Peter Shumlin

Peter Elliott Shumlin (born March 24, 1956) is an American Democratic Party politician who was 81st governor of the state of Vermont from 2011 to 2017. First elected governor in 2010, he was re-elected to a second term in 2012. In 2014 he received a narrow plurality in his race for re-election, but did not attain the 50% threshold mandated by the Vermont Constitution. In such cases the Vermont General Assembly elects the winner. The legislature almost always selects the candidate who received a plurality; this held true, and the General Assembly re-elected Shumlin to a third term by a vote of 110–69 in January 2015. In June 2015, Shumlin announced that he would not seek re-election in 2016. He has signed laws on physician-assisted suicide as well as the United States' first genetically modified food labeling requirement during his tenure as governor. He was chair of the Democratic Governors Association during his first two terms.
He was a member of the Vermont House of Representatives from 1990 to 1993, and represented the Windham District in the Vermont Senate from 1993 to 2003 and 2007 to 2011. He was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Vermont in 2002.

Shumlin was born in Brattleboro, Vermont. He went to high school at Buxton School in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and graduated from Wesleyan University in 1979. Shumlin served on Selectboard for the town of Putney in the 1980s and helped found Landmark College, which was created to help people with learning disabilities gain a college education. Shumlin's father, George J. Shumlin, a third-generation American, was Jewish and descended from Russian immigrants; his mother, Kitty A. (Prins) Shumlin, was from The Hague in the Netherlands, and was Protestant.

Vermont Legislature

Shumlin was appointed by Governor Madeleine M. Kunin to fill a vacancy in the Vermont House of Representatives. He served part of one term plus one full term, and represented Putney from 1990 through 1993. In 1992 he was elected to the Vermont Senate, and he soon became Minority Leader. In the 1996 elections, Shumlin led his Senate Democrats to win back control of the chamber after four years in the minority, and in 1997 he became Senate President Pro Tempore.

Campaign for Lieutenant Governor

In 2002, Shumlin won the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor, and lost the general election to Republican Brian Dubie of Essex in a three-way race that included Progressive Anthony Pollina of Middlesex.

Political hiatus

From 2003 to 2006, Shumlin returned to the family business, Putney Student Travel, an educational firm that allows students in middle and high school to travel to foreign countries, learn about different cultures, and prepare for college.

Return to the Vermont Senate

In 2006, Shumlin ran successfully for his old seat in the State Senate upon the retirement of Rod Gander, who served from 2003 to 2007. Upon his return, Shumlin was once again elected President Pro Tempore.

Vermont and New Hampshire are the only U.S. states whose governors do not serve four-year terms; rather, their governors are elected every two years, always in even-numbered years.

First term

2010 election

On November 16, 2009, Shumlin announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Vermont. Shumlin placed first in the five-way August 24, 2010 Democratic primary with 18,276 votes (24.48%). The close election saw three other candidates come within 3,000 votes of Shumlin. Former Lieutenant Governor Doug Racine came in second with 18,079 votes (24.22%), Secretary of State of Vermont Deborah Markowitz came in third with 17,579 votes (23.9%) and former State Senator Matt Dunne was fourth with 15,323 votes (20.8%). State Senator Susan Bartlett came in a distant fifth with 3,759 votes (5.1%). Racine requested a recount, which confirmed Shumlin as the winner.

Shumlin was not opposed by a Progressive candidate for Governor. The Party had promised not to play a "spoiler" role in the election if he supported single-payer health care, which he did. Vermont Progressive Party Chair Martha Abbott won the primary election, then withdrew from the race, so the party did not have a candidate on the ballot.

In the general election on November 2, 2010, Shumlin received the most votes, 119,543 (49.44%) to Republican Brian Dubie's 115,212 (47.69%). Vermont requires candidates for Governor and some other statewide offices to obtain a majority of popular votes, otherwise the winner is chosen by the Vermont General Assembly. Dubie did not contest the vote in the General Assembly, which almost always chooses the candidate who obtained a plurality in the general election, and on January 6, 2011 the General Assembly elected Shumlin by 145 votes (80.6%) to 28 (15.6%).

Summary of term

After Shumlin's election in 2010, all of his primary opponents except Dunne subsequently joined his administration. Racine became Secretary of Human Services, Markowitz became Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources and Bartlett became Shumlin's Special Assistant, with responsibility for oversight of education and other policy initiatives.

