‘Ol reliable herself, Vermont Yankee is showing her vulnerabilities again.

We have just learned that the

NRC says VY is on closed cycle thru cooling towers due to low river levels and high water temps in river.

Remember that nasty old condenser?      

Now that the NRC has, for all intents and purposes, turned its scrutiny away from VY until 2032, we have yet another reminder that unanticipated environmental challenges to nuclear cooling systems can occur, even in a “land-locked” state like Vermont.

Yesterday I pronounced Randy Brock’s gubernatorial effort DOA. after his campaign finance report showed that he’d loaned $300,000 of his own money to his campaign — accounting for nearly 60% of his unimpressive fundraising total. (And given my near-Merlinian omniscience, cough, I don’t know why Randy hasn’t just given up already.) Then, this morning I read a sentence by VTDigger’s political analyst Jon Margolis that, in my fevered imagination, seemed to be pointed directly at me: “No, the campaign for governor is not over.”

This came after his determined effort to make lemonade out of Randy Brock’s big bag of lemons:

Lending money to your own campaign is neither improper nor unusual. Shumlin did it in 2010, though his loans were never as large a percentage of his total campaign treasury as Brock’s. And considering that Brock didn’t really start running until a few months ago, raising $527,000 isn’t a paltry showing.

… No, the campaign for governor is not over. A candidate doesn’t need more money than his opponent. He just needs enough to run his own campaign and get his message out to the voters.

I respect Jon Margolis. He’s certainly accomplished far more in his journalistic life than I have. But on this one, he’s wrong. He’s bending over backwards to give Brock every benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he wants to appear “balanced” by artificially evening out the pluses and minuses of the Brock effort.

Or, as I’d put it, “the doomed Brock effort.” Sorry, he has no chance. And the race for Governor may well spin completely out of his control, giving Peter Shumlin a victory of historic proportions. I’m more convinced of that today than I was last night, after an initial perusal of the campaign finance reports.

After the jump: dispatches from Death’s waiting room.

A few points:

Out of Brock’s $300,000 in loans to his own campaign, $210,000 came on Thursday, July 12 — a sign that Brock was desperate to put up a halfway-decent number in his finance report. For that matter, he may have even been desperate to cover all the checks he has to keep writing to his big-bucks campaign consultants.

And Brock has spent far more on his campaign than any other candidate in any race. He rightfully points out that he has to spend heavily to make up for Shumlin’s advantages in name recognition and free publicity. However, that doesn’t address the fact that Brock’s outgo is faster than his intake. Vermont Pundit Laureate Eric Davis told the Freeploid that Brock will need to raise $100,000 a month from now until the election to be competitive in the fall. So far, he’s averaging less than $40,000 a month.

The Freeploid also points out that Brock’s paltry fundraising puts him in some bad company:

That’s less than two of the three unsuccessful Democratic challengers of Republican Gov. Jim Douglas had raised at the point in their campaigns. Only Gaye Symington in 2008 had a smaller contribution total – $205,309. Scudder Parker in 2006 had raised $299,677 and Peter Clavelle in 2004 had $260,204.

Eesh. Brock raised a total of $226,000 from other people. Symington’s total, in 2012 dollars, was $219,000.

Can we all agree that if you’re a gubernatorial candidate, you do NOT want to be comparable, in any way, to Gaye Symington?

Given his campaign’s unfortunate burn rate and Symingtonian fundraising performance, it’s clear that Randy Brock is not only in danger of losing the race — he’s in danger of falling into political irrelevance long before the first vote is cast. He’s going to have to do a lot better just to avoid the appearance of irrelevance.

One other thing: Brock’s $226,000 in contributions from people other than himself includes $82,000 from donors who are already maxed out — having given Brock the legal maximum of $2,000.

