Forget the financial meltdown on Wall Street, crumbling cooling towers at Vermont Yankee and the high price of gas and fuel oil.

What Vermonters really care about — if we are to believe Gov. Jim Douglas’ new TV spot — is whether House Speaker Gaye Symington should release the personal finances of her husband!

Here’s a link to the ad, which hits the airwaves tonight. No word on how long it will run.

So why is this is an issue? Symington’s financial disclosure faux pas is more than a month old and has essentially fallen off the radar.

One word, says Douglas campaign spokeswoman Dennise Casey: “Trust.”

This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2008.

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Shay Totten wrote "Fair Game," a weekly political column, from April 2008-December 2011.

7 replies on “Douglas On the Attack”

  1. Symington has steadfastly argued that she is the candidate, not her husband, and Vermonters know the difference.Uh, not really. You can’t parse the assets of a married couple. What’s his is theirs. She should either disclose it all or refuse entirely.Should I stop making fun of all John McCain’s houses and cars just becuase Cindy McCain isn’t the candidate? I don’t think so.

  2. The Symington Campaign should be thankful for the attack because half of the public doesn’t even know who she is. It’s pretty amazing that 5 weeks before the election she’s still unknown. She really out to hang it up.

  3. The Symington Campaign should be thankful for the attack because half of the public doesn’t even know who she is.There might be something to that. I knew who she was, but I didn’t know she was married before this issue came up.

  6. Governor Douglas ensured appropriate state resources were in place for a homeless child after he learned that VT State employees had NOT and COTS had NOT.

  7. Yesterday when Democratic candidate for Governor Gaye Symington was on Vermont Edition a caller named Drew called in with what appeared to be a planted question about funding college education and then she was able to go right into her pitch about her Bridge to Nowhere. It so happens that there is a Drew Hudson who works on her campaign. If the two Drew’s are the same person, then it would seem they should know better than to use something out of the Hillary Clinton campaign playbook that is so patently obvious and phony, unless they are planning on repeating the failure of that campaign too. Do not take my word for it though, take a listen for yourself to the archived recording of the show available at VPR.

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