The Vermont primaries are over and the general election campaign is underway but the governor’s race remains a mess as no clear winner emerged in the five-way democratic race. A recount is underway. Senator Peter Shumlin leads the crowded field by 197 votes. Issues we are pondering –

1. Who is the frontrunner now? Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, the GOP candidate, gets a free ride for at least two weeks or until the recount is done. So we say Dubie is out front for now. He is taking advantage of the confusion among Democrats, campaigning hard, holding press conferences and pressing the flesh like an incumbent without an opponent. He has a lot of money and appears to be spending it. He has earned favorable press attention for his effort , or at least a lack of critical attention.

2. Does Dubie’s hard launch have a downside? Sure! The media is beginning to focus – a real danger for him and something he successfully avoided all summer. For example, he has promised lower taxes at a time when Vermont, like most states, is broke. He will not say what programs he will eliminate to pay for his tax cut. He won’t even take questions on the subject. His campaign manager cuts them off. We wonder why the press doesn’t simply report: “Campaign manager then cut off further questions.” The press needs to step up and hold candidates accountable. The days of the media being invisible are long gone. If reporters can’t get the inside political nuances in the paper, they should put it in a blog. Political readers are starving for that stuff. (Update – as usual, Ann Galloway at VTdigger.org saves the day) http://vtdigger.org/2010/09/01/more-time-sir-um-probably-not/

3. How did Shumlin do it? Pundits, including us, argued before the election he was in third place at best. They argued he had a weak field organization and a smart but inexperienced campaign manager: Alex McLean. The answer is complex. First, Shumlin was the best candidate and the best campaigner. His early and often television ads worked. His direct mail was very good; his field organization: good enough. The large turnout helped. Phil Scott, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, helped; he kept Republicans in their own primary. Democrats made their decisions very late and in the end enough voters liked Shumlin to give him an edge. And finally Alex McLean proved her mettle; she skillfully managed the candidate and the campaign. There is a guy in our office who said: #$@%@% it. I’m voting for Shumlin. Stranegly, that captures something.

5. Why were all the smart people – including uber pundit Eric Davis – so wrong about turnout? We confidently predicted a 40,000 to 50,000 turnout and more than 70,000 showed up. First, there were five really good candidates. Vermonters are informed and care; they turned out because they had real choices. Second, Matt Dunne brought more people, probably first time voters, to the polls. His plan for victory was 15,000 votes. He did that. Third, the pundits, us included, are often clueless and at best making an intelligent guess. We were wrong.

6. Some street chatter has Dubie’s people wanting to run against Shumlin. We doubt it. Shumlin is a brilliant politician who is a “chess player in a town of checkers players.” Ok we stole that line from President Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe, but the shoe fits. Shumlin is usually two steps ahead. His challenge will be to stay ahead tactically but align his message with where Vermonters live their daily lives. By the way, he shopuld accept Dubie’s offer of 12 debates NOW.

7. In a long ago blog post, we said “Dubie Wins!” That is less true now. This is a very Democratic state and the primary showed Democrats are engaged. Dubie has embraced several positions that are anathema to Democrats and independents: he is pro life, supports the death penalty and taxpayer money for religious schools etc. But this recount is very sticky. It could seriously cripple Democratic fundraising and delay the start of a targeted, tactical campaign. Democrats will be wise to use this period to unify their disparate campaigns into a single, effective, efficient winning organization.

8. Who wins? There is no democratic candidate and our office is divided. So we’ll make a prediction in a month!

Robert Sherman
Kimbell Sherman Ellis, LLP
26 State Street, Suite 8
Montpelier, VT  05602
Office:  802-229-4900 x102
Cell:  802-371-8872
bob@ksefocus.com

Anya Rader Wallack, Ph.D.
Arrowhead Health Analytics, LLC
56 North Main Street, Suite 303
Fall River, MA 02720
Office: 508.567.1375
Cell: 617.694.0424

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 1, 2010

MONTPELIER, Vt. – Kimbell Sherman Ellis, LLP, (KSE) a national government affairs and strategic communications firm, announced today a joint venture with Anya Rader Wallack, founder and president of Arrowhead Health Analytics of Fall River, MA.

The venture positions the firms to jointly serve and empower clients affected by the recently passed national health care reform legislation and closely links Wallack and KSE, the firm where she began her career in 1989.