To be fair, many of Shumlin’s donors have maxed out as well. But the Governor is a proven fundraiser, netting almost a million and a half dollars for his 2010 candidacy. There’s little doubt that he will be able to maintain or increase the flow of dollars into his warchest. Brock will have to more than double his pace, while operating from an extremely weak position.  

I could be wrong. It’s happened before and, God knows, it’ll happen again. But I stand by my statement: the Brock campaign is DOA.  

Just in case you missed it (doubtful), I think this is a good start to the Dem’s media message:

(dammit, can’t figure out the embed code crap… any chance GMD can update how the diary side handles images / videos / media)

Now if we could get something done, and hold the Dems to a tougher standard on supporting the middle and lower class…  

As Jack noted earlier – the Rutland County GOP “apologized” this afternoon.

Here’s a reminder of what they were “apologizing” for:

And:

Here’s the problem:

They haven’t apologized for posting a clearly racist post.

Instead, they did a whole heap of blame-shifting, by implying that the problem wasn’t the post and its content, but instead the problem is whiny democrats making them take it down.

And they said they’d change their editorial policy.

Um … no. Sorry, folks, but what you need is some serious education regarding the evils of racism and a 180 degree change of attitude toward people whose skin includes varying amounts of melanin.

Oh, and Rob Towle’s resignation might not be a bad choice, either – at least if you want to send the signal that you’re serious about racism being unacceptable in your ranks.

Well, the filing deadline has come and gone for campaign finance reports in Vermont. It’s a big day; thanks to the state’s antiquated campaign finance reporting rules, candidates haven’t had to file since one full year ago. (From this point on, they have to report once a month through the rest of the year.)

So, lots of numbers. Earlier, I reported the headline: Randy Brock reported a better-than-expected total of $527,000 — but only because he loaned his own campaign $300,000. In actual contributions, it’s a disappointing total. And that, plus the fact that he reported expenditures of nearly 300K on his campaign — far, far more than any other candidate — puts him in a deep financial hole in his race against Governor Shumlin.

Now, on to some other tidbits.

In the only high-profile primary race on the Democratic side, incumbent Bill Sorrell had a decent report, but challenger TJ Donovan outraised him by a significant margin. Sorrell raised $83,000 in cash — including a $2,000 loan to his own campaign — and reported in-kind contributions of over $9,000. He has spent nearly $38,000 already*, which leaves him with about $46,000 cash on hand.

*Most of Sorrell’s expenditures have gone to payroll; he has four paid campaign staffers who are drawing regular paychecks.

Donovan raised a total of $128,000 (no loans), with expenditures of just under 40K, leaving him with $88,000 cash on hand — nearly double Sorrell’s total. And bear in mind that we’re only about six weeks away from the primary, so Sorrell has very little time to close the money gap.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Vermont Republicans. Aside from Randy Brock, noted above, their three candidates for US Congress reported pitiable fundraising totals while the incumbents, Dem Peter Welch and Indy Bernie Sanders, reported huge numbers.

After the jump: Beth Pearce, Vince Illuzzi, Doug Hoffer, and the Lt. Gov race.

Jack McMullen, the no-hoper Republican candidate for Attorney General, reported goose eggs across the board. Well, he loaned his campaign a few thousand bucks to cover expenses incurred so far, but he has received not a single dollar in contributions. Haunted by the ghost of Fred Tuttle.

Treasurer hopeful Wendy Wilton, as reported earlier, raised very little money: a total of less than $16K, with about 11K still on hand. She’s in a very deep financial hole against (appointed) incumbent Beth Pearce, who reported total fundraising of $76,000 for the reporting period, and total money raised at $84,000. Pearce has spent 33K, but she still has a roughly five-to-one advantage in cash on hand. That’s not good for Wilton, who was supposed to be one of the VTGOP’s bright hopes for 2012.

There’s one race where the Republican has a clear financial edge, and one that’s fairly close in dollars.

