Primary colors: Vying to wear the party label

By Shay Totten | Vermont Guardian

Posted September 1, 2006

In less than two weeks, Vermonters will head to the polls and thin the field in several political races.

Democrats have a primary among four people vying to be the party’s choice for the U.S. Senate and lieutenant governor. Republicans, on the other hand, have choices to make in the races for U.S. House and Senate.

On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders is facing off against four others in the bid to be the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate — Larry Drown, Craig Hill, Peter Moss, and Louis Thabault. If he wins, he has already said he would not accept the nomination, and continue to run as an independent.

For lieutenant governor, Windsor state Sen. Matt Dunne, is facing off against Burlington Rep. John Tracy. The winner will face Republican incumbent Brian Dubie and Progressive Marvin Malek.

On the GOP side, millionaire Rich Tarrant faces Greg Parke and Cris Ericson in the bid to represent the party in the U.S. Senate race.

In the bid to be the party’s nominee for the U.S. House seat, former adjutant general Martha Rainville faces off against State Sen. Mark Shepard of Bennington. The winner will face Democrat Peter Welch, along with independents Dennis Morrisseau, who dropped out of the Republican primary, and Keith Stern.

In this issue, the Vermont Guardian profiles the Democrats running for lieutenant governor (page 8) and the Republicans running for U.S. House.

House call

Every campaign takes on the character of its candidate, and the campaigns of Shepard and Rainville are no different.

For Shepard, his shoestring, grassroots campaign is evident in the small recreational vehicle (RV) he bought and is using to crisscross the state with his wife and four sons on board.

Meanwhile, Rainville went on the air Aug. 23 for a weeklong run of television ads, and also launched radio ads trumpeting her “clean campaign” pledge. In all, she is spending more than $50,000 on this first ad blitz, more than Shepard has raised in total.

Shepard said Rainville, like Gov. Jim Douglas, has an air of popularity, but he said neither are out there “talking about the issues that normally get Republicans elected.” Shepard believes that Rainville, like Douglas, is running on a strategy to win over Democrats rather than run on core Republican ideas.

“I think Republicans are so demoralized by losses in the House and Senate that they are looking for someone to save us,” said Shepard.
While Shepard doesn’t claim to be a savior, he does believe he has the right mix of legislative and private sector experience that is needed to represent Vermonters in Washington.

And, it just so happens that the primary falls on his birthday. He’ll be 46 years old.

And, he refuses to pull punches when it comes to the cold shoulder tactics that Rainville and the state GOP have taken with his candidacy, including a lack of substantive debates between the two. This, he claims, allows for Rainville to make sweeping statements and not have to get mired down in details that reflect more core beliefs.

“What I hear is a lot of flowery and real fluffy stuff but nothing specific to get at what her core values are,” said Shepard, who said he is bothered by Rainville’s unwillingness to debate in an attempt, he surmises, to “just coast through the primary election and I bet she has the same plan for the general. I don’t think she’ll succeed like that.”

Shepard said Rainville’s responses in the debates and forums so far differ depending on whether she is in a roomful of Republicans or a mixed crowd.

And, clearly, Rainville has the support of the GOP machine. The state party’s top leaders sent a letter to the Republican National Committee in February, a move that allowed Rainville to get help from top GOP leaders in the House including Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-IL, the speaker of the House, and Rep. Roy Blunt, the majority whip, as well as Rep. John Boehner, R-OH, the majority leader.

And, the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee has already spent more than $23,000 on Rainville’s behalf on polling and developing “issue ads.”

And, as the perceived frontrunner and GOP choice, Rainville has faced tough questions about her hiring of a National Guard member to work on her campaign website and logo, as well as her acceptance of thousands of dollars from a private contractor who was making millions off a project that Rainville actively lobbied Congress to fund.

This support doesn’t seem to phase Shepard, though it does bother him. But, not because it affects him, per se, but because he feels as if primary voters aren’t being given a good chance to evaluate candidates. Instead, the “establishments” of both political parties have cast their dice with particular candidates.

Shepard is used to being elected without the support of the state party. He was not the preferred choice among the GOP in his state senate race, but won anyway.

Shepard’s unorthodox approach to reaching out to Vermonters by driving around the state in his RV came up long before he realized he wasn’t going to raise the kind of money needed to run radio and TV ads.

“I like to campaign this way and that was determined before even thinking I would go for the Senate or the House,” said Shepard. “The whole theme for me is just getting people involved.”

That said, Shepard says Rainville is a “really nice person and I think either she’s trying to figure out what she believes in life at the core level or her ideas on things are not really compatible with Republican voters.”

Shepard said, for example, her “I am a Republican” speech at a convention held in May is not on her website, which he finds interesting.
In her speech, she declared her support for Pres. George W. Bush’s tax cuts, for going to war in Iraq, and said she didn’t support efforts to expand wilderness areas in Vermont. And, she said her political hero was Ronald Reagan.

