Article published Aug 15, 2010
Sharp political mind touts his legislative successes in race for governor
By Peter Hirschfeld
Vermont Press Bureau
For someone who had trouble spelling, Peter Shumlin has a way with words.
As a young student in his native Putney, Shumlin’s dyslexia thwarted his classroom efforts. Much as he tried, he says, the letters wouldn’t cooperate.
Frustrated with the written word, he learned to excel at the spoken. The academic failings he endured as a youngster, he says, gave rise to the rhetorical aptitude that has made him one of the most skilled politicians in Montpelier.
On the Senate floor, at the press-conference dais or in Montpelier backrooms, colleagues say, Shumlin’s oratory skills are unrivaled in the Statehouse, where he’s served as Senate president for 10 years.
His powers of persuasion have been the driving force behind some of the state’s most controversial pieces of legislation. In the last biennium alone, Shumlin shepherded a same-sex marriage bill into law and orchestrated a legislative assault against Vermont Yankee that cast the nuclear power plant’s future into even greater doubt.
“He has an ability to state what the goal and the objective is and knock down all the doors and all the obstacles in the way to achieve it,” says Rep. Tony Klein, the Democratic chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources. “He doesn’t take any prisoners and does what he needs to do to get it done.”
His preternatural gift for politics is universally recognized, even among those who don’t necessarily admire it.
“He’s certainly a politician’s politician, in terms of wielding power,” says Rob Roper, former chairman of the Vermont Republican Party and still a member of its executive committee. “He’s not afraid to put his own agenda above that of other people.”
Longtime Statehouse observers say he plays in a different league. Retired lobbyist Steve Kimbell, who worked with Shumlin on gay marriage and against him on Vermont Yankee, falls back on a baseball analogy.
“In terms of raw political skills, if you’re talking about major league pitchers as a comparison, this guy throws a 100 mile-per-hour fastball,” Kimbell says. “Nobody else throws 90.”
Shumlin is a divisive figure, as revered in some circles as he is reviled in others. According to a June 17 Rasmussen poll, of the 38 percent of Vermonters who have strong feelings about Shumlin, nearly two-thirds of them view him “very unfavorably.”
Shumlin, not surprisingly, wears those negatives as a badge of honor. His towering presence on controversial issues, he says, has made him a lightning rod for Republican criticism.
“We’ve done some polling ourselves, and what we found was that among the staunch Republican voters, I tend to have higher negatives, because I fight so hard for things I believe in like marriage equality and shutting down Vermont Yankee,” Shumlin says. “People who never vote for my party feel more strongly about my name because I’ve gotten things done. And that’s why I can win this race.”
Shumlin says it’s also why he’s the only candidate who can deliver a single-payer healthcare system by the end of his first term, free childcare for every 3- and 4-year-old in Vermont and broadband service to every home and business in the state – all without raising a nickel in new tax revenues.
If it all sounds too good to be true, Shumlin says, just look at his record.
“When I say I’m going to get something done, it happens,” he says. “And I’ve got a record that proves it.”
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Shumlin’s early struggles with dyslexia, he says, have in many ways guided his adult life.
“We’re all formed by life experiences, and I tell people this part about me because my dyslexia, the fact that I learn differently, made me who I am,” Shumlin says. “It defines my strengths and my weaknesses.”
Shumlin, the son of a father who fought in World War II and a mother born in Holland, says his school-age years were marked by verbal compensation for academic failings.
“I had to use my mouth to survive in the classroom at young age when other things weren’t working as well for me as they did for other kids,” he says.
Shumlin, a father of two teenage girls (he is separated from his wife), says these rhetorical skills often go misinterpreted.
“I sometimes come off as slick because I speak so quickly,” he says. “I learned a long time ago to use all the tools I had to compensate for the fact that I didn’t learn the same.”
His learning disability also bred his work ethic and, by extension, his political and professional success, Shumlin says. It also, he says, fostered an appreciation for the plight of the underdog.
“When you’re in a situation like that, where you have to work twice as hard to get to the same place, you never forget people who haven’t had the same opportunities as other people,” he says. “You never forget what it’s like to be discriminated against.”
Most importantly, he says, his condition forced him “to think outside the box,” an approach he says landed him at the prestigious Wesleyan University despite abysmal standardized test scores.
“I still have nightmares about spelling bees,” he says.
After graduating high school, he spent two years in a basic studies program at Boston University.
“It was mostly for inner-city kids,” Shumlin says.
He graduated with honors from Wesleyan, where he majored in English and government.
“My story is one of the reasons I so abhor No Child Left Behind, because you can’t just can’t judge a person’s potential with a standardized test,” says Shumlin, who says he’ll work to exclude Vermont from the landmark federal standards.
After college, Shumlin returned to Putney to work at his parents’ business, Putney Student Travel. In his 20s, Shumlin bought the business from his parents, with his brother, Jeff. The company now coordinates overseas educational experiences for more than 1,300 children annually.
The travel business, along with his numerous real estate enterprises, has made Shumlin a wealthy man. According to tax returns he made public earlier this year, Shumlin made more than $1 million in 2009. He’s poured $150,000 of his money into his campaign for governor.