The former is the race for Auditor. Vince Illuzzi has substantially more money than Doug Hoffer — but for two reasons unrelated to his fundraising prowess. Illuzzi reported total donations of $31,641. But $17,600 of that was in transfers from “Vince Illuzzi for State Senate.” His campaign actually raised less than $12,000. (To be fair, Illuzzi has a big fundraiser coming up, as has been reported here previously.) He also reported a personal loan to his own campaign of $25,000 — which apparently was not reported under “Contributions.” On Brock’s report, his personal loan of $300,000 was listed under “Contributions.” Could it possibly be that our Auditor wannabe made a substantial mistake on his campaign finance form?

(Comedy side note: On the front page, the filer has to sign and print his name. Illuzzi signed his name, and in the space for the printed name, he printed “CANDIDATE.” Hope he does a better job filling out forms if he becomes Auditor.)

Illuzzi has spent a little over $4,000 so far — with the biggest line item being mileage reimbursements to himself, for driving to campaign events from his home in Newport.

Doug Hoffer reported contributions of just over $10,000, with total expenditures of $3,650. So, with Illuzzi dipping deeply into his own wallet and his other campaign warchest, Hoffer is at a distinct financial disadvantage. If you’re considering a tactically sound contribution, he’s not a bad choice.

In the race for Lt. Governor, incumbent Phil Scott didn’t raise a whole lot, but he still did a lot better than Dem challenger Cass Gekas. Scott raised about $27K in cash and has only spent about $4K. There were some technical problems with Gekas’ report so I only got the topline: she raised $7,785. So she’s off to a slow start.

If these first financial returns are any indication, most of the Republican candidates are already in deep trouble. And the only two who are doing well are the two “mavericks” — Vince Illuzzi, who is aggressively positioning himself as a person who has worked with both parties, and Phil Scott, who (almost always) tries to position himself somewhere near the middle of the political spectrum.   What does that say for the VTGOP’s 2012 strategery of moving aggressively to the right?

And what will it mean for the future direction of the VTGOP if their only statewide officeholders are Republican nonconformists?

I’m sure I didn’t catch all the big news from today’s filings. Watch VTDigger and Paul Heintz at Seven Days, as well as the Freeploid and Vermont Press Bureau if not blocked by their paywalls.

If anyone has any corrections to my diary, or questions I didn’t cover, please write them in the Comments and I’ll be happy to amend my post.  

TransCanada is called an energy giant. This giant has almost 40,000 miles of pipeline, 355 billion cubic feet of gas storage facilities and capacity to generate 10,800 megawatts of power. The giant has local connections here in Vermont; one is the Bellows Falls hydro-electric dam which they purchased in 2005. They also are affiliated with and heavily committed to the Keystone pipeline project in the Midwest. In the Midwest and New York they are giving away fairly sizable amounts of money to communities.

TransCanada is committed to strengthening relationships with key stakeholders and building healthy and vibrant communities where we operate

In two press recent press releases TransCanada brags …er announces having given approximately $340,000 in the mid-west and an additional $350,000 in the New York City area to community projects.

That is the give, now the taking part here in Vermont.

 Vtdigger.com reports TransCanada is pursuing a different approach in Vermont. The town of Rockingham and the village of Bellows Falls are being pushed hard by TransCanada to significantly lower the hydro-electric dam’s current taxed value. The Canadian energy giant is disputing a state of Vermont funded and approved property assessment. The value of the dam is sizable part (almost half) for the Village of Bellows Falls and (approx. a third) for the Town of Rockingham’s tax base.  

On June 20, town listers decided not to allow the reduction in market value, after hearing TransCanada’s case about a week and a half ago. TransCanada is now appealing that decision with the town’s Board of Civil Authority (BCA), which will hear the case on July 17, and then make a decision within 30 days.

If TransCanada gets the proposed reduction, it would result in a total tax revenue loss of $640,000, which would have to be made up by other taxpayers.

[…]There is also the threat of possible litigation if TransCanada is unhappy with the BCA’s decision. In the past, TransCanada has sued Littleton, N.H., and Concord, Vt., over dam property values. The company won its case in Concord.

