Visit these links to each candidate's interview:

U.S. Senate: Greg Parke (below), Bernie Sanders, Richard Tarrant
U.S. House: Martha Rainville, Mark Shepard, Peter Welch
Governor: Jim Douglas, Scudder Parker
Lt. Governor: Marvin Malek, Brian Dubie, Matt Dunne, John Tracy

Candid Assessment -- Where the Candidates Stand on Our Issues

by Mary Elizabeth Fratini
with additional reporting by Carrie Chandler

 

Governor - Scudder Parker

That the Democratic Party of perhaps the bluest state in the union chose a former Unitarian minister as candidate for governor has received little attention, despite the increasingly vitriolic rhetoric of the culture wars on the national level. The oversight is understandable since Scudder Parker has since spent almost twice as much time in other pursuits, but his 20-year career as a minister in the Northeast Kingdom grew out of a family faith stretching back to his ancestor Ida Scudder, a missionary’s daughter who founded a medical school for women in India in 1918.

“I’m very proud of and very committed to my faith tradition and being clear that the vision of social justice, equal opportunity, economic justice, a healthy environment, and building a community – in which there is respect for all kinds of people, backgrounds and traditions – is regarded as a source of richness and wealth rather than a source of danger or fear,” Parker said.

Parker has also served as a state legislator, director of energy efficiency at the Department of Public Service (DPS), and public policy coordinator for Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR). Of his campaign for governor, Parker said, “It gives me an opportunity to put to use the skills and knowledge I’ve acquired over the years, in both the legislative and executive branches and in the private sector.”

Versus Douglas

Having announced his candidacy for governor early last fall, Parker spent the first few months fielding two main responses to his bid: Where’d you get the name? and But Douglas is such a nice man.

For the record, it is a family name and Parker is an equally genial fellow, but he is also quick to highlight what he calls Douglas’ lack of accomplishments over the last four years. “If you look at the spectrum of issues and say what has [Douglas] done, he has: demoralized state workers; communicated to most non-profits delivering services in the state that he doesn’t trust or respect them, [and] appointed people to the Human Rights Commission that basically just say no. What has he done on energy, on health care, on affordable housing, on jobs, all the issues he talked about?” Parker asked. “He devotes all of his time to creating the image of a governor being present in the communities, but in terms of thinking through, understanding and having the courage to address in a substantive way issues that affect people’s lives, I think his performance is dismal.”

Parker’s campaign has consistently criticized executive appointments (most recently of Neale Lunderville, Douglas’ former campaign manager, to head the Agency of Transportation) for a lack of diversity and expertise. “Women leadership in government declined substantially relative to what was there during the Dean Administration and I would restore that,” Parker said. “It isn’t just about putting women in positions of leadership, it’s making sure that people of all backgrounds and perspectives are [there] so that the issues for our society are represented at the table of government and the executive branch.”

Energy and Environment

Energy is the signature plank in Parker’s platform of issues, growing largely out of his experience helping to create Efficiency Vermont while at DPS and as an advocate at VBSR. “To me it’s a strategy of investing in small businesses, jobs, and an infrastructure that demands less electricity or produces more of its own electricity,” he said, citing the NRG Systems building in Hinesburg – which uses 80 percent less electricity than a comparably sized building of standard construction by incorporating solar panels, wind turbines, and efficiency measures on site.

“We have had four years of stunning inaction, and the opportunities have been great,” he added, citing the failure to purchase dams along the Connecticut River, support wind power, or increase funding for efficiency. “They [the Douglas Administration] got dragged kicking and screaming by the Legislature to the commission and did a reluctant and half-hearted job investigating the possibility [of purchasing the dams], have said no to wind power, and strongly resisted significant increases in Efficiency Vermont funding, even though we know we can buy efficiency at 4-cents a kilowatt hour when the market price is 8-12 cents. All of these should have been done a number of years ago and should be done now.”

Parker strongly opposes new nuclear power and, while noting that the governor does not make the final decision should Vermont Yankee seek a license extension, said he would insist on a full, independent safety inspection prior to any conversation about relicensing. “The struggle is this – on the one hand, people want to keep energy cheap because then it is affordable; on the other hand, you want to make it expensive because they will use it more efficiently, and in the gap between those two, the middle class falls through,” Parker said. “The challenge is how to make it survivable for the people, institutions, and business of the state. You focus on efficiency, alternatives, and self-production. Those are all steps, none of them is adequate alone.”