Wallack has a deep knowledge of health policy, including Medicaid and the impact of national health care reform on the 50 states. She established Arrowhead earlier this year after serving as interim president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation (BCBSMAF) and executive director of the Massachusetts Medicaid Policy Institute (MMPI). Her clients include health care foundations, state governments and health care provider organizations.

“It’s an exciting opportunity to reunite with KSE,” Wallack said. “Their experience in government affairs, communications and research will enable us to bring a full array of services to the table for clients nationally.”

Bob Sherman, a founding partner of KSE, said the joint venture broadens KSE’s health care expertise while giving Wallack’s clients immediate access to additional expertise in government affairs and communications.

“Anya has made a career of melding health policy, analysis and politics,” Sherman said. “KSE has driven the policy and politics of health care reform at the state level for more than two decades. Together we will be uniquely positioned to help clients meet the challenges of the next decade.”

Wallack started as KSE’s first associate in 1989, representing insurers and providers in the Vermont Statehouse. She then served as Vermont Governor Howard Dean’s Policy Director and Deputy Chief of Staff from 1991-1994, including service on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health care task force. She also chaired the National Governors Association staff-level health care committee in 1993 and 1994. From 1995-1998, Wallack ran the Vermont Program for Quality in Health Care, a quasi-governmental agency that specializes in quality measurement and improvement at the state level.

More recently, Wallack earned a Ph.D. in social policy from Brandeis University’s Heller School and has served as a consultant to state governments and multi-state organizations for most of the past decade. Her consulting clients have included the state of Vermont, the state of Rhode Island and the National Academy for State Health Policy.

For the past two years she has been deeply engaged in Massachusetts health care reform through her service at MMPI and BCBSMAF. She has developed a deep knowledge of the design and implementation of the Commonwealth’s reforms, on which national reform was largely modeled. Wallack continues to serve on the Massachusetts Health Care Quality and Cost Council, chairing that body’s cost containment committee.

Wallack lives in Little Compton, Rhode Island with her family.

About KSE:

Kimbell Sherman Ellis, LLP is a national government affairs and strategic communications firm with offices on Montpelier, VT, Cambridge, MA and Washington, DC. The firm represents health insurers, health providers and health issue trade groups and a wide range of other corporate and non-profit clients, specializing in state government affairs strategy, public relations, new media and crisis communications.

About Arrowhead:

Arrowhead Health Analytics, LLC, is a health policy firm offering clients research, analysis and strategic counsel related to state-based health care reform, Medicaid, state health care regulation and health care service delivery.
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Bassist and vocalist Nick Sherman is part of the KSE lobbying team.

Drummer and cover artist Jeremiah Johnson is an analyst for KSE FOCUS.

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MONTPELIER, Vt. – Our friend, colleague and partner Steve Kimbell announced his retirement today from Kimbell Sherman Ellis (KSE). After 34 years at the center of every major political and policy debate in Vermont, Steve has decided it is time to pursue other challenges.

“This has been a great run,” said Kimbell, “but intuition tells me this is the right time to move on.”

“Steve Kimbell has represented our clients with dignity, intelligence, wit and unparalleled resolve and he will retire as the most respected lobbyist ever to walk the halls of the Vermont Statehouse,” said Bob Sherman, who founded the firm with Kimbell in 1987.

Kimbell is an Illinois native with a B.A. from the University of Illinois and J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. He served on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1970-72.

Steve began working in the Vermont Statehouse in 1976 as an attorney with  Vermont Legal Aid. He learned the Montpelier lobbying trade representing the low income community.  He spent two years as a policy adviser to former Governor Madeleine M. Kunin and then returned to private practice.

KSE Partner Kevin Ellis said: “We view Steve’s retirement with some sadness and enormous pride in a terrific past and a successful future that will be carried on by the creative and highly-skilled professionals at our firm.”

Chuck Storrow, the firm’s managing partner, said that KSE is well-prepared to make the transition when Steve’s retirement becomes official on July 1.

“We will miss Steve both personally and professionally, but the firm in recent years has grown substantially both in numbers and fields of practice.”

KSE, with offices in Montpelier, Boston and Washington, DC, is a multi-state government/public affairs/communications firm with 25 professionals and a national network of strategic partners.  In addition to lobbying Vermont state government, the firm provides multi-state legislative/regulatory strategy in government affairs and manages marketing and public relations campaigns throughout the U.S.  KSE’s affiliated law firm, Kimbell Storrow Buckley Hughes, represents clients before Vermont’s regulatory agencies.

