I guess the Pollina campaign will be the gift that keeps giving to this writer-boy. It’s just too bad that the mainstream media here in Vermont won’t wake up to the campaign’s many silly blunders. Yesterday, of course, we highlighted some of the names listed on the “Democrats for Pollina” website as being far from “Democrats.” And today I got a tip from a vegetable farmer here in Vermont who found it comical that Pollina’s little video speech on his campaign website about the importance of “buying Vermont food products” features a backdrop of…ready for this: bananas, oranges and a watermelon. Watch it yourself:

Like I said yesterday, this campaign is not ready for primetime – deep in the recesses of cable access, perhaps. But not primetime.

I mean, wouldn’t you think Pollina or someone on the campaign staff or video crew would stop to consider what food product is behind him when he says these words to Vermonters:

The State must set the example when it comes to buying Vermont products and helping provide markets for our farmers. It is frustrating to know that our prisons, state colleges and other institutions are still buying and serving dairy and other products that could be bought right here at home. We need more instate processing of meats, vegetables and other farm products. We need to make investments in agriculture infrastructure and on farm enterprises. And we need to build a Vermont Fair Trade certified brand of dairy and other Vermont products.

Or am I missing something and did Vermont just become a major grower of bananas, oranges and watermelons? Heh, you never know with global warming…

While campaign video backdrops may seem trivial, it does point to a continued sloppiness in what is increasingly looking like a haphazard and desperate effort. Remember, this is the campaign that began by trying to parse the definition of “intend,” as in: “I intend to run for governor.” He did that, of course, so he could keep his radio show (Equal Time) going while setting up the campaign without having to play by the “equal time” norms of campaigning. Cute.

And this is also the campaign that played semantics with his fundraising efforts. You’ll recall that Pollina announced at one point that his campaign had a goal of raising $100,000 by mid-January. Well, mid-January came and Pollina did what he thought he had to do: announce that the goal had been met. But when some of the Vermont media woke up for a brief second and asked for proof, Pollina had to admit that at least $30,000 of that money was in the form of “pledges.” Sure, Tony, just play loose with the facts and keep pretending you’re above the political games.

And now we come to his “buy Vermont” faux pas. Of course we all support the notion of buying local. Some of us have been doing that long before the trendy “localvore” movement became…well…trendy. But if you’re going to get up on a video soapbox and lash out at your opponent’s lack of follow through about “buying Vermont products first,” wouldn’t it be wise to hide the bananas, oranges and watermelons in the background? Or, better yet, wouldn’t you want to be featuring some good-old-fashioned Vermont products? Just a thought.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of “do as I say, not as I do” norm that many of us have seen from Pollina over the years. He wants to talk about his “closeness” with the “working man” but he’s more often than not seen sitting at the coffee shop during working hours. He wants to talk about the horrors of things like pesticides but starts a non-organic milk company. He talks about the problems of bovine growth hormone (rBGH) but is too scared to join efforts against the Cabot Creamery’s use of it. He talks about the importance of a third party but covets the Democratic Party’s support. He talked about the importance of public financing of campaigns but then ran into some very rich friends. And now he’s telling voters about the importance of buying Vermont produce with bananas as a backdrop.

Frankly, I’m not sure if Pollina’s clueless or just another smarmy politician amongst many. Either way, it amounts to a terrible start to what everyone admits is a huge uphill battle to unseat the incumbent governor, Jim Douglas. I guess he’s satisfied with fooling the same 15% of the population that he always does – and then calling it a “victory.”

Vermont progressives deserve better.

Please, can anyone out there other than the fawning Vermont media think anything other than “loser” when the name Anthony Pollina is mentioned? I can’t. And for good reason, too. He’s a loser. He loses elections (many of them). He loses in his issue efforts (many of them). And he even loses in court when – oddly – he challenged his rare victory with campaign finance reform. I guess it must have felt weird for him to actually win something so he went to court to fight it. Good for you, Tony. Keep that record clean.

