TimesArgus.com - We Are Vermont

Campaigns relatively tame The million dollar race Nastiness down-ticket Money doesn't buy votes

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MONTPELIER – Peter Clavelle, who last week was returned to his day job as mayor of Vermont's largest city, lost more than votes on Election Day. He lost money.

In a post-election appeal to supporters for cash, the Clavelle campaign disclosed that it had accumulated a debt of $35,000 in addition to the $20,000 Clavelle and his wife Betsy Ferries personally contributed to the Democrat's failed first bid for statewide public office.

"We always knew that taking on a one-term incumbent governor in Vermont was a daunting challenge," Clavelle wrote to supporters. "We can be proud of our effort of garnering nearly 117,000 votes and engaging thousands of Vermonters in this campaign."

Taking on Gov. James Douglas was a challenge. Only one other candidate for the state's top job – Clavelle's political mentor, former Gov. Phil Hoff – has managed to pick off a sitting governor in the last 130 years.

Couple history with the enormous expense of running a statewide campaign virtually from scratch, and it's not difficult to see how a candidate can overspend.

"We certainly overextended ourselves early in the campaign in order to remain on the air," said B.J. Rogers, Clavelle's campaign spokesman. On Friday, Rogers was in the midst of packing up the soon-to-be-vacated Burlington Town Center offices that served as Clavelle's headquarters for most of the year.

Putting a candidate on the air is the single most expensive activity for a political campaign. In that area, Clavelle was pitted against not only a well-funded incumbent, but late in the campaign, he was also was up against an even better-funded group, the Republican Governors Association.

Based in Washington, D.C., the RGA is a 40-year-old association whose sole goal is the election and retention of GOP governors across the country. Every Republican governor – including Douglas – belongs to the group.

The RGA decided to produce advertising for Douglas, even though his lead against Clavelle rarely dipped below 20 points, according to internal polls by both Democrats and Republicans.

Those ads — touting Douglas' two years in office – began flooding the state's airwaves less than a month before the election. Together with Douglas' own ads, it was hard to escape a pro-incumbent spot on radio or television.

Ultimately, a Chittenden County judge ruled the ads illegal, because the RGA was in violation of the state's campaign finance laws. By the time the ads were yanked off the air, the RGA had conferred a $200,000 advertising advantage to the sitting governor.

"Did the RGA investment in Vermont overall have any impact on our campaign finance situation?" Rogers said. "It probably did."



As required by state law, Douglas had no advance knowledge of the RGA's campaign; nor did he contact the group to stop it once the ads started.

But it was not lost on some observers that one of the first congratulatory calls the governor received Tuesday night was from Ohio Gov. Bob Taft – the RGA's president.

Asked if he thanked Taft for the advertising "gift," Douglas last week said he offered thanks generally for the group's support. He didn't mention the ad campaign in the brief cell phone conversation taken moments after he declared victory.

For the second straight cycle, the candidates for Vermont governor collectively spent more than $1 million; Douglas raised at least $697,000; Clavelle took in more than $476,000. Douglas, according to campaign officials, will finish in the black by $20,000 or so.

All that money bought relatively tame ad spots, compared with some of the nastiness of the 2002 campaign. Most observers point to a Douglas spot in which Clavelle fumbles for an explanation of his health care plan in response to a newspaper reporter's questions as the campaign's hardest-hitting ad.

The Clavelle campaign, meanwhile, dished out its dirtiest spot – one in which Douglas embraces Vice President Dick Cheney – late in the campaign. It didn't have much of an effect.

"Everyone will be questioning whether we did the right thing," Rogers said of the decision to stay away from the negative campaigning so common with challengers. "We tried to run a campaign on the issues."



At the same time Douglas and Clavelle played relatively nice, other candidates took the gloves off.

The nastiest ad in the campaign aired for a day on behalf of Greg Parke, the retired Air Force lieutenant who unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Bernard Sanders, Vermont's long-serving Independent congressman.

The minute-long radio spot portrayed Sanders as a contestant on the now-defunct TV show, The Dating Game. In it, the socialist former mayor of Burlington is called a friend of child pornographers, terrorists, pedophiles and a hater of veterans, the elderly and children.

"If you are an illegal alien pedophile terrorist who performs partial-birth abortions on 12-year-old girls without their parents' consent, then you and crazy Bernie are a match made in heaven," the ad concludes.

On Election Day, few were surprised at the ad's effectiveness: Sanders won by nearly 45 points.

Another negative ad campaign was a nearly $50,000 affair funded by the American Taxpayers Alliance. Unlike the RGA, the alliance is a so-called stealth political action committee, because its donors and beneficiaries are not disclosed.

The campaign – putatively on behalf of Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie – featured out-of-context and distorted remarks about former state Sen. Cheryl Rivers, who, along with Progressive Steve Hingtgen, ran against Dubie. The ad concluded with Rivers' home telephone number.

The effectiveness of the ad was hard to measure; Rivers lost to Dubie by more than 20 points. But, according to the former senator, most of the calls to her home generated by the radio advertisement would not have made the alliance happy.

She said she received some nasty calls, but far more of them were in support of her candidacy; in at least two instances, the calls led to donations to her campaign.

There were scatterings of negativity in the races for Vermont's Legislature. Republicans targeted some Democratic legislators with mass mailings detailing votes made by incumbents in support of a pay raise for members of the General Assembly. And in other Statehouse races, county-wide Republican committees took out newspaper advertisements proclaiming that some Democratic candidates had been endorsed by "a pro-gay marriage PAC."

The ads – placed in Orleans County – had little effect, as at least half the so-called endorsees cruised to victory.

Overall, Democrats notched an overwhelming Legislative victory Tuesday, gaining a 14-seat edge in the House and increasing their lead in the Senate. The Democrats out-organized and out-recruited their GOP counterparts in the race for control of the Statehouse.

"Democrats are traditionally very good at grassroots organizing," said James Barnett, Vermont's GOP chairman. But the Republicans reject the notion that they didn't give it a good try. According to Barnett, the party increased its donor base by 70 percent and spent more than $100,000 to send out 340,000 pieces of direct mail.



Money doesn't, in and of itself, ensure an electoral victory. Just ask Jack McMullen.

McMullen, a business consultant, has twice gone up against one of Vermont's most powerful politicians, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. In 1998, he spent nearly a quarter million dollars of his own money, only to go down in flames in the GOP primary against the late farmer Fred Tuttle.

This time around, he again pumped nearly $250,000 of his own into a campaign against Leahy, only to receive 25 percent of the vote to Leahy's 71 percent.

Asked on election night if he regretted spending in six years what takes many families a lifetime to accumulate, he didn't hesitate.

"Sen. Leahy is a pretty formidable presence," McMullen said. "I believe in what I was saying to voters. I ran a clean campaign on the issues and on Leahy's record, and the issues I raised were important issues."