Okay, let's get to it (and note the poll to left).
The question has been called by Terri Hallenbeck in today's Burlington Free Press, so the debate is on. What about Anthony Pollina as a “unity” candidate for Governor? According to the article, Pollina Martha Abbott and David Zuckerman were at Friday's Democratic fundraiser trying to talk up the idea. The Freeps also reports they've been reaching out to liberal Dems on this for sometime (and yeah, now that the conversation is officially out in the open, I was contacted by Dave Z last week about the idea).
First of all, its worth noting again that plenty of us saw this coming. With these press reports, the “spoiler” argument is now up for grabs, as Pollina seems to be the only lefty making any meaningful moves towards running. If he announces this month, and the Dems find somebody in December or January, he'll have a legitimate point of debate that it's the Dem who will be the “spoiler.” To the leadership of the Democratic Party, I can only say: it should not have come to this.
But on to the matter at hand. The fact is, there's a lot to say on the topic, and a lot of air that would need to be cleared before meaningfully moving forward – if that seems like the wisest move. There are pros and cons – and a whole world of history, but while others will dance around it, I invite folks to flesh it out here (a GMD conversation which has already begun, actually). I'll lay out many of the cards after the fold…
Here's the deck of cards for the table-laying, as I see them:
Positive Card 1 – An Apollo-Soyuz Moment
It's finally a way for us all to start working together (maybe). Over the last few years, there have been many times where the Ds and Ps have actually cooperated behind the scenes – sometimes even in front of the scenes (most obviously with Zuckerman's committee chairmanship). This would be a far more extraordinary step.
The truth is, the level of cooperation has gradually risen as the prominence of partisan-warrior Pollina has dropped. Putting him front and center of the Progressive Party's public face again – but this time willingly holding hands with Democrats, not just individually, but institutionally would be a dramatic change. Some of his fans may not put up with it.
But the fact is, if he were willing to run with a P and a D by his name (it seems, at this point, his running as an independent is not an option) it would be an extraordinary move on his part – one that should be seriously considered and discussed graciously and openly by Dems. He's sticking his neck out, and gets a lot of respect in my book for doing so.
Negative Card 1 – Burnt Bridges
Let's be real: there are Dems who are going to hold a grudge against this guy forever.
He's been as openly contemptuous of Dems as Bernie ever was, but unlike Bernie, he hasn't tried to build bridges with Dems, he's tried to build bypasses around them. To make them irrelevent, with the express purpose of supplanting them. His notion of campaign finance reform has been squarely at odds with the very existence of a Democratic Party. To turn on a dime like this will be challenging.
But it goes deeper with many than a disagreement, some don't trust him personally. Pollina has, like Barack Obama, cast himself as a different kind of politician – someone above the backstabbing, self-serving world of the political. And like Obama, that packaging invites a special kind of scrutiny.
For many, that packaging blew up with the campaign finance issue several years back.
Pollina was running for Lieutenant Governor and had intended to accept public financing under the state's campaign finance laws. As part of that law – that he himself was instrumental in passing – there were deadlines and restrictions on things of value that can be shared between candidates and political parties. Polls are expensive things, and were very much considered a thing of value under that scheme.
Now, if the Progressive Party had commissioned a poll and made it public for all to see, that would've been one thing – but they didn't. They paid for a poll and shared it with Pollina and others behind the scenes – a violation of the law's limits in letter and spirit. How do we know this? Because high profile Progressives were naively talking it up around the Statehouse.
So my boss at the Democratic Party at the time wrote a letter to the AG's office asking him to look into it. That's when all hell broke loose. Pollina sued Sorrell, Deb Markowitz and my boss (Mark Michaud). In fact, they sued Michaud by name – not even under his title as VDP Executive Director – which made the whole thing stink of a SLAPP suit, designed to intimidate. Pollina was heard to suggest that it was all a conspiracy (“I smell Dean! I smell Leahy” – I was told by someone), before finally being scolded out of court by Judge Sessions.
He never took any responsibility for screwing up (in fact, his arguments to throw out the law when it worked against him were later used by anti-campaign reform forces in court). Instead, the only thing I would ever hear from the edges of that crowd were angry charges of hypocrisy – insistence that Doug Racine had to be just as guilty. That was hogwash, as Doug is an absolute boy scout about the law, and the Racine campaign at the time was downright paranoid about dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't' rather than make a mistake.
But the message was that the evil, corrupt Dems just couldn't be more pure on any matter than the Progs, so it must be hypocrisy. No further proof necessary.
It was ugly, and writing it up STILL makes me mad all over again. And -correct me if I'm wrong – but to this day, there's never been a simple acknowledgement of responsibility for screwing up.
And for many, that cemented in their minds the notion that Pollina, at the end of the day, was no less a “politician” than any of those he routinely railed against.
Negative Card 2: Weeniecrats
Vermont is full of Douglas Democrats. Tarrantcrats. Those who demanded that the left of their party pull together and play like a team when the Party's candidate for Governor was the annoyingly conservative Howard Dean in the 90's, but who would hypocritically refuse to play like a team if someone too liberal for their tastes were the Party's candidate.
