Legislature to decide Vermont governor's race

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Incumbent Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin held a narrow lead over Republican challenger Scott Milne as votes were counted Tuesday night, but the race was still too close to call more than three hours after polls closed.

Adding to the uncertainty was the question of whether either candidate would meet the 50-percent-plus-one-vote threshold to keep the election from being decided in the Legislature in January.

With 71 percent of precincts reporting as of shortly before 10:20 p.m., Shumlin had won 47 percent of the counted votes, according to an Associated Press tally. Milne had 45 percent, with five other candidates accounting for the balance.

Under Vermont's Constitution, if no candidate for governor, lieutenant governor or treasurer gets an outright majority, the election goes to the Legislature when it convenes in January. Democrats are expected to maintain control of both houses, but the Legislature nearly always chooses the plurality winner in a gubernatorial election - the last time it didn't was in 1853.

Milne, who didn't enter the race until late spring and whose campaign fundraising was dwarfed by Shumlin's, appeared early in the campaign to be a long-shot underdog, as was still reflected in media polling in October.

But Shumlin's own fortunes appeared to have sagged under the technical problems suffered by the Vermont Health Connect website his administration launched 14 months ago under the Affordable Care Act. He also came under fire from critics who charged he took advantage of a poor and intellectually limited neighbor in a land deal in 2013.

Milne's surprisingly strong performance came in a year when voters appeared to be in a sour mood about government.

'I'm voting against whoever (are) the incumbents, just to shake things up,' said Rene Churchill, a 47-year-old computer programmer from Waterbury Center.

Others were sticking with Shumlin. Steve Lobb of Montpelier, who has a business that sells green building materials, said he strongly disagreed with Shumlin's support of a natural gas pipeline expansion being built in western Vermont. 'I will vote for the governor,' he said. 'I like him in every other way.'

Milne criticized Shumlin as too radical, particularly in the incumbent's push for a universal, state-backed health care system sometimes referred to as single-payer. Milne and other critics faulted Shumlin for still having failed to come up with a financing plan for the system nearly two years after state law said the administration was supposed to.

Voter turnout was light around Vermont on Tuesday, as in other races Democrat Peter Welch easily won a fifth term as the state's lone representative in the U.S. House, turning aside the second challenge in as many elections from Republican Mark Donka.

news3blog.blogspot.com called the congressional contest for Welch at 8:07 p.m. Other statewide races, except that between Milne and Shumlin, were settled before 9 p.m.

Incumbents were returned easily in other statewide races, including Attorney General Bill Sorrell, Auditor Doug Hoffer, Secretary of State Jim Condos and Treasurer Beth Pearce.

Many Vermont towns expected to have trouble getting half their registered voters to the polls in Tuesday's elections, but local races generated more interest in some communities.

'I'm concerned about democracy because of the pathetic turnout,' said Fred Wilber, 63, owner of the Buch Spieler music and card store in Montpelier. 'It doesn't work if there's no turnout.'

But in some places, hot local races brought higher turnout.

Rutland City Clerk Henry Heck said turnout in the city likely would exceed half of its roughly 10,000 registered voters and might approach 60 percent. He said two draws for voters were hard-fought contests for state's attorney in Rutland County and for the county's three seats in the state Senate.

Neither of Vermont's U.S. senators is up for re-election this year, meaning the state is missing out on the sort of buzz created by Republican Scott Brown's bid to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in neighboring New Hampshire.