Advantages: her advantages are shown in her very short bio, no one really knows who she is. In this year of outsiders, a little known fresh face of a state senator from lamoille county may be the perfect person to get elected. She doesn’t have the baggage of losing statewide like Racine, Shumlin, and Dunne have, plus she can define herself better than the others can.

Disadvantages: no one knows who she is! Granted she has plenty of time to campaign, but without any way to get a lot of money, in a five-way primary, there isn’t enough time in the world to campaign to a win. Worse still, lamoille isn’t the most populous county in Vermont. It won’t play anywhere near as large a part as other candidates home county’s will. If she was the only woman in the race, she might have been able to monopolize that vote, but with a much better known female opponent, this is unlikely. It would take a five way crash for her to get the nomination.

Strategy: Oddly enough in a primary, her strategy seems to be running as the moderate. In both public forums and on her website she’s called her self the moderate voice in the election. There are two possibilities here. One is that she’s so arrogant she thinks she’s already won and is preparing for the general. I give that possibility a 1% chance. Far more likely, she’s hoping for a four-way split of the liberal base with the moderates going solidly for her. While this may be a sound strategy amongst lesser known opponents, with three giants (Racine, Shumlin and Markowitz) and another fresh face (Dunne) drinking her milkshake, it probably won’t work.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_governor_elections/vermont/election_2010_vermont_governor

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/03/house-effects-render-poll-reading.html

http://vtdigger.org/2010/03/10/dubie-raises-over-115000-at-51st-birthday-party/

http://cgi.sec.state.vt.us/cgi-shl/nhayer.exe

http://cgi.sec.state.vt.us/cgi-shl/nhayer.exe

Advantages: Dunne is attempting to run an “Obama Campaign” and on the surface it’s easy to see. He’s the youngest candidate in the race at age 40, he has experience both in the private sector (advantage over Obama) and in government. Dunne can make the most legitimate attempt at tapping the energy of the youth and his themes of Community service and getting youth involved in government. Since he ALSO faced Brian Dubie, he can claim he did the second best of his rivals against Dubie. In 2006 he ran for lieutenant governor against Dubie who was running for his third term and lost 45-51. During his primary he won the southern part of the state, where he’s from, by a large margin, his home county 30 points better than statewide and Windham county 25 points better. This is an important distinction in Vermont, because if no candidate in a statewide race receives a majority of the votes, the legislature gets to pick who wins.

Disadvantages: Dunne might think he’s Obama, but he’s more like John Edwards circa 2006 (before the affair). He ran a few years ago, despite having limited experience so he thinks he’s entitled to leapfrog his more talented rivals. Further, while his other rivals have important issues, Doug Racine, Healthcare, Shumlin VT Yankee, Markowitz anti-Montpelier, and Bartlett moderately conservative outsider. Matt Dunne’s issue is Matt Dunne. To begin with, he’s 40, yet running for governor after already losing statewide a few years ago. The last person who lost statewide 2 times in a few years was Peter Welch, who lost a race for the house in 1988 and a race for governor in 1990. He wouldn’t appear in statewide politics again until 2006 when he finally won a seat in the US house. Dunne could run and win the race for lieutenant governor and become governor later on, but he’s too impatient for that.

One of Dunne’s big campaign issues against Dubie in 2006 was the fact that Dubie wasn’t in office at all time. One, Lieutenant Governor is a part time job, Howard Dean was a practicing Doctor while he was lieutenant governor, so this is common place. Two, Dunne missed a lot of votes making his complaint hypocritical. He’s from the county directly north of Windham County, Shumlin’s home county.

