In 1997 the Legislature, in its infinite wisdom, amended our Campaign Law. This new law, in part, reduced the already low campaign donation and spending limits. This change greatly reduced the message that a candidate could put out, which benefited the incumbents who already had free access to the press under the guise of "news".

Some outraged groups and citizens immediately appealed; to the Federal Courts, of course. Everyone already knew that the Constitution was not relevant in the Vermont Supreme Court.

Bill Sorrell, as Attorney General, dutifully defended the new law, whose Constitutionality he should have questioned while the Bill was still in Legislative committees.

Sorrell lost. The two sections of the new law which dealt with funding limits were ruled so restrictive as to be depriving candidates and other interest groups of their Rights to Free Speech. Therefore, the new Campaign Law had no funding limits.

Bill Sorrell appealed the ruling to higher Federal Courts. Meanwhile, he and co-conspirator Deb Markowitz decreed that while the issue was tied up in Federal Court, the prior, repealed, spending limits would be used. Neither Deb Markowitz nor Bill Sorrell are empowered to enact law, but that is exactly what they did, and there was no one who would stop them.

After nine years and an undisclosed amount of our money, the US Supreme Court told Bill Sorrell the same thing that every other Federal Appeals Court had already told him: the sections of current Vermont law dealing with campaign funding caps were unconstitutional, and therefore removed from the law which had been in effect for nine years.

Having lost all appeals, and spending a percentage of his budget defending something he should have known was wrong, Sorrell and Markowitz now say that the law on the books is not the law on the books, and that a law which had been repealed nine years ago is now the law on the books.

WHAT!

I know that the current law has no funding caps. So you see, either the current law, or a law which was repealed nine years ago, will be the Law of the Land, depending upon who wins as Attorney General in the November elections.

WHAT A COUNTRY!

Dennis Carver
Candidate for Attorney General

ps: Remember when Deb Markowitz and Bill Sorrell teamed up on a MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING, (regarding Howard Dean's sealed records),which said that the collusion of the Secretary of State and the Attorney General could pretend that another law did not exist?