The defining event of Shumlin's first term was Tropical Storm Irene, which caused almost every river and stream in the state to flood, resulting in at least three deaths and one missing. The storm decimated multiple sections of U.S. Route 4 between Rutland and Quechee, making east/west travel through the southern part of state nearly impossible. Several towns were completely isolated from travel in and out for two weeks. Statewide, the cost of repairs for road and bridge damage alone was estimated to exceed $700 million. This required a substantial re-assessment of Vermont's budget.

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  Flood waters from Tropical Storm Irene on the Ottauquechee River in Quechee, Vermont.

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  Flood waters on the Ottauquechee River in Quechee scouring the approach to the covered bridge, opposite side.

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  Damage caused by flood waters to the Quechee covered bridge on the northern shore of the river.

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  Damage caused by flood waters on the Ottauquechee River to the Taftsville bridge.

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  Damage caused by flood waters on the Ottauquechee River to the Royalton, Vermont bridge.

2011 events

• April 26: Shumlin appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show via telephone where he discussed health care reform in his state, his belief in health care for all and that "health care is a right, not a privilege".
• May 26: Shumlin signed a bill to establish a state health care exchange under the Affordable Care Act and to develop future universal insurance coverage for all residents, making Vermont the first state to initiate a plan for single-payer health care.
• August 17: Shumlin became the first sitting governor in the United States to preside over a same-sex wedding ceremony.
• August 27: Shumlin declared a state of emergency, in preparation for the arrival of Tropical Storm Irene. In a joint statement, Vermont electric utilities announced that they planned to have extra staff on hand. The National Weather Service had forecast between 2–7 inches (51–178 mm) of rain in the state, with the risk of flooding near streams and rivers and an anticipated sustained wind speeds of 30–45 miles per hour (48–72 km/h) and gusts of up to 45–65 miles per hour (72–105 km/h), with expected significant tree damage and damage to power lines.

2012 events

• January 5: In his State of the State Address, Shumlin touted Vermont's policies to promote job growth, claiming a 62% increase over the previous year to bring the state's unemployment rate down to 5.3% from a recession peak of 7.3%—both cited as low numbers in his speech.
• April 11: Shumlin was almost mauled by bears when he attempted to chase them away from raiding bird feeders on his property. Shumlin joked that Vermont "almost lost the governor," and added that he was within "three feet of getting 'arrrh."
• May 16: Shumlin signed a bill banning hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), the breaking of underground rock formations by using pressurized chemical-laced fluid in order to access natural gas deposits. The bill made Vermont the first state to pass such a ban, and was signed in front of group of high school students who pushed for it.
• December 4: Shumlin was unanimously elected to serve as the chair of the Democratic Governors Association for the year, 2013.

Second term

2012 election

The 2012 election took place on November 6, 2012. Shumlin, who again was endorsed by organized labor and the major environmental organizations, was unopposed in the Democratic primary and easily won re-election, defeating Republican Randy Brock by 170,767 votes (58%) to 110,953 votes (37.7%).

Summary of term

Shumlin has been an opponent of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. His administration advocated its closure. However, on January 19, 2012, Judge J. Garvan Murtha of United States District Court in Brattleboro ruled that the state of Vermont could not force Vermont Yankee to close down, as the legislation that attempted to do so was based on radiological safety arguments that are the exclusive concern of the NRC. The judge also held that the state cannot force the plant’s owner, Entergy, to sell electricity from the reactor to in-state utilities at reduced rates as a condition of continued operation. However, on August 27, 2013, Entergy announced in a press release that it would close Vermont Yankee by the end of 2014.

Shumlin has also been an advocate of single-payer health care. In 2011, the Vermont Legislature created a single-payer plan, called Green Mountain Care, which caused Vermont to become the first state to explore this concept. While the bill also allows private insurers to operate in the state indefinitely As of January, 2014, Shumlin remained committed to full implementation of single-payer health care, starting in 2017. In the interim, Vermont has been a willing participant in the Affordable Care Act. As was the case with the federal health-exchange website, Vermont's website, VermontHealthConnect.gov, also experienced difficulties as the deadline for implementation approached in late 2013; it was the product of the same software vendor.

In his January 2014 State of the State Address, Shumlin emphasized a single theme: the rise of opiate addiction in Vermont. He framed the challenge of opiate abuse as greater in scope than the recovery from Tropical Storm Irene. He offered a four-point plan to address opiate growth:

• Fund more treatment to shorten wait-times for those willing to accept help.
• Allow drug offenders to quickly enter treatment programs when they are ready to change their behavior, bypassing the normal judicial process to allow rapid treatment.
• Tougher punishments for drug-runners and armed burglars.
• Crowdsourcing new ideas to prevent addiction.

