VTel's Guite Donated to Campaigns

The Vermont Telephone Co. executive whose company was just awarded $116 million in federal grants and loans to expand broadband Internet coverage in rural Vermont knows something about high-powered connections of the political kind.

http://www.vnews.com/08062010/6905000.htm                                •  Published 8/6/2010  •  VTel's Guite Donated to Campaigns  •  He and Family Have Given $72,000 in Past Five Years  •  By John P. Gregg Valley News Staff Writer  •  Springfield, Vt. --The Vermont Telephone Co. executive whose company was just awarded $116 million in federal grants and loans to expand broadband Internet coverage in rural Vermont knows something about high-powered connections of the political kind.  •  J. Michel Guité and his family have given more than $72,000 in campaign contributions to benefit Vermont politicians and related campaigns, primarily for Democrats, over the past five years, according to state and federal campaign records.  •  This year alone, Guité donated $10,000 to a Vermont Senate 2010 committee that is helping U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., with his bid for a seventh term, and another $5,200 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.Between 2005 and 2009, Guité, his wife and two daughters donated more than $35,000 to the campaign war chest of U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., according to Federal Election Commission records.  •  Guité also donated $1,000 to Bernie Sanders in 2006 when the Vermont independent captured a U.S. Senate seat, and $12,500 to the Vermont Democratic Party between 2005 and 2008.  •  On the state level, Michel and Eva Guité donated a total of $8,000 to the campaign of Republican Gov. Jim Douglas between 2006 and 2007, the maximum allowed, and another $900 to Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie between 2004 and 2006.  •  Leahy, Welch and Sanders in May signed a letter to officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Commerce urging consideration of the VTel application, and four others, from Vermont. The awards to VTel were the second-largest among $1.2 billion stimulus broadband grants to 126 projects around the country announced Wednesday, according to Vermont lawmakers.  •  Douglas also wrote two letters supporting the VTel application.  •  In a phone interview yesterday, Guité said his family's campaign donations were not intended to curry political favor.  •  “We try wherever we possibly can to invest in really good government by trying to support, in a bipartisan way, whoever we think is doing a great job,” Guité said. “I think my history of donations, compared to what I read in the newspaper, is pretty modest … and is what somebody trying to be a constructive citizen ought to do.”  •  But while Guité has given to both Democrats and Republicans over the years, his timing has also been strategic. When Republicans ruled Washington, he donated $2,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, and $13,000 to a federal committee linked to Vermont Republicans between 2004 and 2006.  •  He also has supported Democrats for president, including Al Gore in 1999 ($1,000) and Barack Obama in 2007 (also $1,000).  •  FEC records also reveal that Walter Hewlett, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based investor who helped Guité buy VTel from GTE in the 1990s and is the son of a founder of Hewlett-Packard, has given Welch $11,200 in campaign contributions since 2005.  •  Welch, who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet and is on the House Ethics Committee now hearing the case against U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said in a phone interview yesterday that he was not influenced by the donations and that his lone goal was to expand high-speed Internet service in Vermont, without playing favorites.  •  “What I did is advocate for fair consideration for Vermont, and it's my job, and I did that,” said Welch, who said he also made some phone calls in Washington on behalf of the Vermont applications. “We did not set our finger on the scale advocating one project over the other.”  •  Leahy, a senior member of both the Senate Appropriations and Agriculture committees, is not influenced by campaign donations, his campaign manager, Carolyn Dwyer, said.  •  “The entire federal delegation wrote a letter of support for a number of applicants. The USDA made the funding decision based on the merits,” Dwyer said in an e-mail. “Thousands of Vermonters have contributed to Senator Leahy's campaign. His only interest has been and always will be Vermont's best interest.”  •  Leahy's fundraising -- he has $3.3 million cash on hand, and has raised more than $800,000 from political action committees or similar entities this cycle -- has been criticized by his longshot Democratic challenger, Daniel Freilich.  •  Freilich, who is also running as an independent, yesterday said the contributions from Guité may not be as problematic as PAC donations, but nonetheless raise concerns.  •  “It's always worrisome,” he said. “The truth is you almost never know the truth -- if there was any kind of adverse affecting of objectivity. But the problem is that's exactly the problem. You never know.”  •  Asked if he was comfortable in having taken campaign donations from someone who benefited from his help, Welch said, “This is the question that is always raised, and will be raised, until we get public financing. … I'm a strong advocate of public financing” of campaigns to supplant private donations.  •  David Coriell, a spokesman for Douglas, said the governor's office wrote letters supporting both VTel and ECFiber in the first round of applications, and then sent a letter in a second round just for VTel, after the company asked. Asked if the Guités' campaign contributions came into play in the decision, Coriell said “not at all.”  •  “The governor has supported the various, different applications for broadband money. … VTel had a very strong application, and that really stands on its merits, and I think the federal agencies saw the strong application they put in,” Coriell added.  •  Guité, who is in his mid-60s, said he wrote the checks to benefit Leahy and the DSCC in late May to help a long-time friend, whom he declined to identify, who was holding a fundraiser for Senate Democrats.  •  Guité said he did not speak to Leahy at the event, and had only heard directly from him twice in his life, once about 15 years ago, and then earlier this week, when Leahy left him a voice mail congratulating him on the federal broadband award.  •  Dwyer, Leahy's campaign manager, said the May fundraiser was held at the Shelburne, Vt., home of Eileen (Rockefeller) and Paul Growald, a former telecommunications executive, and that the focus was the couple's commitment to environmental causes and their cutting edge solar and organic gardens.  •  Guité, who owns a $3.3 million home in Greenwich, Conn., but also has sparked controversy with his legal battle to move some old graves on a hilltop property he owns in Hartland, said he liked “the low-key” way Vermonters back candidates and said he had once been disappointed when he gave a sizable campaign donation for the chance to meet President Bush.  •  “For the amount I paid, I got to stand on the other side of the curtain and look at his shoes,” Guité said.  •  The 2005 donations to Welch included the then-maximum allowed of $4,200 apiece from Guité, his wife and two daughters, one of whom was only 20, the other only a few years older.  •  Although federal law states that “no person shall make a contribution in the name of another person,” Guité yesterday told a reporter that another Guité baby is “on the way” and seemed to have a premonition that the child would be politically active one day.  •  “There will be another donor in 18 years,” he said.   •