Questions about transportation and development bring a similar emphasis on simultaneously addressing the supply and demand sides of a problem. “If a woman has to drive 60 miles to a job, most of her disposable income is being used getting there and home, to say nothing of the cost of childcare,” Parker said. Designing communities that require less transportation will decrease the cost to the individual, but also reduce consumption. Likewise, Parker supports better growth center planning as a method of combating suburban sprawl while still providing affordable housing. “We need to adequately fund the Housing and Conservation Trust Fund,” he said. “We need to do better planning to help [developers] be clear about where to build, how to site things; and in that planning, make it easier to get the permits that you need.”

Agriculture and Health Care

Parker is as supportive of local food production as he is of local energy generation, and with more farmers moving to add methane digesters, the two issues are not so far apart. According to Parker, Douglas has failed to have a “vision of Vermont’s agriculture as an integrated part of coping with the pressures of peak oil and the vulnerability we face with increasingly corporatized agriculture at the national level.” Parker pointed to the Farmer Protection Act veto as an example: “I clearly felt that the intention of this bill was to protect both conventional and organic agriculture by making liability [reside] with the makers of the seeds who never relinquish ownership to the farmer,” Parker said.
“Frankly, diversified agriculture needs that protection. I know that farmers have tried to become more efficient, but what I fear is that they never get rewarded for that.”

“The single biggest thing, ironically, that the governor could do to help the agricultural industry in Vermont is to have a good health care plan,” Parker added. He supported the Vermont Health Care Affordability Act passed this session as a first step, particularly given the party split between the Legislature and executive branches. “I don’t think there’s much place for anything to go with the veto threat being the dominant topic of discussion in the chamber – and that’s not what Vermonters deserve,” he said.

Describing his vision of Vermont’s health care as a self-insurance plan for the state, Parker contrasted that with Douglas, whom he accused of sophistry. “The governor is proposing letting our health care future be determined by the market. He’s basically saying he wants the insurance companies to deliver the bad news that you will have less and less access to care and less reimbursement for your care,” Parker said. “Women are so often in the role of providers in critical human services – elder care, children’s care – and almost never do they have adequate health care in those situations. Vermonters deserve a health care system that is not tied to employment, is available to everybody, and is fairly funded.”

Choice

Parker is the only candidate for any statewide race this year whose website has a position statement specifically about women’s health care. It says, “I believe that men and women have the basic human right to consult with their physicians in private about their own health-care decisions. […] A woman’s and a man’s right to consult with a health-care provider about reproductive-health or other health-care decisions will never be in jeopardy as long as I am governor, and I will support efforts to include these rights in Vermont’s state constitution.”

On the issue of parental notification, Parker drew on his pastoral experiences to explain why he opposes it. “We want healthcare providers to encourage people to talk to all the important loved ones in their lives, but state or federal government mandates are not the way that kind of communication happens,” he said. “It does not improve the quality of interaction […] and I don’t think you can count on the government to make up for relationships where there is fear or distrust operating; coercion in those situations usually aggravates the problem rather than making it better.”

Conclusion

Over the last six years, pundits have pushed hard for the Democratic Party to allow more space for religious and moral voices on the left, saying it is the secular voice that turns voters away. Too often, however, putting that into practice has meant supporting anti-choice candidates with vague policy statements like congressional candidate Bob Casey (D-PA), merely for their presumed “electability.”

Parker’s voice is unique for the Democrats, even in Vermont, in combining moral certitude with specific policy suggestions without falling into self-righteousness. Though he has made progress in the last months, Parker has a tough battle against two-term incumbent Douglas, who remains for many Vermonters simply a very nice guy. But what if we did elect someone like Parker, with experience as a legislator, administrator and advocate, who also believes that, “the initial point of disagreement is [not] a place to exercise judgment and then depart. The question is, what happens in the encounter? Who grows? What do you learn? Where does your heart open up? How do you deepen your understanding of the world?”