Former Senator Cheryl Rivers (D-Windsor)

By Terri Hallenbeck, Free Press Political Reporter

7 July 2010

PUTNEY — Down a winding dirt road on the outskirts of Putney is the business Peter Shumlin’s parents started that he now runs with his brother. Over the ridge is the dairy farm Shumlin bought and turned back over to the farmer to run. Nearby are acres of trees Shumlin owns where a friend runs a sawmill. In the center of town are several buildings filled with commerce — a restaurant, offices, apartments — that Shumlin owns and has had renovated.

Just a few square miles offer evidence that the 53-year-old Shumlin has his hand in just about everything. One hundred miles up the highway in Montpelier, where Shumlin serves as Senate leader, legislative colleagues say it is the same with the state’s business.

“It’s amazing the subjects that man is aware of in any given day at the Statehouse,” said fellow state Sen. Richard Mazza, D-Grand Isle/Chittenden. “The guy just never stops.”

Shumlin showed drive for immersing himself in local issues early on. He was 24 years old — back home after college to work in the family business, Putney Student Travel — when he won election to the Putney Selectboard. He helped his hometown win a fight against a new federal prison being built on the defunct Windham College campus. Instead, Shumlin helped lure Landmark College to the site, where it remains today.

John Leader, who was chairman of the Putney Selectboard when Shumlin joined the board 30 years ago, remembers that even at the age of 24 he had a way of making things happen. “Peter was fairly dynamic in his approach to problems. He was not afraid to use his connections and he had quite a few,” said Leader, who runs the Pepsi distributorship in Brattleboro.

Friends and adversaries alike say Shumlin has the intelligence for grasping issues, savvy for knowing when to act and a charm for getting his way — all of which means he gets things done even as he sometimes generates friction along the way.

Local economy

Shumlin is equally at home whether at the Statehouse, where he is typically dressed in a sharp-fitting suit, or back home in Putney dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. He appears to be a man at home anywhere, as long as he is in the middle of the action.

In laid-back Putney, the action is Shumlin’s involvement in a broad cross-section of enterprises. Each one, Shumlin said, brings home the importance of local control and a local economy.

As he walked through the barn of the dairy farm he bought, Shumlin said he decided it would be better to invest his money here and support the local agricultural economy than in the stock market. Being involved with the farm has helped him learn more about milk pricing and the challenges farmers face, he said. The milk there is sold to a cheesemaker down the road, which pays better than the traditional milk market.

Over the hill and up a rutty logging road, a friend runs a sawmill on land Shumlin owns. On another part of the property, a sawmill employee plans to start a CSA — a community-supported agriculture farm – selling locally grown food to local residents.

Family business

If Shumlin has a lot of irons in the fire, he appears to have learned it from his parents, George and Kitty Shumlin, retired teachers who started Putney Student Travel 59 years ago and turned it over to their sons 20 years ago.

In the renovated barn where the business operates, employees jokingly thanked Shumlin for stopping by one recent day. Between the January-May legislative session and his campaign for governor, Shumlin doesn’t spend a lot of time here. His brother, Jeff, runs the day-to-day business of sending students on foreign trips from Australia to Uganda for language, cross-cultural and community-service experiences. The company three years ago began a partnership with National Geographic for a series of programs.

Jeff Shumlin, who is nearly four years younger than his brother, said the two of them have become accustomed to their roles. “I’m more of a behind-the-scenes detail guy,” Jeff Shumlin said. “Peter is really a visionary, a creative thinker. We’re a good team that way.”

Last year, the business helped Shumlin earn an annual income of nearly $1 million, making him the wealthiest candidate in the race. Shumlin reluctantly revealed his income in April after the other gubernatorial candidates released their tax records. Once he did, he defended it as the mark of somebody who understands business.

Born for politics

While business brings home the money, politics has long been in Shumlin’s blood, his brother said, describing a young Peter sitting in his closet listening to Martin Luther King Jr. speeches on reel-to-reel tape. He was in the closet, Jeff Shumlin said, because the rest of the family was so sick of hearing the tape. Shumlin said he still occasionally listens to the speeches in his car.

His interest in King’s speaking ability might have been driven by his own learning disability. Shumlin struggled as a child to learn to read and spell and was eventually diagnosed with mild dyslexia. Shumlin said he believes he compensated for his difficulty reading with his speaking ability. “I had to be the guy who was fastest with my tongue,“ he said. “I had to be funny, engaging, witty and irreverent to survive those spelling bees and still have my peers know I was OK.”

It has paid off for him in politics. He is known around the Statehouse as being quick with a sound bite, the envy of more tongue-tied legislators.

Shumlin entered state politics after seven years on the Putney Selectboard. In 1990, he was appointed to a seat in the House by Gov. Madeleine Kunin. He moved to the Senate in 1993, became minority leader in his second term, and was elected president pro tempore the next term after Democrats gained the majority. He lost a three-way race for lieutenant governor in 2002 to Republican Brian Dubie, the man he hopes to face in November’s election. After a four-year hiatus, Shumlin returned to the Senate in 2007, and his colleagues elected him president pro tempore again.

