SUNDERLAND — Voters across the state turned out for Tuesday’s primary elections, sending Republicans Phil Scott and Randy Brock on to the general election in November to oppose Democrats Sue Minter and State Sen. David Zuckerman for the governorship and lieutenant-governor’s office.
Statewide, Scott, the current lieutenant governor, was the clear winner in the Republican primary contest for governorship, besting rival Bruce Lisman by nearly 10,000 votes out of more than 45,000 cast by GOP voters. His winning margin was 27,442 to 17,876, in unofficial results posted on the Secretary of State’s website Wednesday morning. That meant Scott captured roughly 60 percent of the Republican votes to slightly under 40 percent for Lisman.
Susan Minter, a former state representative from Waterbury and former Secretary of Transportation in the Shumlin administration, captured about half of all Democratic votes cast, garnering 35,616 votes to runner-up Matt Dunne’s tally of 26,271, or about 36.6 percent. Former State Senator Peter Galbraith, of Townshend, finished a distant third with 6,491 votes, or about 9 percent.
Statewide, voter turnout was better than some election officials were expecting. About 25 percent of registered voters found their way to the polls, which would be an improvement over contested primaries in 2000 and 2010, said Jim Condos, Vermont’s secretary of state, on Wednesday morning, according to a news report published in VTDigger.org. Contrary to some expectations, moving the primary to early August, which some speculated coincided with vacations or general voter disinterest during the summer, had not proven to be a detriment.
Scott and Lisman traded barbs and punches over the final weeks of the campaign, with Scott deriding Lisman’s “negative” advertising as being out of sync with “the Vermont way.” Lisman raised questions about Scott’s ability to distance himself from state contract bidding his company, Dubois Construction, which has been awarded state contracts for construction work.
But the hard-hitting campaign won’t mean Lisman will sit on the sidelines and not support Scott in the general election, said Carol Dupont, the co-chairwoman of the Bennington County Republican Party, although, to a degree, that will depend on how Scott approaches Lisman.
“Sometimes it’s the leadership that has to welcome people,” she said, referring to Scott during an interview at GNAT Wednesday. “ But we’re certainly going to back the Republican candidates,” she added.
Locally, voter turnout was also stronger than in recent year’s for a primary election, said Anita Sheldon, Manchester’s town clerk. In the 2008 primary, which was also a presidential election year, only 183 voters, or 5 percent of the town’s checklist, managed to cast ballots. That improved to about 16.5 percent in 2010, before slumping back to roughly 6 percent, or 225 voters out of 3,540 on the checklist.
This year, 733 voters made their way to the polls, out of a checklist of 3,685, the best turnout in several years.
Similarly, voter turnout in Bennington was the strongest it has been in recent years, with about 1,700 voters out of 8,616 taking part, according to Cassandra Barbeau, Bennington’s town clerk.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic party’s lieutenant governor’s race, a three-way contest between outgoing House Speaker Shap Smith, State Senator David Zuckerman and State Rep. Kesha Ram, was won by Zuckerman, who represents Chittenden County in the state senate. He took about 42.7 percent, or 30,600 votes, to Smith’s 36.7 percent, or 26, 234. Ram trailed that pair with 16.7 percent of the vote, or 11,925. All these results remain unofficial as of Wednesday, Aug. 10.
Breaking the results down more locally, Minter carried Manchester by 213 votes to Dunne’s 124, but on the Republican side Lisman carried the town by a 217-130 margin over Phil Scott. Shap Smith was the winner the Democratic lieutenant. governor’s race by a narrow 120-117 margin over Zuckerman, with Ram close behind with 104.
In Bennington, which votes across two districts, Minter, Smith and Lisman were the winners in the Bennington 2-1 district, while Dunne, Scott and Smith took the most votes in the Bennington 2-2 district. A similar pattern prevailed in Arlington, where Minter defeated Dunne 101-83, Lisman beat Scott 86-58, and Smith beat Kesha Ram 79-60, while Zuckerman came in third with 55 votes.
In Dorset, Lisman again bucked the statewide trend, defeating Scott in the Republican primary by 112-71.
Lisman came out ahead in several northshire towns, including Londonderry, Winhall, Arlington, Sunderland and tied 25-25 in Weston.
Minter topped Dunne, 140-102 in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Dorset, while Shap Smith edged Zuckerman 93-82, with Ram not far behind with 71 votes.
Dunne’s campaign ran into some turbulence during the final weeks of the campaign, when he came under fire for modifying a previous position on the siting of wind turbines. Dunne came out in favor of allowing localities and towns where wind projected were proposed to have a greater say in whether or not they would be appropriate or supported by the local residents. That led to a withdrawal of an endorsement by Bill McKibben, a well-known environmental activist, who switched his support to Sue Minter.
Coming late in the campaign, that hurt Dunne among voters who are sensitive to environmental issues, said Michael Keane, the chairman of the Bennington County Democratic Committee.
“Sue Minter made a constant, constant campaign,” Keane said. “She was very visible in our part of the state which often gets the short shrift from political candidates of every stripe.”
For more voting results by individual towns, visit the Secretary of State’s website.
Primary elections were not the only items facing voters in certain towns.
Voters in Dorset also overwhelmingly approved a proposal to equalize the tax rates in the town’s two fire districts, by a 407-59 margin. The fire tax rate in East Dorset has historically been higher than that in Dorset, reflecting differences in the number of properties and their assessed value. The issue has been under discussion for the past few years. As passed, the plan calls for each fire district to create a budget for voter approval. The town would then be charged with collecting the money for the budgets.
In Winhall, voters gave a thumb’s up by a crushing margin of 170-15 to approve the sale of the town’s former public elementary school building to the town of Winhall for $875,000. The building will be purchased from the school district, which had wanted to unload it in advance of Act 46 discussions with Stratton, Searsburg and Sandgate. The town hopes to sell the school building and the roughly eight acres of property it sits on to the Mountain School of Winhall, which currently occupies the building. The Mountain School is an independent school which offers instruction from pre-K- 8th grade to about 65 students currently. The school was formed following the passage of Act 60 in 1997, when Winhall converted its public school to an independent one.
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