Rep. Kesha Ram was among the handful of Democratic lawmakers standing next to Progressive Dean Corren at his campaign event outside the Ward 1 polling station in Burlington on Tuesday.
That doesn’t mean he can count on her vote just yet.
“I really like what I’m hearing from Dean Corren. I am glad that he is working on championing single-payer and other issues that are important to us as Democrats,” Ram said. “And he has not directly asked me for my support, but today seems like the start of that request.”
Corren will soon ask the Vermont Democratic Party to put its political firepower behind his campaign for lieutenant governor. But he still has some work to do to win over the Democratic faithful.
In his bid to unseat Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, the popular Republican incumbent, Corren is going to have to work hard to marshal the enthusiasm, and political resources, of a party he only recently started courting.
“The question is, are they going to come out and turnout for him?” Ram said. “And I think that just requires hard work.”
And also, a compelling pitch to the people who control the Democratic Party purse strings.
Corren looks to have the Democratic nomination solidly in hand, thanks to an impressive write-in campaign in the Democratic primary. But Progressives and Democrats have a long history in Vermont, not all of it positive. And many Democrats will be uneasy lending allegiance to a Progressive who suddenly wants to borrow their brand.
Dottie Deans, chairwoman of the Vermont Democratic Party, wrote Corren’s name in on the Democratic primary Tuesday. And Deans says many Democrats support Corren.
“But there are certainly strong Democrats that feel otherwise,” Deans says.
Corren’s detractors include some prominent Democrats in the Vermont Senate – Senate President John Campbell among them – who say they’ll continue to actively campaign for the Republican incumbent. Even left-leaning Democrats whose key policy planks – like single-payer health care – overlap with Corren’s will have to decide whether they can get past the historically tense relationship between Ds and Ps.
Corren will go before the Vermont Democratic Party’s state committee next month to seek the organization’s formal endorsement. But even if he gets it, as is expected, that doesn’t mean he’ll gain access to all the well-funded organizational apparatus he’ll likely need to have a chance at unseating Phil Scott.
“Right now we’re in a zone where we don’t have a firm commitment either way,” Deans says. “That is a discussion that we have got to have.”
The race between Corren and Scott is shaping up to be the most competitive statewide contest of 2014. And the $200,000 Corren will have at his disposal – he qualified for public financing – will make him the best-funded challenger Scott has encountered.
But the field organizing, voter identification and get-out-the-vote resources on hand at the Democratic Party, which raised over $1 million during the last cycle, would dwarf what Corren can put together on his own. And Corren’s capacity to land himself on Democrats’ telephone call scripts and mass mailings might mean the difference between a surprise upset and a resounding defeat.
Scott will have his own army of supporters, many of whom account for some of the more than 5,000 write-in ballots cast in Tuesday’s Democratic lieutenant governor primary. In Montpelier, for instance, Scott got 55 write –in votes, to Corren’s 195.
Scott says he won’t alter his political messaging to appeal to Democrats who have voted for him in the past, but might now decide to consider Corren.
“I can only be me,” Scott says. “And I’ve to look myself in the mirror the next day after the election. I can’t be any different than I am and my message stays the same.”