Doing battle

President pro tempore was a job Sen. John Campbell, D-Windsor, very much wanted that year, after serving as majority leader under Peter Welch, who left the Senate to run for Congress. Campbell and Shumlin duked it out in a close race by secret ballot in a Democratic caucus meeting before the Legislature convened. When Campbell lost the higher position, he said he had no interest in returning to majority leader. Within weeks, Shumlin had lured Campbell back, promising him a key role in policy decisions. Shumlin stayed true to his word, Campbell said. “He and I were political adversaries,” Campbell said, “but I had no problem staying with him. He puts that aside.”

That is a recurring attribute for Shumlin: He does battle, sometimes there are hard feelings, but he has an uncanny knack for winning forgiveness.

“People stick with me because I think they know I’m going to get at least some of the results I promise,” Shumlin said.

Mazza, a 25-year veteran of the Senate, was angry that Shumlin pushed for a Senate vote in February against the continued operation of Vermont Yankee just as the nuclear power plant was mired in a public relations nightmare. Mazza was among a number of senators who thought Shumlin was unfairly taking advantage of Yankee’s troubles to defeat the plant instead of waiting for the results of an investigation into a tritium leak.

“My feeling was we were jumping the gun,” Mazza said recently. “I would not have handled it that way.”

Shumlin held the vote anyway. Mazza was among the few who voted for Vermont Yankee, but he quickly shrugged off his discontent with Shumlin. “I’ve been angry with him many times. The following day, it’s over,” Mazza said.

Months later, Mazza even defended the Yankee vote, saying Shumlin knew more about the issue than he did. Though Mazza said he is not endorsing any candidate for governor, he speaks highly of Shumlin, more than any of the other candidates. “He has a great ability to lead,” he said.

Beth Robinson, who led the fight for same-sex marriage through the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force, said Shumlin’s willingness to vote on that issue showed both his savvy at reading the tea leaves and his power of persuasion in getting others to follow.

In 2009, many legislators who supported same-sex marriage said it wasn’t the right time to take on the issue, Robinson said. “It took a lot of vision to get outside the conventional wisdom that prevailed — that this was too scary to do even though it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “Peter had the vision where others did not to see where Vermonters really were.”

Then, she said, Shumlin persuaded reluctant lawmakers that they would not face the backlash they did with the passage of civil unions in 2000. “That’s where I think Peter was a game-changer,” Robinson said.

Not everyone’s a fan

While supporters see him as a man who makes things happen, critics question the way he gets there. Polls suggest that Vermonters have picked up on that. In a recent Rasmussen Reports poll, Shumlin had a higher percentage of people viewing him very unfavorably than did the other candidates.

“There’s a number of things he’s said from time to time,” said Sen. Randy Brock, R-Franklin, noting that Shumlin told a television talk show host that Germany drew 30 percent of its power from solar when it actually produced 1 percent. “That makes me scratch my head,” Brock said.

Brock pointed to another instance. At the beginning of the last legislative session, Shumlin had a vacancy on the Senate Finance Committee to fill after the resignation of the only Republican on the committee that would do the bulk of the work on Vermont Yankee. Shumlin passed over Brock, a first-term senator who had served as state auditor and executive vice president of Fidelity Investments and loaded the committee with seven Democrats. “It certainly had the appearance of being disingenuous,” Brock said.

Shumlin said he draws criticism because he’s willing to make tough decisions, something that would serve him well as governor. “Tough decisions make both friends and enemies. I’ll take on things other politicians won’t,” he said. “You can’t have good government if you are not a good politician. Bad politicians don’t annoy people because they don’t do anything.”
Read more: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20100707/NEWS03/100706006/-1/TOPICS0206/Peter-Shumlin-is-at-home-in-the-middle-of-the-action#ixzz0t86cbihK

Read why Jeffrey Hollender supports Peter Shumlin for Governor:

“As the co-founder of Seventh Generation, I take our environmental and energy future seriously.  And as a Vermonter, preserving our natural landscape is one of my top concerns.”

“That is why I am supporting Peter Shumlin for Governor.  Peter isn’t afraid to do what’s right and he has the leadership skills and experience to protect our environment and create jobs.  If the Gulf crisis has taught us anything it is that we can’t do business as usual.  In an age where climate change threatens our way of life, tough leadership is required.”

I have led Seventh Generation from its humble beginnings to its current position as the leading brand for natural home products.  Seventh Generation is a company built on the philosophy that with every action we must consider its impact on the next seven generations.  To me, this isn’t just a motto; it’s a way of life inspired by personal events.  Over ten years ago, my son Alex was in the hospital as a result of a dangerous asthma attack.  Doctors concluded that environmental factors caused the attack.  Creating a sustainable, renewable world isn’t just about the environment – it’s about our families and our future.

Peter understands this and I can count on him to do what it takes to ensure that we leave this world better off than we found it.  I trust Peter with the next seven generations of my family.  I trust him because he has a record of getting tough things done and the strongest record on these issues.  Today, too many politicians talk about what they will do and then fail to deliver once in office.  With Peter, I don’t just like what he has to say, I like what he’s done.

• In 2006, Peter returned to the Senate to help combat climate change and sponsored and passed a bill that Vice President Al Gore called “the toughest climate change legislation in the country.”

• In 2008, Peter helped promote an economic development bill with key green provisions that invests stimulus funds into start up green companies and develops more predictable requirements for wind and hydro development.

• And during this past session, Peter worked to retire Vermont Yankee, the aging nuclear power plant on schedule.

Vermont’s environment needs a leader who is willing to stand up and do the right thing – we need Peter Shumlin.