We all know about Pollina’s electoral losing. He’s something like 0-for-5. But Pollina seems to get energized by losing the way most politicians are energized by winning. The average politician, for example, begins with a lower office, wins, aims higher, wins and so forth. Not Pollina. He aims high, starting with a run for Congress, loses, and then just keeps aiming high for jobs like governor (a couple of times) and keeps losing. What’s worse is that each time he loses – and loses big – Pollina acts like he won. “Wow, I’m up to over 20% of the vote! Wait’ll next time!”

I’m guessing that when Pollina secures his next, great loss this November he’ll be so damn energized by it that he’ll probably launch a bid for the presidency in 2012. And that could be the best thing that could happen to Vermont’s Progressive Party. Because, let’s face it, Pollina’s been sucking a lot of energy out of their movement with all this losing. Worse, it’s preventing a whole new breed of Progs from stepping up and taking a fresh shot at one of the offices that Pollina keeps sacrificing to the Republicans.

It would also be nice if Pollina would stop “saving” Vermont’s dairy farmers. Because let’s look at that track record. In the 1980s, when Pollina started saving them, there were more than 3,000 dairy farmers in Vermont. Today, after more than 25-years of Pollina fighting for them, there are about 1,100 of them left. Thanks, Tony! Sure, it’s totally and completely unfair to blame him for the dramatic drop. But it’s certainly fair to ask him why – given these facts – he’s so proud of his dairy work?

About the only real progress made in the dairy industry in Vermont over the last 25 years has been the advent and growth of organic dairying. And – as if to protect his losing record – Pollina has had NOTHING to do with it. Pollina’s new Vermont Milk Company, for example, even shuns organic. Oh yeah, feel the progressive vision. And pass the pesticides…

Today, a group of so-called Democrats are gathering in Burlington to launch a skimpy little website called “Democrats for Pollina.” It’s a not-so-veiled attempt to “prove” that Pollina is getting gobs of support from mainstream Dems in his Prog bid for the governorship. The group is officially launching a “write-in” campaign for Pollina in the Democratic primary in September. Since Pollina will be on the Prog’s primary ballot, he can’t be on the Dems’. But he could – if he won as a write-in – don both labels in the general election. If, that is, the Dems let him get away with it. Fat chance.

This all kind of reminds me of the announcements last week by Hillary Clinton that she would welcome Obama to be her running mate. It’s the kind of thing that forces that cocked puppy head look that says: Huh? And I’m not sure if it’s more arrogant or ignorant for a person running behind to offer a lesser job to the front-runner.

In Vermont, of course, the early polls show Pollina being in the place he’s always in: third amongst three. Or, for those of us outside Pollina’s groupie shadows, it’s usually called LAST. What’s worse, Pollina was a good distance behind what the pollsters only identified as a “Democratic candidate” since a Dem hasn’t announced – yet. Look Mom, I’m literally losing to a no-name! Good job, Tony. Now get to your room and re-arrange your Buffalo Bills memorabilia….

But that won’t stop Pollina and his groupies who can’t stop losing to think that they’re somehow entitled to a Dem Party primary endorsement via a write-in campaign. Chris Pearson, a Prog who has actually gotten elected and a Pollina sidekick, told the Free Press that Pollina won’t enter the Dem primary officially because “that’s what Peter Clavelle did and it didn’t work.” But then Pearson goes on with this: “People know (Pollina) as a Progressive and for him to suddenly run as a Democrat doesn’t pass the straight-face test.”

Well, yeah. But it also doesn’t pass the smell test for Pollina and his fumble-fingered handlers to think Vermont voters are stupid enough to fall for this write-in nonsense. Let me get this straight: It looks funny to have Pollina get the Dem primary endorsement by earning it with his name on the ballot but it’s fine for him to be sneaky by coordinating the write-in effort for it? Give me a break.

And there we have it: The mush that is the Pollina political spine. If he believed his and his party’s own rhetoric, he’d be announcing that he doesn’t want the Dem’s endorsement – no matter how it came. Instead, he’s taking us all for fools as he skips down this silly little write-in route.

Of course, there’s one way to put an end to all of this: A true progressive needs to challenge Pollina in the Prog Party primary so his followers will have to focus on their own party’s efforts rather than soiling that of the Dems.