On the issues

In their first head-to-head radio debate on Aug. 14, on the Mark Johnson Show on WDEV, the pair agreed more than they disagreed on many issues.

Shepard said the debate didn’t illustrate their differences, which he says are many.

For example, on the Middle East, while both agree that a U.S. pullout of Iraq would be disastrous, Shepard doesn’t believe that the United States should maintain an occupying force in the region.

“It would be a disaster, I think it would be very resented by the Arab people,” said Shepard.

Rainville does support a military presence in the region. But, she also acknowledges that the Bush administration has made mistakes in Iraq and should own up to them in order to build credibility. She says the administration has also not done enough to accentuate the positive stories coming out of the country, such as several multi-party elections and a unity government, not to mention the trials of deposed leader Saddam Hussein.

Rainville said the one major mistake the administration made was “underestimating the post-conflict Iraq and the situation on the ground.” And, given stronger resistence, it allowed insurgents to develop and grow and drag out the situation beyond how long it should have lasted. “We didn’t have the accurate intelligence and cultural understanding,” she added.

On Social Security, Shepard said he is the only one offering some solutions, not just more studies.

“Peter Welch said we need another study, which is useless and the data is not going to find anything different and will just waste taxpayers’ money,” he said. “Martha Rainville says essentially that real leaders wouldn’t allow this to be a problem. I’ve looked at the problem, and I think there are some solutions.”

Shepard does believe people should be allowed to invest some of their money in the stock market as a way to help boost returns when they reach retirement.

The pair also disagree on abortion. Rainville supports a woman’s right to choose, but says she would never choose to have an abortion, nor would she want any of the young women around her to make that choice.

Shepard is a staunch, pro-life candidate. Other than situations where the life of the mother is at risk, Shepard said he can’t “intellectually support [abortion]. We all know it’s taking a human life.”

On issues like health care, both Rainville and Shepard believe that people should be able to buy health insurance from across state lines, and that more private market methods, such as health savings accounts, should be made available to consumers.

However, Shepard believes that the Medicare Part D legislation has become a bitter pill for seniors to swallow, and is only benefiting drug companies and driving up the cost of prescription drugs. Rainville, on the other hand, supports the legislation and would have voted for the bill, despite some of its problems.

For Rainville, a centerpiece of her campaign has been restoring ethics to Washington and ushering in an era of “clean campaigning.” She has even argued that a new independent federal office be created to keep a watch on Congress.

On her main theme, which is ethical reforms and clean campaigning, Rainville said she would do what she could to keep her campaign focused on facts and accurate data when talking about somebody’s voting record.

However, she wouldn’t say whether she thought some of the recent ads by Republican Rich Tarrant, which criticize Sanders, were “negative.”

She couldn’t think of any ads that had run in Vermont that would run afoul of her standards, noting that the “best judges of [negative ads] are Vermonters.”

She said, in general, however, that campaign advertising should stay away from “personal slams and slurs,” noting that attacking a candidate’s “personal integrity and personal life and values is something we don’t need to do.”

Shepard said he is the only candidate who can really bring a breath of fresh air to the nation’s capital.

“There is a real skepticism with establishment politics, and I step outside of that mold much more than Martha Rainville or Peter Welch,” said Shepard. “Just look at where their support is coming from — it’s been from the establishment, and the people rallying around me want to change the establishment.”

Shepard says he has no plans to continue beyond the primary as an independent, as is the trend these days in politics: If you lose your party’s nomination, run as an independent.

“I can accept the people’s choice,” said Shepard. “I mean, I don’t feel like I owe the Republican Party anything, but my life is fine without politics and I don’t need to chase every avenue and jump through hoops just to stick myself somewhere.”

Still, Shepard said he would consider running as an independent if Rainville’s campaign somehow was on the brink of collapse in the next two weeks, but he didn’t think that likely. “I won’t close the door to it, but don’t see it happening,” he said.

Nor does Rainville see it happening. She said the support from established GOP sources and volunteers has been encouraging. As of last month, the campaign had nearly 700 volunteers, and she said that people are responding to her clean campaign message.

And, despite taking money from top GOP officials, some of whom have been clouded by ethics scandals themselves, such as Blunt and Hastert, she says her Guard experience and challenging leadership in the military will prepare her well.

Rainvillle said that in several instances in her career as a adjutant general she challenged leadership in the military.

In one instance, National Guard troops were being deployed along the Canadian border, but under federal control at first. And, when they were deployed the Pentagon had decided not to arm them.

“I fought that federalization, because the Guard should be under the control of the states, it’s a states’ rights issue,” she said. Eventually, the federalization orders were changed after she enlisted the help of others within the Guard and Sen. Patrick Leahy.

She also worked channels within the National Guard Bureau to speed up the delivery of newer body armor for Guard members about to be sent to Afghanistan.

“When you’re in Congress, your role is to stand up for your state and what’s right for your nation,” said Rainville. “It’s the job of every congressman and -woman to defend the Constitution and the voters; that is your primary job.”

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