Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Two former presidential candidates weighed in Tuesday on Vermont’s Democratic primary for lieutenant governor.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) endorsed state Sen. David Zuckerman (P/D-Chittenden) for the No. 2 job. Hours later, former Democratic governor Howard Dean announced his support for House Speaker Shap Smith (D-Morristown).
Zuckerman, Smith and a third candidate, Rep. Kesha Ram (D-Burlington), are squaring off in an August 9 primary. Former state senator and auditor Randy Brock is running unopposed for the Republican nomination.
Statewide candidates have been eagerly awaiting word on potential endorsements from Sanders, whose recently concluded presidential campaign has made him a national star. But until this week, the only Vermont candidate he’d publicly supported this year was Rep. Chris Pearson (P-Burlington), who is running for the state Senate.
On Tuesday, Sanders broke his silence.
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Monday, August 1, 2016
In a new television advertisement, Republican rival Bruce Lisman notes that the company Scott co-owns with his cousin, DuBois Construction, has done $3.8 million worth of business with the state since Scott was elected to the legislature 16 years ago.
"Incredibly, Scott says, if elected governor, his construction company will continue pursuing government contracts," the ad's narrator says. "That's unacceptable — and a total conflict of interest. Time for a change."
The ad also mentions that DuBois performed work on Gov. Peter Shumlin's East Montpelier home in the spring of 2012, citing a Seven Days story from October 2015.
Lisman, a retired Wall Street banker, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on negative TV ads and mailers — mostly seeking to tie Scott to Shumlin — but his latest ad is his harshest yet. The primary takes place in just eight days, on August 9.
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Dunne's campaign sent reporters a copy of a sole-source contract Minter signed with one of the developers, Ariel Quiros, to operate Newport State Airport, which has since been renamed Northeast Kingdom International Airport. The January 2015 document was inked shortly after Minter took over as Gov. Peter Shumlin's secretary of transportation.
In an open letter to Minter, Dunne noted that Quiros and business partner Bill Stenger had already come under state scrutiny at the time. Fifteen months later, in April 2016, federal and state authorities filed civil charges against the pair, accusing them of misusing more than $200 million raised through the federal EB-5 investor visa program.
"Why did you believe that it was appropriate to sign a state contract with Ariel Quiros after concerns had been raised about his business practices?" Dunne wrote in his letter to Minter.
Tags: Matt Dunne , Sue Minter , EB-5 , Newport State Airport , Ariel Quiros , Bill Stenger , Northeast Kingdom International Airport , gubernatorial race , election 2016 , primary 2016 , Image , Web Only
Friday, July 29, 2016
By Thursday night, the devoted Sanders supporter and Vermont Democratic Party chair was ready to embrace newly minted nominee Hillary Clinton.
"Hallelujah!" she shouted as red, white and blue balloons settled onstage, signaling the close of the Democratic National Convention. "This is a celebration. Hillary Rodham Clinton is awesome. [Vice presidential nominee] Tim Kaine was awesome. We've got something to fight for."
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Thursday, July 28, 2016
"Bernie alienates his natural allies," Frank told Chris Graff, then the Associated Press' Vermont bureau chief, for a September 1991 profile. "His holier-than-thou attitude — saying in a very loud voice he is smarter than everyone else and purer than everyone else — really undercuts his effectiveness."
Frank kept up the criticism over the past year as Sanders ran for president, calling him ineffectual and unelectable. And in a brief interview with Seven Days Thursday at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, he wasn't ready to let it go.
"I think his approach to how you get things done is a mistake," Frank said at the Democratic National Convention. "I did think also that his criticisms of [Democratic nominee] Hillary Clinton were much too harsh and overdone."
The former congressman gave Sanders credit for his recent embrace of Clinton's candidacy but said the senator was "running up against his own, I think, excess."
