Shay Totten: Racine wins debate

“Time Out!”
By Shay Totten

[...]The five would-be Democratic governors debated for an hour. Not surprisingly, Sen. Susan Bartlett (D-Lamoille), former Windsor County Sen. Matt Dunne, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, Sen. Doug Racine (D-Chittenden) and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin (D-Windham) agree a lot. All five support closing down VY by 2012, moving toward universal health care, and no reductions in unemployment benefits.

In the end, though, Racine definitely “won” the debate. The quiet candidate let his inner liberal lion roar a little, saying repeatedly he was in the race to “fight” for the folks in the room. That, along with his calls to use some rainy-day funds and temporarily raise taxes on the wealthy, makes Racine the candidate most likely to appeal to the party’s liberal, primary-voting base.

Republican Gov. Dick Snelling used some of the same budget strategies to get the state out of a fiscal crisis in 1991, Racine points out.

As for the rest: Dunne and Shumlin tied for second, each with his unique pro-labor legislative cred. Neither Markowitz nor Bartlett managed to win over a skeptical audience. [...]

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