Dean Corren, a 2014 candidate for lieutenant governor, will be back in court next month, after a federal court ruling Tuesday narrowed the scope of Attorney General Bill Sorrell’s case accusing Corren of violating the state’s campaign finance law.

Corren, who ran unsuccessfully as a Democratic and Progressive candidate for lieutenant governor, faces $72,000 in penalties and reimbursement in state court action, after Sorrell argued Democratic Party support for his campaign amounted to a campaign contribution. Corren ran for office using the state’s public financing law, which limited him to $180,000 in public money and prohibited contributions from political parties.

A federal court ruling by Judge William Sessions III dismissed Corren’s challenges to the penalties based on the constitutionality of certain aspects of the law. But Sessions allowed Corren and others to continue raising constitutional questions about future use of the law. Corren will also be able to challenge constitutional questions about the campaign finance law in the case being heard in state court.

Sessions allowed Sen. David Zuckerman (P/D-Chittenden) to join Corren in the case. Zuckerman, who is a candidate in the 2016 election for lieutenant governor,  argued he wants to use the public financing law, but that some of its rules make the law unworkable.

“As a declared candidate for 2016, he has a clear interest in the resolution of the issues in this case,” Sessions ruled.

Corren’s lawyer, John Franco, said he will continue to challenge Sorrell’s enforcement of the law in both state and federal court. Sessions set a January 14 federal court date.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won the backing Tuesday of the Working Families Party, a labor-oriented party making its first endorsement in a national campaign.

The vote wasn't close, according to the Working Families Party, as 87 percent of its members favored Sanders for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, while Hillary Clinton received support from 11.5 percent.
Working Families Party national director Dan Cantor said in a news release, “The super-rich have used their economic muscle to buy political muscle, and unless you’re one of them, what you think government should do basically doesn’t count. That’s why we’re standing with Bernie Sanders to build the political revolution and make our nation into one where every family can thrive.”

The Working Families Party was founded in 1998 and fights for issues such as a higher minimum wage, paid sick leave and lower student debt. In her 2000 election in New York to the U.S. Senate, Clinton ran on the Working Families Party's line as well as the Democratic Party's. In Vermont, the Working Families Party was formed as a minor party in 2006.

As the New York Times reported, the Working Families Party has chapters in just a few states. “Exactly what this will translate into remains to be seen. The party is not in the early primary voting states,” the Times reported. The party pledged its activists will work toward helping Sanders win the nomination.

Sanders' campaign welcomed the endorsement.

"Bernie has devoted his career to helping working families and is gratified by the support of the Working Families Party,” campaign manager Jeff Weaver said in a press release. “Together they will work to take on the billionaire class and change the rigged economy that is being held up by a corrupt political system."

Bruce Lisman was the only one of four candidates appearing Saturday at a forum hosted by the liberal advocacy group Rights & Democracy who didn’t invoke the name Bernie Sanders. He was the only one to call for a moratorium on wind and solar projects.

When it came time for a group photo in front of a banner reading “Jobs, Justice + Climate,” Lisman was the only candidate not trying for a prime spot. Instead, he stood off to the side and did not make into the frame of the photo that the group later posted on Facebook.

Lisman, a retired Wall Street banker who is a Republican candidate for governor, didn’t quite fit in with a crowd that had gathered for a day of political discussions that included sessions titled: “Tackling Inequality & Building a Moral Economy” and “What Would Bernie’s Political Revolution Look Like in Vermont?”

Saturday’s forum didn’t feature the full contingent of declared candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, but it made up for that by providing some deliciously awkward political moments. It is not every day you get to see
Sen. David Zuckerman (P/D-Chittenden), who is running for lieutenant governor, call for raising taxes on large corporations, then hand the microphone to Lisman.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) can be forgiven for missing a vote late Monday on Gayle Smith's nomination to head the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Earlier that afternoon, the 74-year-old senator underwent elective hernia surgery at a Washington, D.C., hospital. By 9 a.m. the next day, according to spokesman Michael Briggs, he arrived at the Dirksen Senate Office Building and got back to work.

During his nine years in the U.S. Senate, Sanders has missed 90 of the 2,806 roll call votes he's been asked to cast, or about 3.2 percent, according to an analysis by GovTrack.us. That's a bit more than the median 1.6 percent lifetime absentee rate of all senators currently serving. 

As he juggles his presidential campaign and his day job as a U.S. senator, Sanders' missed vote tally has been steadily growing. Nearly half of his missed votes, 41, have come in the past year, pushing his absentee rate up to 11 percent since last December. In the past two months, that rate has crept up to 18.4 percent.

Among the seven votes he missed in October and November were several nomination confirmations, as well as procedural votes on bills to fund the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Until early this year, Sanders chaired the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. 

Both votes were held on November 5, as Sanders appeared at the New Hampshire Secretary of State's Office in Concord to file for the first-in-the-nation primary.

As Phil Scott kicked off his campaign for governor Tuesday, he delivered at least one clear message: He has a strong base of enthusiastic supporters.

The three-term Republican lieutenant governor, who races cars at Thunder Road as a hobby, showed he knows how to turn out a cheering crowd, which included both a who’s who of Vermont Republicans and a collection of those less accustomed to political rallies.

When Scott took the stage Tuesday evening at the Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center in South Burlington, a crowd of about 700 had gathered for a well-choreographed show, festooned with green and white balloons, a model race car and a toy excavator. It was, by far, the largest crowd any gubernatorial candidate has amassed this election season.

“A Scott administration will be focused on the fundamentals,” he said, emphasizing his blue-collar roots growing up in Elmore and Barre and as co-owner of an excavation company. “I believe Vermont needs a governor who listens instead of lectures.”

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