Governor Peter Shumlin says he doesn’t plan to actively campaign until Labor Day because he’s too busy working as governor. But this doesn’t mean Shumlin will be out of the public eye for the next ten weeks.
Even though he had been fundraising for months, Governor Peter Shumlin refused to state that he was a candidate for re-election until just before last week’s filing deadline.
Shumlin says he doesn’t plan to do any real campaigning until early September because he’s busy working to strengthen the Vermont economy.
"I believe in a two year term but two year terms only work if you allow the Governor to do their job for at least a year and a half," said Shumlin. "I am not going to campaign until Labor Day I feel very strongly that I need to do the job that Vermonters are paying me to do."
Retired Middlebury College political science professor Eric Davis says that Shumlin has the luxury of deciding what’s "official" gubernatorial business and what’s a campaign event.
"Some might say that Peter Shumlin’s been campaigning for re-election since the day in January in 2011 when he was first sworn into office," said Davis. "This is something that all governors of Vermont do. Howard Dean did it, Jim Douglas did it. Peter Shumlin is doing it."
Davis says Shumlin’s decision not to formally campaign doesn’t mean that the governor won’t be getting news coverage. Davis notes that Shumlin has three press conferences scheduled for this week and an appearance on a call-in statewide TV program.
"That’s one of the reasons that incumbent governor have not lost in 50 years that challengers just find it very difficult to break through this control of the communications process that the incumbents have."
Davis says Shumlin’s decision not to actively campaign until after Labor Day gives Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock a chance to define his own campaign and develop a set of priority issues for the November election.
"So what Randy Brock needs to do is find as many ways that he can find hooks in news events that he can use to make his arguments about the issues so that he tees up these issues for the Fall when he and Peter Shumlin will actually be in the same studios on the same platforms."
Brock is expected to unveil his plan to make health care more accessible and more affordable at a press conference in the next few weeks.