Republican candidate for governor Scott Milne is still the runaway favorite to win his party’s primary on Tuesday. Milne has garnered a long list of endorsements – including one from former Republican Gov. James Douglas – to prove his support among GOP stalwarts.
“We have a great chance to unseat an incumbent governor for the first time in 52 years as we get to November,” Milne said Monday. “And I’m looking forward to being the man that’s leading the team that’s going to do that.”
But some noteworthy members of the Vermont Republican Party are jumping ranks, and throwing their weight behind the Libertarian Party’s Dan Feliciano. Brady Toensing is the vice-chairman of the Vermont GOP. Over the weekend, he urged his Twitter followers to write-in Feliciano’s name on Tuesday.
“What I wanted to do with my vote is support the best qualified, best prepared candidate to take on Peter Shumlin,” Toensing said Monday. “And I’ve done that by writing in Dan Feliciano”
Toensing joins GOP Treasurer Mark Snelling, former Republican candidate for treasurer Wendy Wilton, and two Republican county chairmen who have also come out in support of Feliciano.
Whereas Milne has expressed some willingness to consider the merits of the single-payer health care system being pushed by Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, Feliciano has denounced it unequivocally. Feliciano says he’d open up the private insurance market to more competition.
And Feliciano has adopted other policy stances – public school choice, for instance – that appeal to the party’s conservative base.
Feliciano’s supporters have expressed frustration over Milne’s unwillingness to denounce single-payer – to do so without more information, Milne has said, would make him an “ideologue.” And they say his lack of concrete policy plans for issues like property taxes and health care – Milne says those will be coming later this summer and fall – have diminished confidence in his candidacy.
