Campaign notebook:

• Daniel Freilich turns to open condescension, if not quite open contempt, in his quixotic bid to unseat Patrick Leahy in the Democratic Primary for US Senate. From a press release: “After speaking at a South Burlington AFL-CIO meeting, I saw and heard Senator Leahy speak. My reaction, pity, surprised me, but reinforced the rationale for my challenging the 35-year incumbent.”
  
• Is the Vermont GOP quietly giving institutional support to former Douglas spokesperson Jason Gibbs over Attorney Chris Roy in the Secretary of State primary, or did former Party leader Rob Roper simply abscond with party resources when he left? It’s hard to see another option when considering the following:

  This past week, the Gibbs campaign delivered emails to Republican in-boxes throughout Vermont. As one denizen of the GOP cyber community (whom GMD notes is not supporting Jason Gibbs) explained to us:

  It is strange how I received Jason’s email because it didn’t come to my regular address. I have an email address that is on my business website. I use it for all of my personal or business emails. It is the [email] address I give to everyone, friends, associates, whatever. But I did not receive the email [from the Gibbs campaign] through my publicly available email address.  
  
  I have one other email account but I never use it to send emails to people and I don’t know any private individual who knows what it is. I use it for banking or to get my credit card statements or to logon to a few websites or to go online shopping, that type of thing. It is also the private email address I use on the VT GOP website for our newsletter.  I’ve never given it to any candidate though, only the party. But that’s the address he [the Gibbs campaign] is using.

  It is important to note that this email address is not in use in any capacity other than commercial online transactions, so it’s hard to imagine that the Gibbs campaign could obtain the email address from any source except the State GOP. The recipient indicated that he had not received any such communication from the Roy campaign to this point, despite the fact that Roy has been an active candidate far longer than Gibbs.

  Hardly conclusive, but it does at least suggest that Gibbs may have been given special access to Party resources, either from the Party proper or from Roper himself. Given that lists are considered things of value for campaign financing purposes, it does raise an eyebrow, even if it doesn’t cross into illegality. In any event, there may be some heated back and forth phone calls between high profile Republicans underway.

  (NOTE: The GMD byline represents collaborative work by multiple site contributors)