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“I’ve got it cleared up,” he says. “I’m happy to talk about it, but I told you what the deal was, and that’s what the deal was.” Got it.
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7/3/14 1:44 PM
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SEVEN DAYS FAIR GAME 13
Last December, neale lunderville abruptly left his job as CEO of NG Advantage, a natural gas delivery service he founded a year and a half earlier with tom evslin, an old chum from their days in former governor Jim douglas’ administration. “After a dozen years of being in pressure-cooker jobs, I needed some time to let the steam out and take some time to reconnect with my life,” Lunderville says. Indeed, the 39-year-old man once known in these pages as the “Boy Wonder” had already held a lifetime’s worth of top jobs: executive director of the Vermont Republican Party; Douglas’ campaign manager and secretary of civil and military affairs, transportation, and
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07.09.14-07.16.14
No More Mr. Nasty Boy
C H U R C H & C O L L E G E • B U R L I N G T O N • 8 6 3 - 3 7 5 9 • W W W. L E U N I G S B I S T R O . C O M
SEVENDAYSVt.com
Since he jumped into the race last month, Milne has been slow to nail down some of the campaign basics: raising money, recruiting staff, building a website and even holding a formal campaign announcement. That’s starting to change. Milne has signed up one of the state’s few young Republican operatives as campaign manager: Vermont GOP political director Brent Burns. The Texas native and Army veteran left the party last week, he says, to start his own political consulting company, called Pure Campaigns. His first client? Scott Milne. “I think he’s a really good candidate,” Burns says of the new boss. “And I think we have a really interesting opportunity this year to frame the issues in a way where Vermonters will be receptive.” Pure Campaigns isn’t a one-man band. Vermont Law School grad tyler Ward and Capital Connections lobbyist Kris Jolin will join Burns in the enterprise. The latter served a stint with almost-gubernatorial-candidate Bruce lisman’s Campaign for Vermont and raised eyebrows at the Statehouse last year by filming nearly every press conference Shumlin held. Wonder if those tapes will resurface in TV ads this fall? Burns’ election-year departure doesn’t leave the Vermont GOP totally in the lurch. Party chairman david sunderland recently hired former Chittenden County GOP chairman Jeff Bartley as its “victory campaign director” and is weighing his options to replace Burns, he says. As for whether Pure Campaigns’ first client will score a win, Burns says he believes “there is a path to victory.” “I think it’s going to be a hard race, but we’re going to run it every single day, fullspeed, until November 4,” he promises.
administration; Green Mountain Power’s “innovation and information leader”; and Shumlin’s Irene recovery officer. Dude clearly needed to take a breather. So he quit his job, hung out with old friends, got another dog, ran the Vermont City Marathon and — wait for it — started to thru-hike the Long Trail. But about halfway through his northbound journey, Lunderville checked his voicemail while seeking shelter from the rain in a utility shed atop the Middlebury Snow Bowl. A few days earlier, Mayor Weinberger had left him a message asking whether he’d serve as interim general manager of the Burlington Electric Department. “It’s something I was immediately interested in,” Lunderville says. “Burlington Electric is a really fascinating organization and, in a lot of ways, is on the cutting edge of energy innovation … It’s something I knew I wanted to be part of.” Last week, Weinberger announced he’d suspended his search for a permanent replacement for outgoing GM BarBara grimes, who retired Monday after 15 years on the job. He asked the Burlington City Council to approve Lunderville’s six- to nine-month appointment, during which time the search would resume — potentially with Lunderville’s name in the mix. (The interim BED manager promises to finish section-hiking the Long Trail this year, now as a weekend warrior.) Longtime readers of this column could be forgiven for spilling their coffee after learning that the Boy Wonder had taken a job with a Democratic mayor of Burlington. After all, that wasn’t the only nickname bestowed on him by the late Seven Days columnist Peter freyne. He was also a charter member of “the Nasty Boys” — the young-gun Republican hit squad that elevated Douglas to governor in 2002 by hammering the hell out of Democratic nominee doug racine. (Fellow Nasty Boy Jim Barnett went on to manage Massachusetts senator scott BroWn’s unsuccessful 2012 reelection campaign and now works for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.) “You can’t run from the past,” Lunderville says of his partisan youth. “It’s right there in black and white. But you can learn.” And learn he has. As Vermont has become bluer, so has Lunderville’s résumé. Though his former boss, Douglas, clashed mightily with Shumlin, Lunderville was quick to help the new governor respond to Tropical Storm Irene. So does this spell an end to Lunderville’s ball-busting Republican career? “I’m not going to rule anything out in the future,” he says. “I can tell you that I don’t see partisanship as a vehicle for progress. I have a strong desire to see Vermont move forward and to see Vermonters prosper, and I think that comes when we work together.” Not so nasty after all, eh? m
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