In this current installment of Darren Allen SnarkWatch (OK, this is the first - and, who knows - maybe the last), I’d like to address two items that he is SHOCKED, SHOCKED to learn about…

One, he finds the Welch campaign’s response to learning of $21,000, spent on Martha Rainville’s behalf, to be whiny and insincere. And speculates that when the next quarterly reports come out, we’ll be sure to see that “the Democrat money machine in Washington is spreading its largesse to Welch.”

But, PoliticsVT is reporting a somewhat different story (my emphasis):

According to reports, the Republican’s national US House campaign spent over $21,000 on Vermont’s US House race further dividing a possible clean campaign pledge between Democrat Peter Welch and Republican Martha Rainville.

Rainville, according to the press, was shocked [SHOCKED, SHOCKED] when she learned that the national GOP had done a poll in Vermont. Rainville said that she would call the GOP in Washington and ask them what questions were being asked and if it was a “push poll.”

Wow, that’s a little different scenario, isn’t it?

And second, he’s troubled by the Sanders campaign’s response to learning of Tarrant staffers videotaping his campaign stops. He writes (my emphasis)…

Sanders and Welch and Tarrant and Rainville and James Douglas and Scudder Parker and every other major candidate always send emissaries to their opponents [sic] events. It’s as old a trick as they come…

But, uh oh, Peter Freyne has this to say (my emphasis)…

P.S. Yes, confirmed Lennon, that was the “Tarrant for Senate” campaign’s office manager Layla Gray grilling Bernie about his sugar contribution at the spaghetti dinner Sanders’ campaign held on Saturday in Swanton. Eyewitnesses say the Tarrant staffer did not tell the crowd who she worked for, and kept interrupting Sanders when he attempted to answer her question.

Lennon told “Inside Track” Ms. Gray had every right to be there and ask questions as a private citizen.

Technically, yes. But it is in rather poor taste, Ol’ Tim, for a campaign staffer. At least in Vermont. Can’t remember it ever happening before in the Green Mountains.

Maybe it’s kosher in your native New Hampshire, but in Vermont, the paid-staff doesn’t play “average citizen” at an opponent’s campaign event.

OK, so who’s right? (And I recognize that they are commenting on two slightly separate topics: Allen adds the videotape angle).

Odum was nice enough to say at the Political BBQ last Sunday that it was good that I don’t have any real inside knowledge of Vermont pol’s proclivities; that I might be able to report from the perspective of the average Vermonter’s media-generated perspective of the political climate.

So, I say again, who’s right, here?

Is Darren Allen correct when he says that “Politics, as most observers know by now, is a dirty game that has only one acceptable outcome — to win.”

Or is Peter Freyne accurately positing a much rosier portrait of the traditions of the Great State of Vermont?

(By the way, it appears that the reference to the BBQ and Odum are missing from the print edition of Freyne’s Inside Track. I’m sure (hope?) this was just edited down for space concerns, but…

Does the Inside Track blog Freyne says is looking for sponsors - read: Seven Days is trying to find funding to pay Peter for a few more hours a week - not want to highlight the consistent work being done by the future competition?

Who knows? But, fun to speculate about, eh?)

[Crossposted at Green Mountain Daily]