Despite winning Windham and Windsor quite easily in the 2006 primary, he will have to compete with Shumlin who has been known in the area for a lot longer. Further, in the 2006 general election, he failed to win Chittenden county, as previous mentioned, is a must win for a democrat. Specifically Burlington ward 3-3 through 3-6 should be a slam dunk for a democrat as Obama won them with upwards of 80%. Dunne won in the mid sixties. Good, but not good enough. Further, he lost Colchester and Essex with only a third of the vote. Obama won at a rate similar to his statewide totals, these should be swing towns. Dunne’s from a liberal part of the state, so he hasn’t had to face many competitive elections, so his campaign will depend on his strategy and skill.

http://www.mattdunne.com/about.php

http://www.law.berkeley.edu/news/2006/welch110906.html

http://vermont-elections.org/elections1/2006GELtGovrev1206.pdf

http://vermont-elections.org/elections1/2008GEUSPres.pdf

Advantages: Leadership, experience, location and name recognition. As president pro Tempore, he was in charge of the democratic caucus, and helped draft and pass tough budgets in the recession of 91. On Racine’s site he boasts his 25 years experience in government. Six years as lieutenant governor, 12 combined years as a senator, 3 as leadership, people know who he is. Since he’s from Chittenden county, he has home field advantage in an area which could have anywhere from ¼ to ½ of the democratic primary electorate. He has already announced his issue (to be discusses later) as healthcare calling for a single payer system in Vermont. Plus Racine has already faced and defeated his republican opponent, Brian Dubie, before, back in 2000.

Disadvantages: It’s been how long since he was relevant? Racine has long since been yesterday’s news, he just can’t seem to handle that. His primary senatorial experience was in the eighties, his leadership in the last year of the eighties and first year of the nineties, and lieutenant governor experience in the mid nineties. Further, he’s already had his chance to become governor in 2002 and lost a race that should have been his. He is essentially the AL Gore of the race (Circa 2002). His main experience was decades ago, his 2^nd in command experience was years ago, he lacked the charisma of his counter part (Howard Dean) and he only re-entered politics in 2006 to set himself up to try again to be governor. He was the first to announce his intent, only to get attention as the only candidate in the race. Also in regards to healthcare look at how well that’s worked for Obama and the democrats. His time has passed.

http://www.7dvt.com/2009past-prologue

http://dougracine.com/about/accomplishments

http://www.timesargus.com/article/20100310/NEWS02/3100305/1003/NEWS02

Markowitz has served as secretary of state since 1998. She has never run in any other election nor have there been any scandals or problems during her tenure. She lives in Montpelier, which is in Washington County, one of the more populous counties in the state. Her experience in the private sector was as a clerk, lawyer and director of the Municipal Law Center.

Advantages: Markowitz has several advantages that essentially make her the frontrunner of the election for both the primary and general election. First of all, polling shows she’s the only candidate leading republican Brian Dubie. While the electability argument probably won’t go far as the state is heavily democratic, it shows she has the largest pool of support (although maybe not the deepest). Second she has been a statewide elected official for the past 11 years without losing once. Further as secretary of state she’s been able to avoid partisan issues and votes that might look bad in a primary, or general election. Her opponents have all lost statewide (Shumlin, Racine, Dunne) or have not run statewide (Bartlett) From her website, she appears to be running against Montpelier, by In a democratic party being both Jewish and female will help her, at least in the margins. She’s also one of the younger candidates.

Disadvantages: she has a few problems as a candidate. For one, she doesn’t have any legislative experience. While her other opponents can lay claim to passing or voting for popular bills she’s been on the periphery of governance as secretary of state. It’s not the part time job that is Lieutenant governor that allows extra time for campaigning and building support. Nor is it the attention grabbing job of attorney general that would allow for her to send out constant press releases about convicting one scumbag or another on behalf of the public. The job doesn’t even have the glamor of the treasurer who can reunite people with their unclaimed money (treasurer Jeb Spaulding runs ads for this constantly). All she can say is that the elections went off without a hitch and she registered businesses, not actually awe-inspiring.

http://www.debforvermont.com/

cnn.com/election2008

Shumlin is the current Senate Pro Tempore of the Vermont senate, serving as a senator since 1992. He has served as pro temp from 1997 until 2002 when he lost an election for lieutenant governor to Brian Dubie and Progressive Anthony Pollina (not to be confused with USD professor Anthony Mollina). Upon the retirement of Senator Rod Gander, Shumlin ran and reclaimed his old seat. In addition to experience in the legislature Shumlin is also an experienced businessman. As owner of Putney Student Travel Shumlin has experience keeping a business profitable and balancing budgets.

