(Host) Brian Dubie and Peter Shumlin are the two gubernatorial candidates who’ve received most of the attention this election season.
But there are seven candidates for governor, and three of them accepted VPR’s invitation to debate the issues.
VPR’s Patti Daniels reports:
(Daniels) Dennis Steele of Kirby may have the most name recognition among the independent and minor party candidates. He’s part of slate of candidates who are advocating for secession:
(Steele) "We’re not isolationists. What we’re proposing is that we become our country and control our own destiny."
(Daniels) Throughout the debate, Steele argued that the U.S. has lost its moral authority and that Vermont would be better off controlling its monetary and agricultural systems. Objections to U.S. foreign policy are central to Steel’s argument:
(Steele) "It’s the endless wars, we have a million dead Iraqis, we’ve ruined their country, we have 4 million displaced Iraqis across their country, American soldiers are continually murdering civilians over there, Obama’s drones are raining down deaf on Pakistan. We’ve got soldiers committing suicide, 6,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, hundred-thousand wounded, soldiers are committing suicide at higher rates since records have been kept in 1980."
(Daniels) The independent candidates also took on the issues that Dubie and Shumlin have been wrestling with, but with their own twist:
(Feliciano) "We can’t be everything to everyone anymore because it’s costing us through the nose."
(Daniels) Dan Feliciano of Essex says he’ll draw on his background as a business consultant to make state government operate like a lean private sector enterprise. And he didn’t have much praise for the Challenges for Change approach to trimming the state budget:
(Feliciano) "I think that’s management by lobotomy. The problem there was, you’d didn’t have an expert go in and say, here’s what it takes to build a bottoms-up budget, here’s where to look for waste. What they did basically was took an across-the-board swipe at reducing budgets and said, ‘Now live within these means.’"
(Daniels) But Feliciano wasn’t the only one arguing for new financial strategies. Emily Peyton of Putney says Vermont should create its own currency and its own banking system. Her ideas are in reaction to what she sees happening with federal banking policy:
(Peyton) "What we have in essence, is we have a very few people who are suffering from a serious mental illness, which is called greed, and need to control and who are in control of the markets of the world."
(Daniels) Two minor party candidates didn’t participate in the debate: Cris Ericson of the United States Marijuana Party declined the invitation, and Ben Mitchell of the Liberty Union Party had to work.
For VPR news, I’m Patti Daniels.
(Host) VPR’s next debate is Thursday between the major party candidates for Congress: incumbent Democrat Peter Welch and Republican challenger Paul Beaudry.