Monday, October 17, 2016
New disclosures filed late last week with the Federal Election Commission show that Leahy, a 42-year incumbent, raised more than $445,000 in the two and a half months ending September 30. He collected another $55,000 in that period through a leadership political action committee called Green Mountain PAC.
Milne, a Pomfret businessman, raised just $57,000 from donors during the three months ending September 30 — and contributed another $12,000 of his own cash to his long-shot bid.
Since winning his last six-year term, Leahy has raised more than $4.67 million through his main campaign account, his latest filing shows. Milne, meanwhile, has collected just $74,000 — including $17,000 of his own money — since joining the race last May.
In the lead-up to next month's election, Leahy has been drawing down some of his reserves. The incumbent Democrat spent nearly $649,000 in the most recent reporting period, roughly $297,000 of which went toward television advertising produced by the Philadelphia firm Shorr Johnson Magnus. Milne, who has no paid staff, spent a mere $35,000.
Tags: Patrick Leahy , Scott Milne , campaign finance , election 2016 , Image , Web Only
Thursday, October 13, 2016
In February 2016, U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) became just the third member of Congress to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for president. Until then, nearly every other high-profile politician in Sanders’ home state — from Gov. Peter Shumlin to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to former governor Howard Dean — had backed former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.
While Welch had kept mum about his presidential preference until just prior to Vermont’s March 2016 primary, a hacked emailed obtained by WikiLeaks and posted online this week suggests that Clinton’s campaign thought it had secured Welch’s support 10 months earlier.
In the April 2015 email, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook informed campaign chair John Podesta and other senior staffers that Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger was “on board” and planned to announce his endorsement of Clinton “on his terms.”
“Shumlin and Welch are going to hold their fire for now,” Mook continued. “They will come out together when we think it’s best.”
From:[email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Date: 2015-04-29 14:08
Subject: Vermont Chain
—Miro Weinberger, Mayor of Burlington, is on board. He is going to announce it on his terms...Brynne and Jesse are following up on that.
—Shumlin and Welch are going to hold their fire for now. They will come out together when we think it's best.
—Brynne is doing a call w Shumlin's political guy re how to proceed w LOP and building the program.
Tags: Senator , Peter Welch , Patrick Leahy , Howard Dean , Bernie Sanders , Peter Shumlin , John Podesta , Robby Mook , presidential campaign , Image , Web Only
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) joined 25 of his peers in opposing the stopgap spending bill, which nevertheless passed the Senate with 72 votes in favor. The veteran Democrat pledged last week to vote against the so-called continuing resolution if it did not include reforms to the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. Instead, the legislation simply extended it, as written, until December.
According to Leahy spokesman David Carle, his "nay" vote was "a direct result" of his reservations on EB-5.
Tags: Senator , EB-5 , Patrick Leahy , Bernie Sanders , Peter Welch , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
"Notice Trump sniffing all the time," he wrote on Twitter. "Coke user?"
Rather than apologize for the off-color tweet the next day, the former practicing physician doubled down on it Tuesday afternoon in an appearance on MSNBC.Notice Trump sniffing all the time. Coke user?
— Howard Dean (@GovHowardDean) September 27, 2016
"Well, you can't make a diagnosis over the television," he said. "I would never do that. But he has some interesting — that is actually a signature of people who use cocaine. I'm not suggesting that Trump does, but—"
"Well you are suggesting it, actually, in a tweet," MSNBC host Kate Snow interjected.
"No, I'm suggesting we think about it," Dean said. Then he rattled off a list of symptoms he said Trump shared with cocaine users, ranging from "grandiosity" to "delusions" to "trouble with pressured speech."
Tags: Howard Dean , Donald Trump , Image , Video , Web Only
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Carol Moore, the most recent president of now-closed Burlington College, is publicly excoriating its board of trustees and People’s United Bank for backing previous president Jane O’Meara Sanders’ decision to buy a $10 million lakeside campus in 2010.
In a letter to the editor published in the Chronicle of Higher Education on Thursday, Moore describes the land purchase, which plunged the college into debt, as an “appallingly inappropriate business deal.” She blames it for the school’s demise.
Moore, a former Lyndon State College president who was appointed interim president of Burlington College in December 2014, demurred from criticizing her predecessors during her time in that post. (O’Meara Sanders was forced to resign in 2011. Her chief financial officer, Christine Plunkett, took the helm until she resigned suddenly in July 2014.)
But in her explosive letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Moore doesn’t hold back. She writes:
BC’s fate was set when its former board members hired an inexperienced president and, six years later, approved the imprudent purchase of a $10 million piece of property for campus expansion. Enrollment that year was about 195 and the budget just over $4 million, less than half of this ill-advised investment. What were they thinking? Where was the Finance Committee when these decisions were being made?
Tags: Senator , Burlington College , Bernie Sanders , Jane O'Meara Sanders , Carol Moore , Image , Web Only
Thursday, August 25, 2016
Speaking to some 200 supporters at Burlington's North End Studios, the former presidential candidate said he hoped that "hundreds of thousands of people" would join the new group, called Our Revolution. It would immediately get to work supporting more than 100 candidates and seven ballot initiatives this election cycle, he said.
"These are people who will be fighting at the grassroots level for changes in their local school boards, in their city councils, in their state legislatures and in their representation in Washington," Sanders said.
According to Our Revolution executive director Shannon Jackson, Wednesday's launch was webcast to 2,600 house parties and 40,000 viewers across the country. But the event was overshadowed by an unusually public staff revolt within the fledgling organization, as well as questions surrounding its legal status.
As Politico and BuzzFeed first reported Tuesday, at least eight employees quit Our Revolution over the weekend after Sanders' former campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, was brought in to serve as the group's president. They complained that Weaver planned to raise money from wealthy donors and spend it on television advertisements, rather than organize a grassroots political movement.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , presidential campaign , Recommended Reading , Image , Web Only
Monday, August 8, 2016
The Burlington resident last week plopped down nearly $600,000 on a lakefront camp in North Hero.
Sanders’ new crib has four bedrooms and 500 feet of Lake Champlain beachfront on the east side of the island — facing Vermont, not New York. The Bern will keep his home in Burlington and use the new camp seasonally.
“We’ve traveled up to the islands many times over the years — almost always on day trips,” Sanders’ wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, told Seven Days in a written statement. “We’ve been impressed with the North Hero community, eaten at the North Hero House and Shore Acres and have suggested them to friends who were looking for a beautiful place to stay or have dinner. St. Anne’s Shrine in Isle La Motte is my favorite church and it is nearby.”
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , presidential campaign , North Hero , Burlington , Jane O'Meara Sanders , Image , Recommended Reading , Web Only
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.
Tags: Senator , David Zuckerman , Bernie Sanders , presidential campaign , Howard Dean , Shap Smith , election 2016 , primary 2016 , Image , Recommended Reading , 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."
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Hillary Clinton , presidential campaign , DNC 2016 , Recommended Reading , Image , Web Only
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."
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , presidential campaign , Barney Frank , DNC 2016 , Image , Recommended Reading , Video , Web Only