And I think I know someone who’s interested. Stay tuned.

Vermont’s much-mythologized Town Meeting Day is now upon us and the Vermont media is showering us with its annual puff pieces and odes to the so-called glories of the day. But because of Vermont’s centralized form of government that puts almost all the power in Montpelier, none of the actions taken by a town on its coveted meeting day can go beyond the very short leash the legislature has put them on. That means, for example, that, unless the state legislature passes a bill specifically declaring that towns can take action on an issue like war, nukes or alternative energy, nothing the towns do on these issues matters. They can have, in affect, a nice debate and nothing more.

Many Vermonters would be surprised to know that we actually have less direct control of our town government than our brethren in all our neighboring states. And what about all that talk and folklore about Vermont’s town meetings being bastions of grassroots democracy?

“It’s a myth,” replies Vermont’s Secretary of State, Deb Markowitz, the woman playing the referee between the state legislature and the towns. “It’s a big shock to a lot of people in this state when they realize towns really don’t have much power. They can have a discussion on issues but they can’t enact laws.”

Ironically, the autonomy of local towns took a nosedive after the American Revolution.

“We should not romanticize this historical period,” wrote Ben Grosscup in a pamphlet entitled Vermont Towns vs. Genetic Engineering, a publication of the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield. “The newly formed U.S. government eviscerated local autonomy in favor of a centralized republic first by state constitutions drawn up during the Revolutionary War and subsequently by the federal constitution.”

Vermont’s companion states in New England, however, eventually opted for what’s known as a “Home Rule” style of state government that cedes power to the towns. Vermont, on the other hand, adheres to the legal principle known as “Dillon’s Rule,” which severely restricts town autonomy.

The League of Cities and Towns, a nonprofit coalition of Vermont’s local governments, has been trying for years — to no avail — to get the state legislature to adopt a Home Rule style of government. According to the League’s October 2002 newsletter, “the State of Vermont is tied for last in terms of autonomy granted to municipalities.”

Interestingly, it’s been the Republicans in the state legislature who have acted as the primary roadblocks to the efforts to give more power to the local governments — not exactly what you’d expect from those who usually espouse decentralized government.
In fact, the state’s top Republican, Governor Jim Douglas, is also no fan of giving more power to the towns. Despite making folksy references to his decades of service as Middlebury’s town meeting day moderator, Douglas has called attempts by Home Rule advocates to provide more power to the towns as “willy-nilly” changes to Vermont’s way of governing.

But for citizens and town officials looking to maximize local democracy there’s nothing “willy-nilly” about breaking up the near-monopolistic power centered in Montpelier. Advocates of Home Rule point to numerous situations in which the entire state legislature had to be corralled into approving even the most basic local actions.

“Several years ago towns tried to adopt ethics ordinances that would govern the ethical conduct of their local officials,” Markowitz told me in a past interview. “But they couldn’t do it until the state legislature passed a bill granting them that specific right.”

The City of Burlington has also been repeatedly hamstrung by the current system whenever it needs to do something as routine as altering its charter. Again, before they can make a move outside of the narrowly defined powers already granted by Montpelier, they must get in line and work their way through the Vermont Senate and House and then – hopefully – get the governor’s signature.

Nowhere is the lack of citizen empowerment at a local level more apparent than when it comes to citizens’ efforts to bring forth environmental or social issues for town consideration. While it’s relatively easy to get your pet issue on your town meeting’s agenda (all you need is a petition signed by 5% of the town’s eligible voters), your efforts are bound to a mere discussion of the issue or, at best, an advisory statement to the folks holding the real power in Montpelier or Washington.

One of the hottest issues to surface on town meeting agendas in the last couple of years has been the genetically modified organism (GMO) issue. Spearheaded by the folks at the Institute for Social Ecology in years past, dozens of towns passed resolutions calling for the state legislature to either label or ban these controversial foods.

