Per today’s Rutland Herald:

When Republican state Sen. Kevin Mullin voted to support same-sex marriage in 2009, some of his supporters in Rutland County vowed to get revenge at the polls this year.

“This isn’t about moving on,” said Steve Cable, a Rutland resident opposed to same-sex marriage, shortly after the April 2009 vote. “This is about getting even.”

Opponents of same-sex marriage had nearly a decade to oppose civil unions, the 2nd class-citizen equivalency unit we received in 2000.  The bigots got their retribution the next year, doing major damage to some supporters of civil unions through primary challenges.  

This time, not so much so.

There’s something that happens when you make dire predictions and noise about calamity that fail to manifest.  You lose your power.  You lose your relevancy.  You become a joke.

You had your grace period.  We gave Vermont time to get comfortable with same sex couples receiving some state recognition.  That time is over.  No one cares.  Everyone’s moved on.  There are more important things for us all to deal with than whether or not some lesbian couple in the Northeast Kingdom needs your permission before they can marry.

Or, as the Herald reports:

Mullin said there was some opposition to him during the race because of his same-sex marriage vote, although the crowd that tried to unseat him was “very small and not very organized,” he said.

The wrong side of history is a very lonely place to be.

To recount or not to recount (Brattleboro Reformer Editorial; 8/26/2010), here:

The question on everyone’s mind right now is pretty evident: Will there be a recount of the votes cast in Tuesday’s Democratic gubernatorial primary?

There are less than 200 votes separating Windham County’s “hometown boy,” Sen. Peter Shumlin and former Lt. Governor and current Richmond senator Doug Racine.

In addition, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz is less than 700 votes away from the top spot.

So it only seems logical that all of the candidates should at least wait for the official results to arrive before claiming victory.

[…]

One major reason that a recount should be considered is that while 106 of the state’s cities, such as Brattleboro, use optical scanners to tally votes, 140 of them count their ballots by hand.

Town clerks and their assistants do an outstanding job when it comes to any and all elections in Vermont, but all it takes is one or two miscounted votes in each town to swing the vote to another candidate.

[…]

The Reformer agrees with Racine and counsels the candidates to wait for the official results to come in before hoisting a victory flag. If the vote count is as close as it was on Wednesday, Racine and Markowitz should call for a recount and Shumlin should agree. It’s in the best interest of all Vermonters.

Considering everything at stake, it is my hope that Doug Racine and his campaign gives serious consideration to requesting a recount as concerns the Vermont Democratic gubernatorial primary election.

Some rank and file Democrats and also others who voted in the election as well, including some supporters of Peter Shumlin, had stated online that a recount should be done when final unofficial results had not yet been called by the press.

They stated their opinions that it was indeed crucial to make sure all votes were properly counted and accounted for so there would be no doubts of whom got the most votes and is rightly the Democratic nominee.

The fact is the race was way too close, especially knowing how easy it is for things to go wrong during the initial vote counting process in a statewide race, which the state auditors race from several years ago helped to illustrate, when one candidate seemed to win and on a recount another of candidates had been found to have actually received the most votes and had been duly elected.

In addition, since this was a primary election with a lower total of voters, it will not take as long as the aforementioned recount had, so this cannot be an excuse not to do so.

This election is far too important to allow any doubts or questions to linger over it, which would be the case if an official recount was not performed.

Morgan W. Brown

Montpelier

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With all the excitement and suspense since the primary, I never got a chance to say how honored I was to be a part of the grass-roots movement to carry Doug Racine to the governor’s seat.  I think what we accomplished deserves recognition and a moment of celebratory reflection.

Conventional wisdom is that money wins elections.  If there is any take-away from the whole race, it is that that ain’t necessarily so (cue Gershwin).   With all the funding that other candidates could claim, the passion of roughly 600 grass-roots volunteers in the Racine campaign pretty-much levelled-out the playing field.  “Money doesn’t buy happiness,” as the saying goes; but apparently, it also doesn’t buy elections in Vermont.  I say this with no disrespect to the other candidates, who all had their share of informed, committed supporters; but because this bodes well for the general, where Brian Dubie will be surfing on national cash.

What we learned from the primary, and what will empower us as we move into the general campaign is the certain knowledge that Vermont voters as a whole are becoming smarter, more engaged, and are swelling the Democratic/Progressive ranks.

It is a testament to Doug Racine’s personal magnetism and his honest and realistic approach to issues which matter to Vermont voters that his message resonated so well without a boatload of media buys.  

Whatever the final outcome, this primary has restored my hope for the future of Vermont and my commitment to the cause of public education in the service of democracy. Thank you, Doug!

Both states had seriously contested primaries.  In  Vermont, most of the contests were in the Democratic Party, while Florida had serious contests at the top of both party tickets.  I guess Floridians were too busy lining up for the early bird specials.  The turnout differences are amazing.  

The New York Times reports that in Florida “[i]n all, 1.25 million Republicans cast ballots in the Republican Governor’s race, while fewer than 909,000 Democrats voted in the Democratic Senate primary.”  Given the state’s population of about 18, 537,969 (at last estimate), that’s a turnout of 6.7% of the population for the GOP and 4.9% for the Dems.