I don't know how you get those folks to shape up, but there are enough of them to really screw things up on Election Day.
Negative Card 3: The Anti-Dem Faithful
They aint gonna like it. Sure, some will rationalize it as the next step in attaining Pollina's historical goal of supplanting the Dems, but the fact is, if Pollina accepts a D by his name, there are several of his allies who will stay home from voting – and perhaps more importantly (as their numbers are probably too small to impact the voting totals too much) – to stay home from volunteering.
Crass Card 1 – Can Pollina win?
I take no joy in saying this, but no freaking way.
In a straight shot at Douglas, he comes in less than Clavelle, who was a bridge builder to the middle (and even the right). Pollina has historically alienated at least as many people as he has reached out to, and Democratic voters (as we all know) tend to be the last group willing to fall into line when told to.
And despite his long efforts to work with those in the working class crowd who are GOP-oriented, most of them still won't vote for him. A few will – and that'll be the few his campaign will parade around the spaghetti dinners to demonstrate his working class cred, but that'll be the end of it.
What about Bernie you say? How does he do it? Well, for one thing he does it by not getting in his own way. By picking up the “independent” label, he adopts a very powerful, positive term, and in the process allows folks to project many of their own political hopes onto him. And that's not phoniness, either. Once he's got their attention in that way, he makes real connections.
But Pollina will not run without the Progressive brand he's worked so long and hard to market, and for many on the right, as well as the middle, that P is a big ol' scarlet letter. Clavelle couldn't shake it, even though he explicitly dropped it for the D tag. A lot of folks cling to the notion that running as a Dem was precisely WHY Clavelle lost, but that's ridiculous. It brought him votes – I daresay at least 10 or 12%. The problem was, that it needed to buy him more like 26% above and beyond what he could get by running as a P. Remember, we all talk of the Clavelle campaign as a monumental failure, but he had a lot better showing than Pollina ever did – even on his best run.
My prediction:
Pollina with a straight shot: 35%
Pollina in a 3-way race: 14%
Crass Card 2 – Money & Resources:
Some of the usual suspects who put a lot of money behind big ticket Dems will step up and support Pollina, but many will not. Douglas's financial advantage will increase with a Pollina unity candidacy.
And Pollina would rightfully expect access to Democratic resources – such as their now unmatched voter lists and polling data. Such information is the prized possesion of the VDP, and its hard to imagine them turning those over to Pollina, which would likely mean turning them over to the Progressive Party.
Nor would Pollina find the resource-sharing mechanism for Democratic campaigns very tasteful: the Coordinated Campaign. A legal entity that would require Pollina to fundraise into for his “buy-in” to the resource sharing. This would be tantamount to Pollina raising tens of thousands of dollars into the Democratic Party.
Just try and get your brain around that one.
Positive Card 2 – Money & Resources:
People get excited about Pollina they way they don't get excited about too many Dems. Field assets could be combined in some key areas and the potential is there for a fantastic ground campaign. This would go a long way towards refocusing anti-Douglas work back towards the ground which, honestly, is where the left has a traditional advantage that they've frittered away through self-doubt and a tendency to run field operations as though they're either secondary, or as though we're all still living in the sixties.
Also – Organized Labor in Vermont just adores Pollina. That's why the state AFL endorsed him over Shumlin for Lite Guv, even though Shumlin had a 100% AFL-CIO voting record (ouch). Whereas Labor will likely help out whoever the Dem candidate is, expect them to do so with greater enthusiasm if it's Pollina.
Crass Card 3 – The Spin of Defeat:
There's going to be some ugly, defeatist calculating going on. If Douglas can't be beaten (as many believe – if they didn't, the Dems would have a candidate by now), some will try to calculate what kind of loss would look best. If Pollina runs as a P-D and loses, maybe it can be blamed on Pollina and the Dems don't lose any perceived power. On the other hand, the very fact that the Dem bench is all too chickenshit to run against Douglas in the first place suggests a major loss of face, and therefore perceived power. If Pollina runs in a threeway, and Douglas wins, maybe that can be blamed on Pollina too.
Sounds ugly, I know – but there's no question many are thinking in such terms.
Put it all together and you get…
If it went this way, and we saw a Pollina-Dunne unity ticket, a big part of me would be thrilled. I can certainly let bygones be bygones, and would strongly and relentlessly encourage others to as well In fact, I would bust my butt to help him succeed and give naysayers quite a bit of hell if they didn't shut up and get on board.
But in all honesty, I'd be feeling that we'd be working to raise some important issues and open some strategic vulnerabilities to take Douglas down in 2010, as I just don't see Pollina coming close. I really wish I did.
So- yer-alls turn. Let's see those cards – don't hold back. It'll probably get heated, and that's okay, because it probably needs to – but let's see if we can't make it productive.
Fire away…
