By Peter Hirschfeld
Vermont Press Bureau - Published: July 18, 2010
Susan Bartlett has read her own political epitaph before.
In 1997, she alienated powerful constituencies in her Lamoille County Senate district by helping to shepherd Act 60, the landmark education funding law, through the Statehouse.
“They said re-election was impossible after that,” she says now. “They’d dug the hole and nailed the coffin.”
In 2000, it was Bartlett’s strong advocacy for civil unions that was to be her undoing.
“They said if Act 60 didn’t kill her, then we’ve got her this time,” she says. “I was outspent 5-to-1. They said I was toast.”
Bartlett endured, though, riding her reputation for fiscal moderation to eight consecutive re-elections since first winning the county’s lone Senate post in 1992.
As the five-way race in the Democratic gubernatorial primary hits its midsummer stride, Bartlett is once again fielding rumors of her political demise.
Polls show her lagging well behind the rest of the field. And Bartlett’s fundraising totals bode ill for her candidacy (in campaign filings disclosed last week, she reported $70,000 in donations, the only Democratic candidate below $200,000).
Perhaps owing to her previous political battles, Bartlett is unfazed. Last year, when she announced her candidacy, Bartlett predicted certain triumph in the 2010 general election. Voters are ready to leave Gov. James Douglas and Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, she said, but want a voice of fiscal moderation that she alone among Democrats can provide.
On a recent sweltering Monday, inside the dark, wood-floored living room of her North Hyde Park home, Bartlett remained cocksure in the face of political realities that point to almost certain defeat in the Aug. 24 primary.
“They’ve said I was done before. They’ve told me it was all over,” Bartlett says. “Then the silent majority goes to the polls and elects me.”
‘Willing to say no’
In the Statehouse, where she has been chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee for a decade, Bartlett has made a comfortable home on the conservative edge of the Democratic spectrum.
During the last two legislative sessions, more progressive members of Bartlett’s caucus championed the use of “rainy day” funds to protect government programs from revenue shortfalls. Bartlett, however, urged a fiscal restraint that exposed the Agency of Human Services to significant budget cuts.
In advance of the Senate vote on Challenges for Change, a government restructuring plan that was criticized by fellow Democrats – including three also running for governor – as a backdoor downsizing scheme, Bartlett delivered the sales pitch for a piece of legislation that cut more than $30 million from state spending.
“She’s willing to say no,” says Sen. Jane Kitchel, former human services secretary under Howard Dean and now vice chairwoman of the appropriations committee. “If you’re the chair of Appropriations, you do have to say no at times. It’s not the most pleasant position to be in, but she never led people with false hopes.”
Senate President Peter Shumlin, who 10 years ago made Bartlett the first woman to head the appropriations committee, cited her “moderation” and “balance” among his chief reasons for her appointment.
“I think the thing about Susan that makes her so good at that job is that she has a very balanced approach to making decisions, and that’s what an Appropriations chair has to do,” says Shumlin, who is competing against Bartlett in the Democratic primary.
The same moderation that won Bartlett respect, and considerable power, in Montpelier – in her inaugural Senate run in 1992, she considered declaring as an independent – has probably hurt her standing with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which generally decides primary elections.
Going for the moderates
Bartlett has made clear her primary campaign strategy: Own the moderate bloc of Vermont Democrats, a portion of which has swung for Douglas and Dubie in the past four general elections.
That approach might be problematic, according to Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College.
“She has been quoted in the last several weeks as saying she’s looking for the support of so-called moderates,” Davis says. “But I believe her main difficulty is going to be that most of the people who vote in the Democratic primary call themselves either liberals or progressives rather than moderates.”
Moderates haven’t shown up in primaries, Bartlett counters, because there weren’t any moderates to vote for.
“I can say to people, ‘This is the primary where you actually have a choice. This is the primary where you can have a profound impact by actually coming out to vote,’” she says. “I hear folks all over the state telling me, ‘This is the one. This is the one where I vote.’ We’ll see if they show up.”
At home in the Kingdom
Even as she peddles her self-styled fiscal conservatism, Bartlett says she never wavers from her belief in the goodness of government.