In Vermont (population estimate: 621,254), there were 72,766 votes cast in the Democratic primary for Governor.  That’s 11.7% of the population.  (And in August!)

What does that say?  Vermont is a community.  Florida is a confederation of condos and shopping malls.

[UPDATE: AARP gubernatorial debate set for tonight has been POSTPONED to Sept. 26, according to the Associated Press.]

Brian Dubie gets a few more days summer vacation and maybe the time to realize that the other side has already figured out its opponent.

“You know what I talked about this morning? I did the final edits on my 10-point jobs plan that I look forward to discussing ,” Dubie said. “The other side will figure out their opponent and when they do I look forward to the debate that will happen.” Times-Argus

Labor Day and September is looking us in the face and Dubie is still polishing his jobs plan.

It reportedly has 10 points, which by now must be quite well polished and edited. He had time to polish in June. He was reportedly polishing in July. He continued polishing in August and reports indicate he will to polish into September.

We all look forward to seeing his ten point plan.  

Those potentially awkward debates will have to wait too. The close democratic primary results have put the debates front and center into prime election period. Debate shy Dubie had scheduled his first debate with the democratic candidate this Thursday. This delay may increase the potential statewide audience and importance of a forum he is noted for being weak in.  It will shine the spotlight on a part time Lt. Gov. with a history of phoning it in.  

Tired tonight?  Me, too. Still, it's worth starting thinking about what this election means. People have already started in with the recriminations, and in a multi-candidate race that means the spoiler question.  Was there a spoiler? Who was it? Why did they screw things up for the rest of us?

First off, let's drop the word "spoiler". It tends to piss people off whenever it comes up, whether it's accurate or not. It might be better to ask about the candidates, and whether their presence led to the near-deadlock we're in now.

An example of the discussion is a set of comments from one of my Facebook friends, who was highly critical of Susan Bartlett. Here's an example of some of the things she's said:

Thanks  for nothing, Bartlett, for staying in a race where you had less than a  snowball's chance in Hades. Will we have you to thank for the  unthinkable this November?

And:

I don’t really think these are correct. There’s an implication that Susan was in the race for some reason other than to win: that she was feeding her own ego, or positioning herself for some future career outside of the Legislature.

I don’t think there’s any reason to say that. For one thing, as long as I’ve known Susan, which is a long time, she has never struck me as an ego-trip kind of person. What I think was going on here is that Susan had what she saw was a real political difference with the other candidates, and she thought she could offer people a real choice. I never thought there was any kind of path to victory for her, but that’s a separate question. She obviously did, and that’s why she ran.

You could also argue that she really didn’t have much impact on the outcome: she didn’t divert that many votes, or grassroots workers, or dollars from the other campaigns. She didn’t even win her own county, did she?

A bigger question, though, is that it isn’t obvious that she drew disproportionately from a single candidate. Possibly more Deb than the others because she might have attracted some voters who were motivated by the chance to elect a woman, but the conventional wisdom is that a weak candidate hurts the other candidate who is most ideologically similar, and that person isn’t obvious. It’s entirely possible that even if this had been a three-way or four-way race it would have ended up just about this close.

The candidate who has baffled me from the beginning in this race was Matt Dunne. I like Matt, I think he’s a very attractive and energetic candidate, but his role in the race never made any sense to me. From Matt’s perspective, getting into the race late, I don’t really see how he looked at the candidates who were already in and thought that there was something missing there, so that he could significantly add to the array of choices.

Does that make him a spoiler? No, in part because, even more than Susan, his votes could have been split evenly among the three candidates who finished above him. That’s what people mean when they say he was everybody’s second choice.

Couple of things to deal with, here…

First of all, regarding that “1000 Vermonters for Change” project and the $35,000 so many of you pledged to send the primary winner the day after the primary. Well, it is the day after the primary, but clearly its a little premature to be mailing those $100 checks, as the winner isn’t entirely clear.

Everyone will be watching to see if the vote total changes meaningfully when it is certified in the next couple days – and then whether or not one of the other candidates opts to call for a recount. When it becomes clear who the nominee is, I’ll be sure to post a link to the winner’s fundraising page.

Second, we had a contest, yes? A mug or stein to whoever came closest to calling the final spread! Looking back at the entries, the winner is the not-quite-psychic-but-close-enough-to-be-a-bit-creepy placlair, whose prediction can be seen here.

So placlair – what’s it gonna be? Mug or stein? Email me at jodum-at-poetworld.net with an address, and I’ll send it your way shortly. Congratulations! If a recount really turns things on their heads, maybe somebody else will have to get one too…

Racine’s press release:

BURLINGTON, VT – The results of the gubernatorial race are too close to call, Doug Racine declared Wednesday morning. “We are seeing discrepancies in the online, unofficial results, and we want to wait for the official results before making a decision about next steps,” Racine explained. “I have not conceded and I have talked with Peter Shumlin, who has agreed that we should see the official results before announcing a winner.”

The Secretary of State indicated to Racine that the official results would be available sometime between Friday and Tuesday.

From the e-mail I just received from the Shumlin campaign:

Thanks to your incredible support, it looks like we have won the Democratic gubernatorial primary!

Personally, I’m waiting for the official results.