FAIR GAME
April Exhibit
Function, Fire and Fun
B
SEVENDAYSVT.COM 04.01.15-04.08.15
SEVEN DAYS 14 FAIR GAME
8v-MirrorMirror021115.indd 1
2/9/15 2:07 PM
POLITICS
Big Fish
ILL SORRELL couldn’t keep a smirk off his face last Wednesday as he outlined the evidence against his the UVM pottery new public enemy No. 1. co-op, teachers Standing before the television cameras and Students in his Montpelier office, the Democratic attorney general looked like he’d just reeled display their in the biggest fish of his career. recent work In the past five months, he said with pride, “an awful lot of people” in the AG’s office have performed “many, many hours of work on this matter.” So who was the menacing criminal Sorrell was pledging to bring to justice? DEAN CORREN, a 59-year-old inventor and ex-legislator, who ran for lieutenant governor last fall as a Progressive/Democrat, only to be walloped by Republican incumbent PHIL SCOTT. Corren’s crime? Asking the Vermont Democratic Party to send an email to supOpEning rEcEptiOn porters — valued at just $255 — touting his thursday, April 2nD 5 - 8pM at the gallery strengths and inviting them to a series of rallies. WWW.FROGHOLLOW.ORG Sorrell’s proposed punishment? $72,000. 85 Church St. Burlington VT 802-863-6458 Yeah, you read that right. In one fell swoop, Sorrell threatened to wipe out Corren’s life savings for the 8v-froghollow040115.indd 1 3/30/15 3:44 PMsimple crime of misinterpreting Vermont’s opaque campaign finance laws. Or, more accurately, for the party’s crime of misinterpreting the law. “This is really just a witch hunt by the attorney general,” says JOHN FRANCO, Corren’s attorney. “Billy Sorrell wants to send Dean Corren to the gallows.” In so doing, Sorrell may have signed a death warrant on Vermont’s public election financing system, which was designed to free politicians from the corrupting influence of campaign contributions. After all, what candidates would avail themselves of such a system in the face of consequences so dire? “This is like one of those draconian, three-strikes-and-you’re-out policies,” says La Mer Vermont Public Interest Research Group Bobbi Brown executive director PAUL BURNS, who advoTrish McEvoy cates for public financing. “Except that Laura Mercier Corren didn’t even get the benefit of the SkinCeuticals first two strikes.” Kiehl’s Since 1851 Sorrell didn’t seem to grasp the irony bareMinerals by Bare Escentuals last Wednesday that in his overzealous en...and many more!! forcement of Corren’s alleged infraction, he was going after one of the few statewide candidates who didn’t spend the last election cycle begging for cash from corporate or union interests. The same can’t be said of Sorrell himCorner of Main & Battery Streets, self, who raises most of his campaign conBurlington, VT • 802-861-7500 tributions from national attorneys seeking www.mirrormirrorvt.com to do business with his office. Indeed, Sorrell owes his very political career to a super PAC — funded by those same special
All the lines you love...
OPEN SEASON ON VERMONT POLITICS BY PAUL HEINTZ
interests — that bought $200,000 worth of TV ads in the closing weeks of his 2012 race against Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. DONOVAN. When Republicans called for an investigation into allegations that he illegally coordinated with the PAC through former governor HOWARD DEAN, Sorrell punted. Why? “Because I knew the facts, and it didn’t happen,” he says. BRADY TOENSING, a Republican attorney who has gone toe-to-toe with Sorrell on campaign finance matters, doesn’t think much of that explanation. “General Sorrell acts with the shameless confidence and hypocrisy of an epaulet-wearing, third-world despot because he is effectively immune from any inquiry, especially the sort to which he subjects other Vermont candidates,” Toensing says.
BILLY SORRELL WANTS TO SEND DEAN CORREN TO THE GALLOWS. J OH N F R A NC O
The facts underpinning Sorrell’s case against Corren are not in dispute. Soon after the Burlington Prog jumped into the LG race last spring, he became the first candidate in a decade to qualify for public financing. It wasn’t easy. In just one month, Corren raised $19,283 in small contributions from 862 Vermonters. That earned him another $181,000 in public money to spend on his campaign. “The public financing system that we have in Vermont presents huge benefits to candidates who want to take advantage of that,” Sorrell said last week. “But along with those benefits are the responsibilities or obligations to play by the rules that the legislature sets.” Those rules are pretty strict. After qualifying for public financing, candidates are barred from accepting donations — in cash or in-kind — in excess of $50. Those who do, the statute says, must immediately return any of their public dollars not yet spent at the time of the infraction. After Corren won the Democratic nomination last August, he and his campaign sought a legal path for the party to support his candidacy. Throughout the fall, according to emails included in a court filing, Corren campaign manager MEGAN BROOK and Vermont Democratic Party executive director JULIA BARNES exchanged ideas about how to do so in compliance with their attorneys’ recommendations.
On October 24, just 11 days before the election, the party finally sent a mass email under the name of chair DOTTIE DEANS to its list of 16,000 Vermonters. Employing some language suggested by the Corren campaign, Deans explained why she supported the candidate and called on her fellow Dems to attend one of four rallies featuring nearly two dozen candidates. The party reasoned that the email did not count as a contribution because Vermont law exempts “costs paid for by a political party in connection with a campaign event at which three or more candidates are present.” Three days after the email went out, a Dorset Republican named RALPH COLIN forwarded it to Sorrell’s office, questioning its legality. Colin says he “got a tip” about the email from someone “indirectly” affiliated with the Scott campaign. After a five-month investigation, Sorrell filed suit last week in Vermont Superior Court alleging that Corren “solicited and accepted” the email illegally — and failed to report it. He called for Corren to return the $52,000 in public funds he hadn’t yet spent when the email was sent and pay another $20,000 in fines. The party, which was also investigated, reached a settlement with Sorrell and agreed to pay a $10,000 fine. Asked last Wednesday why he threw the book at a guy whose campaign appeared to be acting in good faith, Sorrell put it simply: “If you’re going to take the benefit, there are downsides: You have to play by the rules. And if you’re not going to play by the rules, the penalties are significant.” But the Vermont Democratic Party wasn’t the only one coordinating campaign activities with Corren. Last September, Sorrell himself headlined a press conference with Corren outside McCaffrey’s Sunoco in Burlington. The two candidates railed against Chittenden County’s unusually high gas prices and called on the legislature to address the matter. A few days before the campaign event, according to emails obtained by Seven Days, Corren sent Sorrell draft copies of charts he planned to print for the occasion. Sorrell responded via his state email account that he would follow up directly with a Corren campaign worker. Sorrell never reported the costs of the printed materials in subsequent campaign finance filings, even though they presumably benefited his reelection bid just as much as Corren’s. By the AG’s own logic, shouldn’t such expenditures count as an in-kind contribution from Corren to Sorrell? Not so, the AG says, because the press