The surprisingly close result in Vermont’s governor’s race has pundits scratching their heads and trying to figure out why a Republican who was expected to get trounced came within a point of the two-term incumbent. Some are pointing to Governor Peter Shumlin’s push to single-payer health care and the rocky rollout of the state health care exchange as his key vulnerability.
Vermont’s health care exchange has had problems since it started last November and is currently offline so that fixes can be made before the next open enrollment period begins. In addition to the negatives from the health care exchange, the governor postponed his promised single-payer financing report until January.
Vermonters for Health Care Freedom is an anti-single-payer group in Vermont. Founder and President Darcie Johnston is adamant that the close results are a referendum on the governor’s health care record and agenda. “If Vermont Health Connect continues to be non-functioning and impacting Vermonters in very negative ways then he is going to have a very hard time moving forward in the Legislature with single-payer in any way, shape or form. So if he truly wants to move forward with single-payer he has to get the exchange working.”
Vermont Health Care for All Chair Dr. Deb Richter disagrees that the election was in any way a referendum on health care reform. “The only candidate that was vehemently opposed was Feliciano and he only got four percent of the vote. The fact that we lost a key legislator, Mike Fisher who was the head of the Health Committee, there’s no doubt that it will be more difficult but we still are moving forward. The governor has every intention of pushing this. But we’re still in a Democratic majority. We will have a Democratic governor. We will have a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. So that’s why I’m optimistic that we can still get this done.”
Vermont Leads is a statewide campaign supporting the state’s proposed universal health care system. Executive Director Peter Sterling notes that only opponents of single-payer are calling the gubernatorial race, which now goes to the legislature, a referendum on single-payer. “Having worked with a couple dozen candidates as well as doing a lot of door knocking, phone calling and all that grass-roots work myself, I didn’t hear any voters talking about they don’t want to see us move to universal health care. Nor did I have any candidates call me and say ‘Peter I really need help. I’m getting creamed because I support and I voted for single-payer health care.’ That was not the issue at all in this race. As a matter of fact even the governor’s main opponent Scott Milne didn’t campaign against universal health care. He himself said he was agnostic and needs more information on it.”
Republicans in the Vermont House picked up eight seats, but remain a minority. House Minority Leader Republican Don Turner believes voters may not have spoken specifically on health care, but rather what he calls the overall mismanagement of the Shumlin administration. “It does go into the whole Vermont Health Connect boondoggle that is still not working after 80 or 90 million dollars was spent. I think that’s one thing. But I don’t know that we could take the results and pin it to one thing. But the overall management of the Shumlin administration I think people don’t want to see the cost of living in Vermont continue to rise as it has for the last few years.”
Ethan Allen Institute Vice President John McClaughry hypothesizes that voters are fed up with the governor for various reasons. “The colossal failure of the Vermont Health Connect exchange has been a nagging problem for Governor Shumlin. Nothing seems to work. So that has to be a big part of the question. There are other issues that Shumlin has attracted some criticism for. But how to sort out which one motivated which voters is beyond my pay grade. But I think the bottom line here is, and I think Governor Shumlin was certainly chastened by learning this, is that half the people in the state really don’t want him for governor anymore. And I have to believe that health care was the single largest source of dissatisfaction.”
Shumlin received 46 percent of the vote on Tuesday. His six challengers received an aggregate 54 percent with Republican Scott Milne taking the bulk at 45 percent.