Shumlin observed that, “It’s when the blue lights are flashing and cold reality sets in that we have our best shot [at persuading opiate users to seek treatment]”.

2013 events

• January 10: Shumlin gave a State of the State Address that emphasized improving education from kindergarten through college in Vermont in order to make the Vermont labor force more appealing to prospective employers.
• May 22: Shumlin signed a bill making physician assisted suicide legal throughout Vermont.
• June 6: Vermont became the 17th state to decriminalize cannabis. Shumlin signed a bill that made possession of less than an ounce of the drug punishable by a small fine rather than arrest and possible jail time.
• December 9: He was re-elected in December 2013 to be chair of the Democratic Governors Association for the year, 2014.

2014 events

• January 8: Shumlin gave a State of the State Address with a single theme—the rising rate of opiate abuse in Vermont.
• January 15: A Shumlin administration official, Mark Larson, announced that the Vermont Health Connect website implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act was unavailable to small businesses enrollments, requiring direct enrollments with insurance companies until further notice.

Third term

2014 election

Shumlin was the Democratic nominee for a third term. Republicans nominated businessman Scott Milne, whose mother Marion Carson Milne served in the Vermont House of Representatives, and father Donald was the longtime Assistant Clerk and Clerk of the Vermont House.

A major campaign promise of Shumlin was to establish a single-payer healthcare system for Vermont.

In the November 4 election, Shumlin took 46.4% to Milne's 45.1%, with Libertarian nominee Dan Feliciano taking 4.36%. The rest of the votes were scattered among other minor candidates. The Constitution of Vermont requires that the 180-member Vermont General Assembly choose the winner when no candidate receives over 50% of the popular vote. On January 8, 2015, the Assembly chose Shumlin over Milne by 110 votes to 69.

2015 events

On June 8, 2015, Shumlin announced he would not seek a fourth term in 2016.

In contrast to other governors, who stated that they would attempt to turn away refugees fleeing the violence of the Syrian Civil War, Shumlin stated that Vermont would continue to welcome refugees. Shumlin said that the screening process weeded out poeople "who should not be accepted" and criticized governors who attempted to stop relocation, saying: "The governors who are taking those actions are stomping on the qualities that make America great, which is reaching out to folks when they’re in trouble and offering them help, not hurting them."

2016 events

In his final State of the State Address on January 7, 2016, Shumlin announced his support for the legalization of the consumption and sale of cannabis in the state of Vermont.

Shumlin is adamantly pro-choice, and drew a contrast between himself and his 2010 Republican gubernatorial opponent Brian Dubie, who would not answer the question of whether or not he would cut funding for low-income abortions when pressed by Shumlin during the two candidates' televised debates. Shumlin held a pro-choice rally two days prior to the election, prompting his opponent to host a pro-jobs rally on the same day to draw a contrast between the two candidates' priorities.

In 2011, Shumlin expressed his support for "Team Kale" in its trademark dispute with fast food restaurant Chick-fil-A and said it sends the message "Don't mess with Vermont."

Shumlin supports same-sex marriage and presided over its legalization in the state of Vermont during his tenure as President Pro Tempore of the Vermont Senate.

On May 8, 2015, Shumlin signed a genetically modified food (GMO) labeling bill. The legislation would mean that some products that are sold within the state of Vermont must have labeling that says that the product "may be partially produced with genetic engineering.”

Family

Shumlin was married to Deborah Holway from 1989 to 2013; they have two daughters together.

In September 2015, Shumlin announced his engagement to girlfriend Kate Hunt. They married in December 2015 in a ceremony at their East Montpelier home.

Real estate controversy

In May 2013, Shumlin was involved in a real estate transaction, which generated controversy. A neighbor, who owned a house and land adjacent to Shumlin's East Montpelier home, owed back taxes and risked losing the property in a tax sale, asked Shumlin to consider buying the property. Shumlin bought the property, had the assessed value reduced because the house was in disrepair, paid the back taxes, paid the neighbor's back child support, and allowed the neighbor to continue living in the house for several months. The neighbor then had second thoughts about the transaction. After some criticism in the press, Shumlin agreed to let the neighbor repurchase the property.