Advantages: Shumlin has a myriad of advantages that would help him in the gubernatorial primary, but might hurt in the general election. To begin with, as president pro tempore, he can claim the mantle of leadership on most of the important issues of the state as he has to whip of support for any bill that comes his way. Further, he has passed several laws important to democratic primary voters. In the last session, Shumlin corralled 2/3′s of the senate in conjunction with House Speaker Shap Smith to override governor Douglas’ veto of the same-sex marriage bill.

Further, he saved a multitude of programs by overriding Douglas’ proposed 2010 budget and passing his own, with 2/3′s of both houses. Shumlin pushed the de-licensing bill of Vermont Yankee, the state’s 40 year old nuclear power plant, through the legislature when other senators were saying they would vote for it, but were waiting for someone else to act. While his primary opponent who serve in the legislature, Racine and Bartlett can claim they proposed and attempted to pass bills, Shumlin can state unequivocally that he got the job done.

Shumlin is from one of the more liberal parts of the state, Windham County. It voted for Obama 74 to 25, six points better than the state as a whole. Further the county is fairly populous, accounting for 7% of the state’s votes in the 2008 general election. In a democratic primary it could be two-four times that percentage (ballpark. There hasn’t been a competitive statewide democratic primary in Vermont since the 1994 election for US Senate against Jim Jeffords. Windham made up 15% of the primary electorate).

Disadvantages: Almost all of Shumlin’s strengths are paradoxically his weaknesses. His greatest weakness will be the economy. This is true for most democrats, as unemployment remains at 9.7% and democrats control both the executive and legislative branches federally, but it’s far worse for Shumlin. Back in 2009 Douglas attempted to pass a budget that would have called for millions in cuts. Shumlin and Speaker Smith drafted their own budget that wouldn’t cut anything but included millions in taxes, a middle class tax-cut, a new gas tax and a sales tax holiday. Said budget was then passed, vetoed, and Shumlin, along with Smith, passed their budget with the 2/3′s majority needed to override Douglas’ veto. Shumlin OWNS the economy going into 2010, more than any other democrat would because not only did he vote for the budget override, he orchestrated it.

Vermont Yankee may also come back to bite him, come November. The vote to de-license was nonbinding, so the plant isn’t doomed, but there’s a large chunk of people who would be economically displaced were it to close. The 600 or so workers for Vermont Yankee, not to mention the businesses in the town of Vernon, where the plant operates. The removal of Vermont Yankee would increase the cost of electricity, but that would not happen until 2012 at the earliest, so it’s difficult to predict if power costs would be a factor in the 2010 election.

In the primary Shumlin has a number of disadvantages to overcome. Despite his decades of leadership in the statehouse, he’s not very well known statewide. He ran for lieutenant governor in 2002, against Brian Dubie, yet he only received 32%. This was a classic split of the democrats and the progressives that occurs in many open elections and oftentimes results in republicans winning a plurality. Douglas won with a plurality of 45% in 2002 in the same way.

His residency may hurt his candidacy as well. While Windham county makes up a large chunk of the primary electorate, it’s no where near as much as Doug Racines. Racine is from Chittenden County, the population center of the state, the Vermont equivalent of Minnehaha county. In 1994, Chittenden county made up over 25% of the democratic primary electorate. Were Shumlin to cede this county to Racine, he would almost certainly lose.

Worse still, he’s already lost to Brian Dubie, his republican opponent in the general election. This may have a taste of Virginia’s Deeds/McDonnell gubernatorial election. In 2005 Creigh Deeds lost to Bob McDonnell in the election for attorney general. Four years later Deeds lost to McDonnell in the gubernatorial election by 20 points.

Shumlin is the quintessential insider. He’s had his hands in Vermont policy at the statewide level for almost two decades and with that comes blame from all corners. He’s also had success at passing policy important to primary voters, from same-sex rights, to protecting programs, to closing an old nuclear power plant. If he excites voters in the primary with his success at passing their agenda, then reassures general election voters with his experience he could be one of the few insiders that win in November. Otherwise, at age 53, with no open statewide offices coming up within the foreseeable future, he’s likely finished at the statewide level.

http://vermont-elections.org/elections1/1994DemPrimaryUSSenate.pdf

http://www.shumlinforgovernor.com/meet-peter/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704240004575085771093093364.html?KEYWORDS=peter+shumlin