Shumlin calls himself a “reluctant politician” who “got into politics by mistake” after waging a campaign against a jail proposed for his hometown.
“The local selectboard voted to have the Bureau of Prisons turn the bankrupt Windham College into a maximum-security federal prison,” he says. “I thought that was the wrong future for my hometown.”
After leading a successful charge to rescind the plan, Shumlin says, he was encouraged to run for the board himself, where, at 24 years old, he learned “it’s easy to say ‘no.’ It’s much tougher to solve real problems.”
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Well-manicured hair and sharp suits notwithstanding, Shumlin likes to describe himself in terms that evoke images of a rural farm boy.
“I’d rather be on a farm spreading manure than wearing suit,” says Shumlin, whose old Putney farmhouse adjoins the dairy farm at which he is a financial partner. “My favorite day of the year is opening day of hunting season. I’ll be the first governor in a long time that cuts own wood, splits it buy hand.”
For such a “reluctant politician” though, Shumlin – the longest serving Senate president in state history – has spent a lot of time in Montpelier. His Statehouse career began in 1990 when then-governor Madeline Kunin appointed him to fill vacant seat in the House. In 1992, Shumlin was elected to one of Windham County’s two Senate seats, and in 1997, he was selected by his Senate colleagues to serve as the chamber’s president.
He left the Senate in 2002 after a failed bid for lieutenant governor – a race he lost to Brian Dubie, but returned in 2006, when he was promptly reinstated as Senate president despite his official status as a freshman legislator.
As Senate president, Shumlin has been credited with guiding its pivotal votes, including civil unions, gay marriage, Vermont Yankee and the historic 2009 override of Gov. James Douglas’ budget veto.
“He’s just got a good political mind,” says Dick Sears, a longtime Democratic senator from Bennington County. “He’s able to see the forest through the trees and he understands the impacts of various moves way ahead of most other people.”
Colleagues say he’s a consensus-seeker generally but can resort to steamrolling when it suits his needs.
“I’m a person who’s dealt very heavily on some very big issues with him for the last four years, and while we were pretty much on the same page on where we wanted to go, we often disagreed on how to get there,” says Klein, a Shumlin supporter. “I’ve seen the good part of Peter but I’ve seen the bad part too. And it hasn’t changed my opinion of him. He got us where we wanted to go – and that’s the key. It’s about the end result, not how you get there.”
Not everyone agrees. Roper, who, as head of the Vermont Republican Party, sparred with Shumlin from afar, says he speaks from one side of his mouth and legislates from another.
“He’s earned a reputation for not exactly being truthful and he has earned a reputation for saying one thing to one person and turning around and saying another thing another person,” Roper says.
Roper says Shumlin was among the first prominent Democrats to declare there was no more tax capacity left in the state of Vermont, only to turn around and push a $26 million tax increase into the fiscal year 2010 budget.
“Now he’s running for governor, and he says again we have no more tax capacity,” Ropers says. “We’re supposed to believe that now?”
Rep. Patty O’Donnell, a Republican lawmaker whose House district is in Windham County, says Shumlin’s tenure has coincided with a sustained period of economic decline in the county he represents.
O’Donnell faults Shumlin for investing more energy on his own political profile than the financial plight of his constituents. Specifically, she points to Shumlin’s “grandstanding” on Vermont Yankee, in which he’s demonized what she says is one of the region’s most important employers.
“On political issues you can be sure he’ll be right out front. But on issues that help Windham County residents live their lives and grow, he’s nowhere to be seen,” O’Donnell says. “And if that’s what he’s done in Windham County, what’s he going to do for the state of Vermont?”
Senate Majority Leader John Campbell says great leaders tend to have vociferous detractors. Shumlin’s success on divisive issues, Campbell says, has earned him enemies on the losing sides of those fights.
“When you look back at all the great leaders in history, I challenge anyone to find one that hasn’t had people say the same kind of negative things about them,” Campbell says. “Those enemies will always attack the integrity of the great leader. What I know about Peter is he’s a great leader. And I know his integrity stands up to scrutiny.”
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Shumlin is a self-proclaimed “fiscal conservative” who has vowed not to raise taxes.
“You won’t find anyone tighter with money than I am,” he says.
But critics – including a Democrat against whom he is competing in the Aug. 24 gubernatorial primary – say new revenues are the only way to fund the massive capital infusions associated with items on his ambitious five-point campaign platform.
Those campaign promises include single-payer healthcare by the end of 2014 and free childcare for 3- and 4-year-olds.
“Everything on his plan requires tax increases,” Roper says.
Shumlin assures voters they will not. Administrative reforms and the elimination of profit motive, Shumlin says, will more than pay for the health care overhaul.
“My plan does it cheaper than we do it now,” he says.
Emptying the prisons of non-violent offenders, he says, will cover the nearly $50 million price tag attached to his early childhood education plan.
The same qualities that have made him a successful businessman, Shumlin says, will guide his fiscally responsible turn in the governorship. Most importantly, he says, he’s the only person who can build the political will needed to achieve major reform.
“We don’t need anymore commissions. We’ve had enough studies,” Shumlin says. “I think we need an activist governor who’s going to get things done. We need vision. We need creativity. And that’s what I’m going to bring.”
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