Let me revise a previous posting. Things went down like this:

An e-mail arrived today from "Host Committee, DebforVermont" announcing a "Campaign Kick Off Party" for Deb Markowitz, Democratic candidate for governor. It would be held at 6 p.m. March 9 at Coffee Enterprises in Burlington. Recipients of the e-mail were being asked to save the date. A long list of names was given as hosts of the party. Prices were listed in coffee terms from $100 for "tall cup" up to $1,000 for host.

I posted a blog item about this and noted it was at the exact same time as an event Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie was holding for his 51st birthday for a donation of $51 per person. (An e-mail about that had arrived earlier in the week and I hadn't gotten around to noting it, so this seemed like an opportune time.)

This prompted an e-mail from the Vermont Republican Party criticizing Markowitz for charging for her campaign kickoff event, contending that this put her out of touch with ordinary Vermonters and saying that Dubie's eventual kickoff would be free.

Which prompted an e-mail from Markowitz campaign manager Paul Tencher to me saying I had misunderstood - the Coffee Enterprises event was actually just the end of a two-day campaign kickoff jobs tour for which details would be released next week (it will be in Barre and it's free), though no mention of that was made in the original e-mail (and my chances of guessing that were pretty small).

He followed that with a release criticizing the Vermont Republican Party for an "early political attack."

Phew, it's exhausting.

- Terri Hallenbeck

Labels: Brian Dubie, Deb Markowitz, vermont politics