While they fight here in Vermont it seems they are waging a well funded charm offensive in other areas.  TransCanada is putting a little goodwill in the pipeline out west and in New York City. “When we became aware of the obvious needs in the communities where we operate, we felt compelled to help.” says William Taylor, TransCanada's senior vice-president of eastern power. But in cash strapped Bellows Falls and Rockingham they feel compelled to wipe out $640,000 from the community’s tax base.  

UPDATE: Going national.

The story has been picked up by the Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

The story keeps on going. Here’s the new post from Rob Towle, chair of the Rutland Republican Committee:

***OFFICIAL STATEMENT***

I totally regret that some members of the Democratic party were offended by the satirical post on this page yesterday. There were some that commented on the post that they did not see how the possibly inflammatory comments were anything other political commentary. This page is not the original author and the intent was to show the author’s frustration at the current economic situation that he/she finds themselves in.

I realize now that there are those that were deeply offended and for that I am very saddened and I will make sure that our editoral process will result in posts to our pages that reflect the spirit of good natured political discussions. My hope is that we can get back to the critical dialog necessary to move Vermont and the US back towards economic prosperity.

Any comments are greatly appreciated.

Now viewed in isolation, the second paragraph is almost a legitimate, sincere apology.

The problem is that it was preceded by more of the same truculent, self-justifying stuff he was posting yesterday.

First off, he claims that “some members of the Democratic Party were offended.” In fact, the first person to challenge him was the treasurer of the Franklin County Republican Committee. The offense was not personal to those who were offended, the post was offensive in itself.

Second,I’d like to hear his view of how the suggestion that President Obama is a cornbread and fried chicken-eating, praying-to-Mecca Muslim is any kind of legitimate political comment, satiric or otherwise.

When he’s done with that, how about explaining how the suggestion that President Obama is turning the country over to Spanish speakers, and that real Americans will be forced to learn Spanish?

And finally, how does any of this have any bearing on Social Security, a Democratic idea that we have had to fight to protect against Republican attacks for more than half a century?

Rob, our door is open. If you have any response to these points I urge you to post them right here.  

For a few moments, it looked like there was some happy news for the Randy Brock campaign today — the deadline for filling the first finance reports of this year. As his report was filed, we got the top line number: $527,000. That looked pretty darn healthy; Vermont Pundit Laureate Eric Davis had said Brock needed to raise $350-400K to stay competitive in the race.

So at first glance, it looked like had ha cleared that barrier with ease.

BUT… then we got the actual report. And it turns out that Randy Brock’s $527,000 includes a $300,000 loan from Brock to his own campaign.

Money bomb FAIL.

And there’s more bad news: Brock reported campaign expenditures of $282,000. Which means he spent more money than he raised — when you subtract his personal loan. I guess those “expert” out-of-state consultants don’t come cheap.

Let’s remind ourselves of the context: Peter Shumlin raised almost $700,000 and spent only $77K. So Shumlin has about $625K cash on hand, while Brock has $244K. And if he hadn’t loaned himself a buttload of money, his campaign would be significantly underwater.

Yikes. Allow me to be the first to say it: Randy Brock’s campaign is DOA.  

Yes folks, today at 5:00 p.m. is the deadline for Vermont candidates to file financial reports covering the last 366 days. (Leap Year, ahem.) I stopped by the Secretary of State’s office around 1:30 to see what had been turned in so far. The answer: not much. Peter Shumlin, Phil Scott, Wendy Wilton, early filers among statewide candidates.

(I’m only looking at the statewide races, because the prospect of looking at all those Legislative candidates is just way too daunting. And I’ll concentrate on the topline. If anyone has specific questions about particular donors or anything, feel free to post ’em in the Comments. I will be picking up the rest of the reports today before the SoS closes.)