But when anti-GMO activists sought to have their towns ban farmers from growing these foods they learned the hard way about the lack of power at the local level. In Marshfield, for example, the town moderator declared the petition calling for a town “moratorium” on the production of GMO crops “illegal.” Secretary of State Markowitz and the Vermont Constitution she’s forced to interpret supported his opinion.

“The towns can ask the legislature to enact a moratorium,” says Markowitz. “But they can’t enact one on their own.”

Contrast this, for example, with the citizen-based initiatives in Nebraska, Iowa, and Pennsylvania to ban all forms of corporate farming within their townships. Now that’s empowerment.

While discussions and education that ensue at our town meetings are nice, Vermont’s cities and towns deserve the right to take action – just like they did before the Revolution.

[Editor's note: This essay was adapted from my column in Seven Days, "Left Field," published earlier in this century.]

I’m glad to see that the Burlington Free Press and WCAX finally got on board with the story about the Progressive Party’s candidate for governor, Anthony Pollina, and his radio show at WDEV. I called WDEV’s star of talk Mark Johnson last week while he was hosting Pollina-the-guest to ask them both about the issue of Pollina being both a radio show host and a political candidate. But, more specifically, I wanted to know what kind of ethical rules they were employing at the station when Pollina-their-colleague paid a visit as Pollina-the-candidate. It’s a conflict that should raise more than a few eyebrows.

Mark Johnson got defensive, as he usually does when questions about the media come up. And while he defended what is certainly his right (and responsibility, I might add) to invite Pollina as a guest since he’s running for governor, Johnson seemed to not understand the concerns about blurring Pollina’s roles at the station – host, guest, advertiser. Or, if you will, how the WDEV news and talk professionals will deal with a candidate who is also a colleague on the dial.

“I’ve only seen Anthony here probably twice in the three years he’s been on the station,” declared Johnson. “It’s not as if we’re hanging out.”

But that’s not the point. The point is that the roles are blurred, as was proven by the typically smooth segues that Johnson served up when moving from talk about Pollina’s radio show to talk about his candidacy. One minute joking about their mutual “boss,” the omnipresent Ken Squier, and the next a question about Pollina’s opinion on matters of the state. Sorry, but it’s just strange. Illegal? No. But strange.

And it’s Pollina who should have understood this from the beginning and not put people like WDEV, Squier and Johnson in the hot seat. In fact, Pollina remained largely silent when I brought the issue up to him on Johnson’s show, basically declaring that he’ll stop the show when he gets too busy with the campaigning.

Pollina should know better. Remember, his show is called “Equal Time,” a title based on the belief that the media lacks fairness. Indeed. And it’s also doesn’t seem real fair that a candidate who works for a media outlet – folksy as it is – can also sit down with that outlet’s news department for an “objective” interview.

Isn’t this the kind of political and corporate media mingling that understandably drives progressives like Pollina crazy about Rupert Murdoch’s empire, most notably Fox News? Imagine the outrage if a Fox News host became a candidate, kept his or her airtime, and then also started appearing on other programs as candidate/guest. Or, if you’d like to bring it home, how about if the same happened with a WCAX personality? Or a Free Press employee?

It just doesn’t pass the smell test. And any good populist progressive should know that.

But now that the story has morphed from me bringing it up on the Mark Johnson Show to now being covered by the mainstream media, Pollina is finally figuring it out. And he’s also listening to the wise words of Squier, who has been clear that he’d like Pollina to find a replacement for his show – and soon. It’s Squier who has built a local radio station that is the pride of Central Vermont, bucking the trends of push-button-pop and all-Brittany-News-all-the-time for a real commitment to all things local. And how ironic that it’s a Prog who’s bringing the ethical stench to his doorstep.

Pollina wants it both ways. He wants us to listen to his words and ignore his actions. Pollina wants us to believe him when he proclaims to be the media underdog but forget that he’s forking over $600 a week to be the media. He wants us to hear his words about campaign finance reform but forget that he balked at that kind for reform when it didn’t suit his personal needs. And he wants us to listen to his rants against the two-party money chase but forget that his party’s main goal right now is to amass $100,000 for him in six weeks.

Not a great start to a progressive candidacy. But it’s not as if Pollina’s been in the business of winning these things.