“I’m sure not one of those Republicans,” she says. “My father and I stopped talking about politics when he decided he liked Ronald Reagan.”
Bartlett is a chatty woman whose family moved to Orleans when she was 15. The daughter of a soldier father and an English mother – they met while he was stationed in the European Theater during World War II – Bartlett, 63, says she took immediately to rural life in the Northeast Kingdom.
“I’d been in South Carolina before that, and this new place was much, much better for me,” she says.
Bartlett says she wasn’t a great student at Orleans High School (though her campaign website touts her receipt of the “Betty Crocker Award”). Nor did she achieve excellence in her undergraduate studies at the University of Vermont, where she met her future husband, Bill.
“I was not a terribly good student,” she says. “I just was not interested.”
At Johnson State College, where Bartlett earned her master’s in administrative education – she specialized in special education – she says she found her calling.
She started working in group homes for at-risk youth. After graduating, she was hired by the Lamoille North Supervisory Union, where she developed a districtwide special-education program.
“My parents used to tell me that from when I was a toddler, I was always a defender of the weak on the school playground,” Bartlett says. “It’s just been an obvious part of who I am, and the special-education work was a natural fit for me.”
Bartlett says her work with children helped spawn her interest in politics, which she came to see as a way to make government work for vulnerable children and adults.
“The fundamental thing that makes me a Democrat is I really do believe it is appropriate for government to create programs to help people,” Bartlett says. “This whole ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ thing, maybe that used to work. But you go look at some of the poor folks in this state and tell me what the odds are of those kids being able to pull themselves up.”
For all that she burnishes her conservative credentials, Bartlett says she has a long record of supporting government programs even in the face of budget constraints.
She’s long been a proponent of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and, colleagues say, helped protect it from draconian cuts pushed by the Douglas administration in 2009 and 2010.
She also touts court diversion programs, for which she helped carve out additional appropriations.
‘Not slick’
Bartlett is one of the few gubernatorial candidates without a well-polished stump speech and says she rarely uses prepared remarks.
She often pauses a few beats before answering questions at candidate forums and isn’t given to rhetorical bluster.
“She’s very down to earth and straightforward,” says Sen. Diane Snelling, a Chittenden County Republican also on the appropriations committee. “She’s definitely not slick.”
Nor is she a polished politician. One of Bartlett’s early forays into campaign PR left many political observers scratching their heads. In advance of the Senate’s February vote on the relicensing of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, Bartlett’s campaign circulated a news release condemning the timing of the vote. She accused Senate President Peter Shumlin of grandstanding and said lawmakers needed more time to study the issues surrounding the aging plant.
It was odd enough – politically, at least – that a gubernatorial wannabe had opted to publicly criticize a vote around which her party’s faithful had rallied so strongly. Odder still was her position on a key vote just a few days later. A Republican-led amendment sought to delay the Yankee vote until later in the session – precisely the action Bartlett had called for just days earlier.
Yet she voted against the amendment.
She later said she wanted the Senate to speak in a unified voice on Yankee. When she failed to rally support for her position to postpone, she reasoned, she might as well join the majority.
But the turnabout left many Statehouse insiders wondering whether the senator was ready for prime time.
“I say what I think. I always have, and you can be sure I always will,” Bartlett says. “I really don’t spend a lot of time thinking how it’s going to play.”
Long odds
Davis, who moderated a candidate forum in Middlebury earlier this year, says Bartlett has the least name recognition of any of the five Democratic candidates. But he says she’s impressed with her knowledge of all things budgetary.
“My sense is that to people attending the forums, she comes across as very knowledgeable, especially in state fiscal policy,” Davis says. “Susan Bartlett knows more about budgets than anybody who doesn’t work on the fifth floor of the Pavilion building,” where the governor’s office is.
While Davis puts long odds on Bartlett to win the primary, he says she’s well positioned for other executive jobs. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bartlett end up with a senior position in the next administration if a Democrat wins in November.”
Bartlett says she’s not interested. And she warns political pundits not to embarrass themselves later by writing her off now.
“I’ve always been lifted by that great and wonderful silent majority,” she says. “They’ve always come out for me before. We’ll see if they do it again.”
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