[A]t around 7 p.m. Tuesday night, Sen. Kevin Mullin, R-Rutland, got a call from a Rutland City state representative informing him that his district had favored Lt. Gov. Phil Scott by 60 votes in the Republican gubernatorial primary.
Mullin was at an annual event in Rutland honoring the ski industry, known as Winter in August, which attracted hundreds of people and elected officials, including U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch. A Scott supporter — along with the other two Rutland County senators — Mullin was feeling good. Despite a seemingly slow start to the day, turnout was better than he had expected for an Aug. 9 primary.
So when Mullin got wind of the official results for Rutland City and Rutland Town he was shocked. Bruce Lisman had carried all four wards in the city as well as Rutland Town. He also had won West Rutland and another 12 towns in the county. Scott took 10 towns in the county including Castleton, Brandon and Fair Haven.
“Obviously, Lisman was better organized in Rutland than I thought he was,” said Mullin.
Scott won the statewide race by a margin of 20 percentage points. Rutland, a Republican stronghold and the second most populous county in the state, will be key for Scott in November. In the 2014 gubernatorial election, Republican candidate Scott Milne won Rutland County by more than 3,000 votes, according to Mullin. Milne narrowly lost the election to Peter Shumlin.
On the Democratic side, Sue Minter, who is well-known in the region because of her role in recovery efforts following Tropical Storm Irene, carried three of four wards in the city as well as Rutland Town. Overall, Republican voters outnumbered Democrats by a sizable margin.
Herb Russell, the lone Democratic representative in Rutland City and who is retiring this year, said Minter is “very well liked in Rutland County.” He also noted that she worked diligently in the county from the time she announced her campaign and, as transportation secretary, was a big proponent of establishing rail service between Rutland and Burlington along with other infrastructure projects in the region.
Lisman opened a field office in Rutland in mid-April that served as the campaign’s southern hub. In a press release at the time, the Lisman campaign said they opened the office to send a “clear signal to southern Vermont that Bruce is committed to addressing the fragile economy outside of Chittenden County.”
Ethan Latour, a spokesman for the Scott campaign, said they felt they had performed pretty well in the county as a whole and that Lisman’s margin of victory was narrow in Rutland City and Rutland Town. “What we feel it came down to resources,” Latour said. “Frankly we didn’t have the same campaign resources our opponent had.”
Lisman outspent Scott by a wide margin throughout the primary season and deployed a barrage of attack ads against his opponent.
Meanwhile, Latour said, the Scott campaign had only one central office in Montpelier. “We’re pretty utilitarian,” he said.
The negative tone of the campaign also likely had an impact on Rutland voters, Mullin said. “You know, basically, the Lisman campaign did the Democrats job for them,” he said. “By painting Scott as another two years of Shumlin.”
County Sen. Brian Collamore, a Republican who works in broadcasting, said during the last week of the campaign seemingly every commercial break on radio and TV included an ad for Lisman. “He was just a constant presence,” Collamore said.
Mullin also said voters he encountered on Tuesday were frustrated and fed up with the status quo.
But perhaps not for the reasons one might expect.
Outside the Ward 2 polling place Tuesday morning, several voters approached Korinne Rodrigue, who is running on the Democratic ticket for a County Senate seat, and asked her not about the economy or jobs but about her position on refugee resettlement.
A proposal to resettle about 100 Syrian refugees in Rutland has become a potent issue in the city and surrounding towns. After Mayor Christopher Louras announced that Rutland was one of several cities in the U.S. being considered as a resettlement site, Rutland, Rutland Town, Castleton and Pawlet initiated petitions asking that the municipalities give voters a chance to weigh in on the issue. All of the petitions were turned down.
A letter in today’s Rutland Herald from Don Chioffi, a longtime Select Board member in Rutland Town, attributed Lisman’s success in Rutland to his stance on refugees. Chioffi, who helped organize the petition drive in Rutland Town, wrote that Scott did not do as well in Rutland County as he did in the rest of the state because of the issue of refugee resettlement.
“Mr. Lisman,” he wrote, “was the only one who stated emphatically that he didn’t think it was prudent to proceed until all questions had been answered.”
Scott initially urged caution on refugee resettlement and in an interview with Vermont Public Radio after the Paris terror attacks in November, said the program should be put on hold. But he quickly reversed course after being heavily criticized by his Democratic rivals. In July, Scott told VT Digger he disagreed with how the decision on refugee resettlement in Rutland was made but that as governor he would not stand in the way of welcoming Syrian refugees to Vermont.
“We have an obligation as a society to do whatever we can to help,” he said.
The State Department has said that its decision on refugee resettlement will be made by the end of September — the issue will undoubtedly be on the minds of Rutland voters in November.
Mullin said he has little doubt that Scott will do well in Rutland County in November. He hopes that Lisman’s campaign infrastructure in the county can be used to get out the vote for Scott. Latour echoed that sentiment and said they will definitely look at the strategy Lisman employed in Rutland.
“We’re confident that Phil’s plan to grow the economy and make Vermont more affordable will really resonate with people in Rutland for the general election,” Latour said.