KSE is planning for growth and will announce exciting changes in the coming weeks. As always, we are committed to delivering the same high standard of service to our clients that was established by our co-founder Steve Kimbell.

All of us at KSE wish Steve a happy and productive retirement.

For more information, contact Kevin Ellis, 802.371.8112 or Kevin@ksefocus.com.

Kimbell Sherman Ellis, LLP

We assumed for the moment that Kagan was gay. If true, I thought we had the opportunity to move civil rights ahead 25 years with the first gay member of the Supreme Court.

But strangely, no one was talking about it. There were blog rumors. But the New York Times, always trying to be perfect, called her “unmarried.” No one else was writing about it even though the Washington buzz machine was, well, buzzing about her sexual orientation.

Couple of days later, the bomb explodes. The Wall Street Journal runs a page 1 photo of Kagan playing softball. Huffington Post and Politico run stories quoting Kagan friends saying she is NOT gay; that they used to set her up on dates.

Then we learn the White House has been telling reporters on background that Kagan is straight.

And lastly we learn that Kagan herself told the White House she is straight.

What a mess. Even after Vermont approves a same-sex marriage equality law (a proud moment for this firm) and we are just beginning to talk about the absurdity of the gays in the military policy, we still can’t talk about this issue honestly.

I really hope Kagan and the White House are telling the truth about her sexual orientation. If they are lying and she is gay, it means they were afraid of telling the truth, that they were ashamed of her sexual orientation; that they placed a successful nomination over the truth. That sets back civil rights in this area for along time.

Worse, is the way the media let the story come to them. Instead of confronting the issue and leading the conversation, they followed internet rumors and White House leaks on a really important issue.

What will REALLY be fun to watch is Republicans struggling to attack Kagan if she is gay. Will they really say she can’t be on the court because of who she likes to date? How will Democrats and the president handle that one?

Vermonters Confront Collapse with Michael Ruppert
Author & Peak Oil Activist to lecture across Vermont May 13-16

White River Junction, Vt. -  Chelsea Green Publishing announced today that author Michael C. Ruppert will give a series of talks in Vermont about the peak oil crisis and what we must do to confront it.

The Los Angeles-based Ruppert, author of Confronting Collapse and the subject of the Chris Smith/Bluemark Films 2009 documentary Collapse, will discuss and sign copies of his book in Burlington, Montpelier, Brattleboro and Woodstock May 13-16.

Ruppert is a former LAPD narcotics officer turned investigative journalist who details the intricate connections between money and energy, including the ways in which oil shortages and price spikes triggered the economic crash that began in September 2008. Fossil fuel, and oil in particular, is the single resource on which our whole industrial civilization is built, and inexpensive, easy-to-access supplies are now in a state of accelerating and irreversible decline. In Confronting Collapse, Ruppert predicts that as much as two-thirds of the human race may perish in the next five to 10 years as global oil sources dry up, food disappears and lights go out around the world.

Ruppert’s Vermont speaking tour will focus on the tangible steps we must take to confront the grave reality we face globally.  In Confronting Collapse, Ruppert outlines 25 steps the nation and all states should implement immediately, including the creation of a second strategic petroleum reserve for the use of state and local governments, and national Feed-in Tariff legislation to support renewable energy sources.

In the film documentary Collapse, filmmaker Chris Smith set out to make a film about peak oil and ended by filming Ruppert, chain-smoking in an abandoned meat-packing warehouse in downtown Los Angeles. Called “shockingly persuasive” and “unexpectedly moving” by the New York Times, the film has received rave reviews from the LA Times, Variety, Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, The Onion, and many others.  Says Robert Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times, “Above all else see Collapse. Above all else.”

Ruppert is an internationally sought-after speaker on peak oil who lectures across the nation.  His statewide tour is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing, Vermont Commons, The Candidates for Vermont Independence, and Free Vermont Radio, as well as 21 local sponsors.

TOUR SCHEDULE:

BURLINGTON – May 13, 2010, 7:30 pm – Burlington City Hall, Contois Auditorium

149 Church Street, Burlington

MONTPELIER – May 14, 2010, 7:30 pm, Unitarian Church of Montpelier

130 Main Street, Montpelier

BRATTLEBORO – May 15, 2010, 7:30 pm, Brattleboro Union High School

131 Fairground Road, Brattleboro

WOODSTOCK – May 16, 2010, 7:00 pm Woodstock Town Hall Theatre

31 The Green, Woodstock.  Features screening of the film Collapse followed by Q & A with Ruppert.

LOCAL SPONSORS:

Burlington sponsors:  Peace & Justice Center , Transition Town Charlotte, Transition Town Shelburne, UVM Environmental Program, and Burlington Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Montpelier sponsors: Transition Town Montpelier, Food Works at Two Rivers Center, The Bridge, Post-Carbon Sustainability Network, Peak Oil Awareness, and Rural Vermont.

