier sought to hold Jonathan Leopold (pictured), personaly liable for repaying the cash; Kiss's powerful chief administrative officer oversaw the loans to BT. According to the Burlington Free Press, Crawford ruled that the municipally owned Burlington Telecom had in fact violated its state license by failing to pay back loaned taxpayer money within 60 days, but ruled that Leopold wasn't on the hook.

Seven Days contributing writer Kevin J. Kelley caught up with Leopold by phone Tuesday evening; he had just returned from a short holiday with his family in Italy.

"I feel vindicated," Leopold told Kelley. "It's taken a long time for the facts to come out and I'm pleased with the decision."