The VDB sit-down with Anthony Pollina
In Which An Admittedly Wary Democrat Confronts an Admittedly Charming Progressive
Vermont Daily Briefing, March 16, 2008, by Philip Baruth (link to article).
By March 15, 2008, certain things about the election cycle underway remained entirely uncertain — whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would ultimately capture the Democratic Presidential nomination, to take one example. And whether that nomination would ultimately be worth anything when captured, to take still another.
But certain things had become brutally, painfully clear: while Progressive Anthony Pollina was running hard against Jim Douglas, Democrats were still waiting for Godot — not to mention Dunne, and Racine, and Sorrell, and Campbell, and most recently, Galbraith.
That would be Peter Galbraith — the man who helped quiet the Balkans — and he was said still to be locked in very serious ruminations about a bid. But March revealed muddy truths: either Peter Galbraith was not running after all, or he planned to run a campaign so unfocused and late out of the box as to make little substantial difference.
Political bloggers, of course, abhor a vacuum.
And so when Pollina’s camp contacted me about an interview, there was never any serious question about doing it. The questions, such as they were, revolved around the particular method: the timing, the focus, the purpose of the sit-down itself. Because it went without saying that the interview would be attacked from all angles, no matter how I went about it.
The very questions themselves would become proxies in the longstanding feud between the two Parties: Democrats would see only softballs, Progressives only beanballs.
Why, many Democratic VDB readers would demand, had I let Pollina misrepresent history and conceal his true intentions? Why, Progressive VDB readers would wonder, did I set out to covertly knee-cap the only man with a shot at beating Jim Douglas in 2008?
And the copious email I have received in advance of publication has only confirmed those suspicions.
The interview was a suicide pact, then, but I went at it with a fairly clear purpose: to air a series of longstanding grudges held by Democrats, with the idea of allowing Anthony Pollina to address them and, just possibly, put some of them to rest.
Inevitably and ironically, in the complex psychological interplay involved, a long interview could not help but engender more disagreements — but hopefully those would be fewer in number than the points of understanding we might reach.
And again, at every stage, I came back to the same stark truth: the Democrats have no candidate this time out. So if ever Anthony Pollina would have a chance to prove his long-standing assertion — that he is uniquely qualified to lead a “small-P” progressive coalition to victory against the forces of the status quo — this year would seem to be it.
One final note: this interview does not constitute an endorsement, nor should any of the comments or questions within it be seen as such. I tried my level best to come to it with an open mind, however, and I left it more than willing to hear Pollina make his case over the coming election season. I can only hope it will convince each of you to do the same.
VDB: First of all, I wanted to congratulate you on being officially in the race — that seems like, for some reason, a huge achievement for people this year — and I wanted to tell you also that I had to admire the way you went about it: you had a pretty serious statement of candidacy and then you set a target figure, a hundred thousand dollars, and you made it clear that that was going to be a marker of the seriousness of the campaign.
Then you went out and raised that, and were able to report that back to people, and I think that’s had the effect you were after, which is twofold: to keep competitors out of the race, and to force a new consideration of the old dynamic between the Democrats and the Progressives and how they’re going to approach statewide office.
I’d like to start by asking you: that was then with your candidacy, the hundred thousand dollar target, but where are you now? Where does it stand now, not just in terms of money, but volunteer power, endorsements, all those things?
Pollina: Well actually — ironically because it’s actually right now — we are going to do an official kick-off celebration and —
VDB: Democrats for Pollina.
Pollina: Well, actually there are two things. Democrats for Pollina should be kicking off [looks at watch] almost as we speak, from what I understand, or sometime this morning.
VDB: I got forwarded an email on that from somebody.
Pollina: So that’s good. And that came out of conversations we had at house meetings and other places where people who are Democrats have said, “What can we do to help?” And we’d say, you know, “Talk to your State Committee member, write a letter to the editor,” and then we started saying maybe people should organize a write-in campaign or find a way to get the Democratic Party on board. So one of the good things that came about is this group of Democrats who are doing that. Putting up a website and —
VDB: I saw it. Bill McKibben is a part of it.
Pollina: Yup, he is.
VDB: He’s at the top of the list — which is a great headliner.
Pollina: And there are a number of, I guess, former elected officials whose names will appear on that list. There are other current elected officials who have made contributions and who have been helpful in one way or another. Some of them, it may take them a bit longer to make that support public. But I think that’ll happen. And we’re pleased to have gotten the support of the Democrats that we’ve gotten.
To back up to what you were talking about before, when we talked about making the statement that I was going to be a candidate and then trying to raise the money, and then opening a bank account, all of that — at every step in that early process, we actually kept the Democratic party informed. We literally called them up to say, “We’re opening a bank account today,” or “We’re gonna do this today.”
VDB: What was the response to those phone calls like?
Pollina: Mostly it was, well, actually to be quite honest, most of those phone calls were not made by me. They were made by someone in the campaign. And mostly the response was just, “Okay, thanks for letting us know.” I certainly have been to meetings with Democrats, the Party Chair [Ian Carleton] and others, and you know, talked about staying in touch, wanting to find a way to move forward together.
Those conversations were just — I don’t want to say just in the sense of being negative — they were good conversations. I was never quite sure if we were getting anywhere with it, but I thought it was important to keep that door open. But you find, after a while, that you want that door to swing both ways, and sometimes we’d leave those meetings and wonder if we were really being heard.
This article continues… please read the rest of Philip Baruth’s interview with Anthony Pollina at: Vermont Daily Briefing.