Brattleboro sponsors: Post Oil Solutions, Save the Corporations from Themselves, and Marlboro College MBA in Managing for Sustainability.

Woodstock/Upper Valley sponsors: Pentangle Arts Council, groSolar, Transition Town WRJ, Transition Town Hartland, Sustainable Woodstock, Pompanoosuc Agricultural Society, and Sustainable Energy Resource Group.

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About Chelsea Green Publishing

For 26 years, Chelsea Green has been the publishing leader for books on the politics and practice of sustainable living. We are a founding member of the Green Press Initiative and have been printing books on recycled paper since 1985, when our first list of books appeared. We lead the industry both in terms of content—foundational books on renewable energy, green building, organic agriculture, eco-cuisine, and ethical business—and in terms of environmental practice, printing 95 percent of our books on recycled paper with a minimum 30 percent post-consumer waste and aiming for 100 percent whenever possible. This approach is a perfect example of what is called a ”triple bottom line“ practice, one that benefits people, planet, and profit, and the emerging new model for sustainable business in the 21st century. www.chelseagreen.com.

CONTACT:

Diane Zeigler
Kimbell Sherman Ellis LLP
802-229-4900 x 100
zig@ksefocus.com

The event is the largest elite cycling race in the country, where more than 2,000 amateur and professional cyclists will compete.

Team member Nick Bennette

“We’re proud to sponsor the MetLife team and we believe they are excellent ambassadors for groSolar’s message – that solar power is a lifestyle choice with a global impact,” said groSolar CEO Jeff Wolfe.  “In the race to save the planet, we are determined to install solar on as many rooftops as possible.  The MetLife team is exceptional group of athletes committed to practicing and promoting sustainable living, encouraging healthy ideals while racing at an elite level.   It’s a great fit for groSolar, and we hope that cycling fans will take note and adopt clean, sustainable energy practices as well.”

Founded in 1998, groSolar is the largest 100 percent U.S.-owned distributor in the solar industry, and is the fourth-largest installation company in North America. This is the first time that Vermont-based solar company has sponsored an elite cycling team.  Team members are taking advantage of the opportunity to work closely with a solar company and are participating in training sessions with groSolar to learn more about the fundamentals of solar power technology.

“We love this sport, and being committed to it means that we embrace a broader set of lifestyle choices,” said Brad Sheehan, the team’s director.  “A healthy planet begins with healthy people.  When considering climate change, there’s a planet at stake and solar power is an important part of the solution. We’re proud that a company like groSolar is getting behind us with their support, and we’re equally behind their mission to bring more solar to America’s rooftops.”

groSolar will be present at the races throughout the season to offer information about solar power to cycling fans. For more information on the team and its racing schedule, go to MetLifeCyclingTeam.com.  For more information on the Tour of the Battenkill, visit TouroftheBattenkill.com.

The ‘MetLife Cycling Team powered by groSolar’ cyclists have support from MetLife, groSolar, Sheehan Graphic Design, Landry’s Bicycles (Boston), S&W Sports (Concord, NH), Trek Bicycle and Brighter Planet.

About groSolar

groSolar is North America’s premier distributor, installer and integrator of solar energy solutions for residential and commercial installations. Founded in 1998, groSolar is the largest 100 percent U.S.-owned distributor in the solar industry, and is the fourth-largest installation company in North America. The company has offices and warehouses across the US, distributing solar electric and solar hot water systems from offices in VT, NJ, NY, CT, MA, MD, DE, PA, and CA. groSolar integrates components from leading solar manufacturers including Zep Solar, Canadian Solar, Solon, Motech, Heliodyne, SMA, Fronius, and UniRac into simple solar energy solutions for customers that generate clean, reliable energy for decades. groSolar is a mission-driven company dedicated to providing high quality solar energy solutions and whole energy appreciation. groSolar’s venture capital investors include NGP Energy Technology Partners, SJF Ventures, and Calvert Social Investment Fund. Learn more at groSolar.com or call 800.374.4494.

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