The two major-party candidates were joined by Liberty Union nominee Bill Lee, the retired Red Sox pitcher, who chimed in with occasionally amusing, sometimes pointed, but often off-point comments. Asked whether even he would vote for himself, Lee conceded that he was “up in the air” about the prospect, but he also declared, “I know everything.”
The debate’s most spirited moments came when the three candidates were given the chance to pose questions to one another. Minter asked Scott why he would not join her call for universal background checks on gun sales. When Scott responded, “It isn’t the gun, it’s the violence,” Minter fired back.
“We do have a problem, Phil,” she said, arguing that universal background checks reduce fatal domestic assaults and pointing out that 86 percent of Vermonters support the proposal. “This is a way we can actually reduce the violence, Phil.”
Scott sniped back. “I understand, Sue, because you govern by polling. You run your campaign by polling,” he said. “I’m going to stick with my notion that we should enforce the laws that are on the books.”
“Here you are again, Phil, saying things I don’t think are accurate,” the Democrat responded. “I will oppose a carbon tax.”
“You’ll veto a carbon tax?” Scott asked. “Is that a yes?”
“Climate change is real and it is here,” Minter said in response.
“It’s a simple yes or no,” Scott interjected.
“About climate change?” Minter asked.
“No, about the carbon tax,” Scott said.
In previous debates, Minter has said that she would not pursue a tax on carbon, but she has refused to unequivocally state that she would veto such a bill if it arrived on her desk. That continued Thursday, even after the debate, as reporters pressed her on the question while she walked to a waiting car.
“I think you’ve heard everything,” she said, refusing to elaborate. “I’m not going to threaten a veto.”
Minter declined to repudiate the ads, instead using the question to restate the message behind them.
“I think now, more than ever, Vermonters want a governor who always has, always will stand strong for a woman’s right to choose without restrictions,” she said, referring to Scott’s opposition to late-term abortions and his support for parental notification laws.
Scott, in turn, condemned a series of ads sponsored by the Republican Governors Association, including one that depicts Minter as a bobblehead doll nodding in agreement with retiring Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin.
Scott persisted in questioning Minter about taxes, asking if she planned to renew an existing sales tax exemption on aircraft parts, set to expire next year. He argued that the exemption has fueled technical education programs.
Minter was determined not to give a specific answer. “I will look at it as I will with any proposal: how it affects the middle class,” she said.
For the past two months, Minter has cited jet planes as an example of something she would be willing to tax, reasoning that they benefit the wealthy. Last week, she told Seven Days she wasn’t sure what sort of jet tax she was referring to, then clarified that she would tax charter flights, not aircraft parts. At Thursday’s debate, however, she again left her proposal vague.
Instead, Minter turned the tax question against Scott, arguing that his plan to look for a penny of savings on every dollar comes from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s website.
“I don’t think it’s real governance,” she said.
The two also dueled over college education. Minter pointed out that Scott had said in a 40-page economic development plan he released in July that he would be coming out with an education quality plan.
“Is this a plan that is a secret?” she asked.
Scott denied he had promised such a thing, though he praised her for reading and, he alleged, for borrowing from his plan.
The Vermont Democratic Party, meanwhile, tweeted a passage from Scott’s plan. Indeed, on page 11, he had written, “I will be introducing a more comprehensive education quality plan as this campaign proceeds.”
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The fact Scott denounced some of the ads by his own party while inter would not and would not answer questions directly ought to tell the voters that Phil does have integrity, Sue will win at any cost and she will not protect the middle class but further hurt us as Shumlin has done
Sue Minter has changed her position on the legalization of cannabis, (Marijuana), after the primaries. She says she will support legalization and then limits her support by requiring very restrictive requirements including a per se limit that is not supported by science. This puts the cart before the horse. Minter took an anti gun stance and has now softened her position. She proposed extending the sales and use tax to force service businesses to charge it. Then she backed down on that. She is in my opinion grasping at straws. I want to see the legalization of cannabis and I think that Phil Scott will let a bill pass without signing it. I do not want to see the sales and use tax applied to services or to out of state customers. (This would put me out of business). I agree with Lt. Gov. Scott that we do NOT need more gun laws. We DO need better mental health care for those in crisis. The man who killed five young Vermonters on RTE 89 needed help and did not get it. The bottom line for this independent voter is trust. I do not trust Sue Minter.
Phil Scott denouncing an ad by the GOP that was overtly sexist is not the same thing as asking Sue Minter to denounce an ad by Planned Parenthood’s PAC because it highlighted parts of his record that he finds less than favorable and so do a lot of people who happen to have uteruses and also vote.
For one thing, the GOP is a purely political entity who made a political calculation and it missed the mark: most voters don’t like sexism so Phil helped himself by disavowing it. There isn’t anything particularly admirable here. This should be the bare minimum.
A PAC affiliated with Planned Parenthood is political but its agenda is women’s health and reproductive rights. The ad against Phil is only offensive if you don’t fully believe women have the right to bodily autonomy. If you believe a 16 year old who has been raped by her father should have the right to terminate the pregnancy immediately without notifying her abuser or believe that a woman who finds out late in her pregnancy that there are life threatening complications should not be prosecuted for the worst moment of her life than maybe you want to know where Phil really stands and you want him to be held accountable.
And the idea that “hey, X politician said it too” just does not fly as an argument coming from our next potential governor.
“vtwoman”- you’ve missed the mark in this case. If the “PAC affiliated with Planned Parenthood” truly cared about Planned Parenthood’s mission, they would support (or at very least remain neutral on) all Pro-Choice candidates, regardless of party affiliation. In this scenario, they’ve chosen Partisanship over the issue at hand, and have used manipulative messaging to disparage a Pro-Choice candidate. If you don’t agree with me, then I’ll ask you this: why haven’t they run any ads about Senator Leahy’s support of restricting late-term abortions? Why haven’t they run ads about Tim Kaine’s record on abortion (which happens to be more conservative than LG Scott’s)?
Phil Scott thinks he’s a nice guy and this is enough reason to be governor. We need much more than that in the executive office. SueMinter is a proven manager of budgets, personnel and large projects. Sue minter will be a great governor for Vermont.
Phil Scott has been Lt governor for 6 years and the business he co-owns has received millions in state contracts. Scott sees no moral problem with his influence.
Vermont Citizens Protect Our Democracy Hand Count the Vote!
I was surprised to discover Vermont is still using Accuvote optical scanners now over a decade old having flawed security. See the YouTube video Silvestro the cat about the 2008 New Hampshire primary recount demonstrating the ease with which a malicious insider or company technician could fraudulently program Accuvote to alter the vote count without poll workers knowing anything is wrong. One company continues to represent a single point of failure for integrity of the Vermont election with no transparency of Accuvote programming.
To make matters worse, in the event of a recount, Vermont rules do not allow actual hand counting of the ballots rather running it through the same flawed scanners.
Occasionally, flawed e-Vote machines make the news as in Chelsea MA, during the republican presidential primary where the e-Vote machines gave a landslide victory to Jim Gilmore the former governor of Virginia! Days later officials declared it was a programming error and the victory should go to Trump.
I make a common sense plea to hand count the vote by poll workers witnessed by local citizens on election night as the Gold Standard for election integrity. In addition, protecting the voting artifacts and insuring strong chain of custody can make forensic analysis of election artifacts possible if a court were to overrule the state legislatures ban on hand counting the votes during a recount which would use this same company to program the recount scanners.
Scott has been in office 17 years , I do not think we want life time elected officials.