So, the big headline: Peter Shumlin is Mr. Moneybags. And on a hot sticky day like today, how better to cool off than to take a swim in your Big Vault O’Loot? Shumlin’s total: $just short of $680,000, including about 3K in in-kind contributions. That’s pretty damn awesome for a guy who isn’t quite officially (cough, cough, choke) running for re-election.

Add to that, a surplus of $26K from 2010 (waste not, want not). Subtract total uncampaign expenditures of $77K (wow, it’s expensive to not run for office). Grand total on hand, in the bank: $625,130.02.

Hmm. Randy Brock’s $40,000 “money bomb” is looking more like a defective sparkler. We’ll have his total later today.

After the jump: Wendy Wilton and Phil Scott. Can’t you just hardly wait?

The other toplines: Wendy Wilton, Republican candidate for Treasurer, raised $15,970 and spent just under 5K. Not a great start for someone aspiring to be Keeper of the Public Purse. About half her cash came from seven big donors: 2K each from Joyce Errecart of Shelburne and Richard and Jody Wilcox of Mendon, and 1K each from Ralph Colin, Jr. of Manchester Center, Bog and Judi Sherman of Leicester, and Gene Richards/Spruce Mortgage of Burlington.

(No word yet on Dem incumbent Beth Pearce.)

And the People’s Cheerce, Phil Scott, is doin’ his grass-roots thing. Raised a total of $31,408, including 4K in in-kind contributions. Spent less than 4K. No word yet from Cass Gekas.

Nothing so far on Auditor, AG, US Senate or Congress. More news as it becomes available. Stay tuned!

Lately we’ve heard of the stellar composition of Vince Illuzzi’s fundraiser “host committee” — notably including some of his State Senate colleagues of the Democratic persuasion: Dick Mazza, Hinda Miller, and former Senator Elizabeth Ready, crossing party lines to support Illuzzi’s latterly-declared bid for Auditor and (implicitly) oppose their party’s choice for the gig, Doug Hoffer.

Something in the water in our senior chamber, perhaps?

Well, here comes more happy news of Senate bipartisanship in the Auditor’s race. Or, to use a different word, betrayal. The (paywalled) Vermont Press Bureau brings us this touching anecdote:

Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell served as Illuzzi’s personal photographer during the Independence Day parade in Montpelier,taking shots as Illuzzi shook hands along the parade route.

Illuzzi said Campbell also acted as a sort of “choreographer” during the parade. “He’d say, ‘Stand here and go here,'” said Illuzzi. “It was very helpful, actually.”

Campbell hasn’t replied to VPB’s request for comment, but Vince certainly has. Is Campbell going to cross party lines and actually endorse Illuzzi?

“Endorse is an interesting word,” he said. “He is sympathetic.”

“Let’s put it this way,” Illuzzi added. “He’s certainly not opposing me.”

Awwww. So cute you could puke. Especially if you believe in some semblance of party loyalty, eh?

This is the same John Campbell who seemed to have more trouble with his own Democratic caucus than with the other guys, who repeatedly bollixed up the agenda, fell way behind the House’s pace on key bills, got into a public argument with fellow Dem Dick McCormack (in which he called McCormack “a horse’s ass” within hearing distance of a reporter), and blamed freshmen Senators for screwing up the Senate’s inner workings and basically telling them to STFU. He didn’t name names in that quote, but he clearly had significant differences with fellow Dems Peter Galbraith and Phil Baruth during the session.

To recap… John Campbell gets along just fine with his longtime Senate buds, regardless of party. He has trouble with Democrats who don’t toe his line. He’s engaged in a PDA with one of the Republicans’ statewide candidates. Gee, maybe we should redraw party lines in the Senate: you’d have the Prog/Dems, the Republicans, and the Old Buddies’ Club. If the Buddies can’t scare up a majority, then we can set up a brace of comfy chairs in the corner where they can smoke cigars and mutter imprecations at the whipper-snappers of the Senate.