The rumor mill says Lt. Governor Brian Dubie will not run for Governor. I believe that is correct and I predict he will not run. While I don’t have any inside information, his public actions speak volumes.
What and why – after the flip. . .
In 2002, Peter Shumlin and Doug Racine both announced they were running for Governor.
Many Democrats who wanted to avoid a primary at all costs (as well as folks in Racine’s camp), convinced Peter Shumlin to run for Lt. Governor instead. So Shumlin took-one-for-the-team, bowed out of the gubernatorial primary and ran for Lt. Governor rather than Governor.
Early in the 2002 campaign, Peter met with a group of potential supporters/donors/volunteers etc. He told us the following disarmingly candid statement, which is also a basic truism of Vermont politics although the majority of Lite Gov. candidates don’t seem to admit it.
Shumlin said: “I hope you’ll support me. I also hope you’ll consider your support of me as an investment in a future Governor. Let’s be honest here, kids don’t grow up saying ‘I want to be Lt. Governor someday’ and neither did I. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be Lt. Governor, but if I’m elected, I will also be coming back to you because I want to be Governor at some point. I want to use this campaign and my time as Lt. Governor to demonstrate the type of Governor I can be for you.”
Point well taken.
2009: So what’s up with Lt. Governor Brian Dubie?
Over the past 30+ years, virtually every person who ran for Lt. Governor did so because they wanted to be Governor.
In fact, if you go back to 1974, when Brian Burns was elected to be Thomas P. Salmon Sr.’s Lt. Governor, every Lt. Governor DID, with varying degrees of success, run for Governor of Vermont (Brian Burns, Peter Smith, Madeleine Kunin, Howard Dean, Doug Racine).**
Where does that leave Brian Dubie?
Countless Vermont politicians have run for, coveted, or served as Lt. Governor for the sole purpose of positioning themselves to be the “Next Governor Of The State Of Vermont.”
So Dubie is running, right? No. Here’s why.
First, Brian Dubie has had since the summer of 2002 to think about being Governor and, at some level, the idea of being Governor has appeal to him. It has appeal to anyone who has the least bit of political ambition and has run a state-wide campaign.
But here are just a few of the considerations he’s mulling today. One, he can’t win and he knows it. Two, he can’t win and I suspect there is no shortage of people telling him just that. Three, if he truly wanted the job, he would have been geared up a nano-second after Jim Douglas announced he was being pushed stepping aside. Let’s face it, number one is a show-stopper and number three is as clear a look into his thinking as we can possibly have.
Brian Dubie’s public behavior has telegraphed far more than anything he has said on the subject. He is not running.
There are a lot of Republicans glued to their cell phones this beautiful Labor Day weekend. Enjoy folks!
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** The two notable exceptions are T.Gary Buckley who was eaten by his own in the ’78 GOP Lt. Gov. primary by Peter Smith and once again by a dozen or so other Republicans in a senate primary in 1980. The other exception is Barbara Snelling who served in the State Senate until health problems forced her to retire.
…is that he really doesn’t seem to have any actual interest in doing any work related to government. The lt. gov gig works well for him, since it gives him a fairly nice paycheck with no actual commitment to, well, anything.
I can’t imagine why he’d want to give that up to become governor, a job you’re expected to actually do.
And, it is quite possible that Dubie does not want to continue as Lt. Gov. So where does that leave the race for both seats, along with Auditor and Secretary of State? Hey, maybe a clean slate!
after the minimum dignified amount of time .It would be harder to duck most of those pesky debates as he has in the past .Also he might have to follow Douglas’s example and disclose his tax returns.In the past he has refused to release his own financial information unless the Legislature requires it as a state policy.