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"I think she's really smart. I think she's not afraid to make a tough decision. I think she's had an executive role in state government. And I think she's most likely to beat Phil Scott, who I really like," Dean said, referring to the Republican lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate. "I like Matt Dunne very much, too."
Minter, a former transportation secretary, is locked in what's widely regarded as a tight race for the Democratic nomination with Dunne, a former state senator. Another former state senator, Peter Galbraith, is also in the race.
"He's very, very smart," Dean said of Galbraith. "But he's a little abrasive."
Tags: Howard Dean , Sue Minter , Matt Dunne , Peter Galbraith , Phil Scott , DNC 2016 , Philadelphia , Democratic National Convention , election 2016 , primary 2016 , Image , Web Only
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
"He said, 'I need your help. Would you be willing to nominate me for president?'" the classical singer recalled.
Nelson, who had traveled to Philadelphia to serve as a Vermont delegate to the Democratic National Convention, obliged. Hours later, she stood onstage at the Wells Fargo Center to formally second Sanders' presidential nomination.
"I have never felt the Bern more than I do this moment," she told thousands of cheering Democrats. "We will never stop working for a future we believe in. We will never stop fighting for the change we need. And we will never forget the man who leads us."
The next afternoon — halfway through the convention — she was on her way home to Vermont.
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The Castleton Polling Institute did not ask Vermonters who they would vote for in the state's primary election, which is less than two weeks away. But it found that more voters like and know the pair than they do former senator Peter Galbraith and perennial candidates Cris Ericson and H. Brooke Paige.
According to the poll, which was conducted during the middle of July, 58 percent of Vermonters view Minter favorably, while 13 percent view her unfavorably. Fifty percent see Dunne in a favorable light, while 16 percent do not. Only 39 percent have a good impression of Galbraith, while 24 percent have a bad impression.
Though Minter holds a slight lead in favorability, Dunne does in name recognition. Seventy-three percent of those polled say they know who he is, while 63 percent say the same for Minter and only 48 percent for Galbraith.
"It would be really hard to look at our data and predict who's going to come out on top in that race," says Castleton polling director Rich Clark.
Tags: Matt Dunne , Sue Minter , Peter Galbraith , Bruce Lisman , Phil Scott , VPR , Castleton , poll , election 2016 , primary 2016 , Image , Web Only
"What we are dealing with now is something kind of unique — and I believe, quite honestly, the worst Republican candidate in the modern history of the United States of America," Sanders told a breakfast crowd at a Wyndham Garden Hotel near Philadelphia International Airport. "What makes him unique and extremely dangerous is he is a demagogue."
Sanders reminded the delegates from Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine that before Trump ran for president he repeatedly questioned whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.
"It was about undermining the legitimacy of the first African American president in the history of our country — that he should not be president because he is African American," the senator said. "And that is disgusting. And that is the kind of person that we are running against."
Sanders made his remarks the morning after delegates to the Democratic National Convention — with an assist from Vermont — named former secretary of state Hillary Clinton their presidential nominee.
"As of yesterday, I guess, officially our campaign ended," Sanders noted during the breakfast.
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In a bid to unify a fractured Democratic Party, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday motioned for rival Hillary Clinton to be named its presidential nominee.
The dramatic gesture formalized Clinton’s status as the first woman to win the nomination of a major American political party. It reframed Sanders as a team player for a party he had yet to join. And it began the reconciliation required after a long and divisive primary.
The senator from Vermont made his motion at the end of a state-by-state roll call inside Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center. One by one, party activists and elected officials from Alabama to Wyoming delivered their delegate counts — with a bit of local color.
One delegation, from the group Democrats Abroad, turned over its microphone to Sanders’ older brother, Larry, who has lived for decades in the United Kingdom.
“I want to read, before this convention, the names of our parents: Eli Sanders and Dorothy Glassberg Sanders,” he said with tears in his eyes. “They did not have easy lives and they died young. They would be immensely proud of their son and his accomplishments.”
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