Report from the Shumlin-Dubie debate tonight at the REV conference

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( – promoted by Sue Prent)

I was at the debate tonight.   There was a packed house.  I filmed the whole thing and I’ll have some pieces of it on my blog.  Wanted to share a couple things for now…

Dubie brought an “entourage” with him.  Folks in Dubie tshirts.  Someone who knows a lot about this stuff told me they are getting paid.  They brought a stacks of lawn signs with them. First they put all the lawn signs out right in front of the entrance to the convention center.  There must have been 40 or 50 of them, and one HUGE one that took several people to hold up.  If you were driving by the Sheraton, you’d think there was a Dubie convention going on there, not a REV conference.  I gave them a piece of my mind.. I told them you can’t win an election with lawn signs.  I told them it was ironic that given the administration’s lack of support for renewables, that they were putting up all these signs in front of a rewnwable energy conference.

Then the debate took place.  More on that later. The one thing I want to mention is at the end, when Dubie was thanking everyone he couldn’t remember the name of Renewable Energy Vermont.  Everyone chuckled.

Then all his fans with the signs went back to the front doors.  They stood there with their stacks of signs, expecting to give them all away to people on their way out.  But guess what, NO ONE took one!  It was hilarious!  Every single person walked right by them.  One person I saw took a sign, but he walked a bit into the parking lot and he just dropped it on the ground, stepped on it, and left it there.   I know… littering is bad… but it was kinda comical.

more soon

8 thoughts on “Report from the Shumlin-Dubie debate tonight at the REV conference”

  1. The sign bit is interesting.

    His facebook fans have been clamoring all week about how hard yard signs are to get.

    One person suggested going to the highway dept.to get back the ones the crews gather from the state right of ways.Give them credit for good recycling instincts.

    The sign shortage reminded me a little of the cabbage patch doll shortage engineered just before the holidays one year.  

  2. Very interesting and entertaining.  Please don’t forget to post a link to the debate footage!!

  3. The crowd was a nice change from the other debate I saw so far (up in St. Albans), in that it was heavily Dem (what do you expect from a renewable energy conference?) and the Co-Pilots took a back seat in this one (literally and figuratively, they were definitely not as ‘in-your’face’ as I’ve seen them).  

    Besides Shumlin’s hard-lining stance on VY, both candidates appeared to be really eager to confront energy issues by making it quicker for developers to move projects forward and by creating a business environment that supported energy tech.  It’s exciting to see both of them so passionate about this issue (although I can’t help but wonder if their passion might wear off [esp. Dubie’s] once they are no longer, say, debating in front of the renewable energy industry).  

    And talk about hard to get: Shumlin signs are oh so elusive.  But then again, signs don’t win elections — votes do.      

  4. No surprises in the debate, but y’now what, I’d already made up my mind!

    There were 2 young Dubie co-pilots (that’s what the t-shirts say) collecting that row of 50 or so lawn signs they had planted. and the big signs they had at the entrance were truly oversized.

  5. The entire national delegation spoke at Friday’s lunch, and all 3 were absolutely passionate about making VT the national leader for renewables and efficiency. Bernie joked about whether it’s VT or CA that currently leads on efficiency – he and Barbara Boxer apparently have an ongoing joke on the topic.

    I’ll be posting notes from some of the sessions on the Green Energy Times web site tonight or tomorrow.  

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