Final Results:

William H. Sorrell, Democratic - 214,980 - 72.6%
Karen Kerin, Republican - 55,268 - 18.6%
Charlotte Dennett, Progressive - 17,730 - 5.9%
Rosemary JAKOWSKI, Liberty Union - 7,505 - 2.5%

The results were disappointing, but in my heart of hearts, I know we fought a great little campaign and I can't thank everyone enough for all they did. We captured media attention from around the country and the world (See, most recently, John Nichols article in the November 17, 2008 edition of The Nation, "Vermont V. Bush." Click here to read.) The donations poured in from what seemed like every state in the nation, thanks largely to Vince Bugliosi talking up the race with the media and putting out his "tin cup," urging people to donate to my campaign. As a result, we got some great ads out there.

During the last month or so of the national campaign, the war in Iraq went virtually unmentioned and unnoticed, both by the candidates and the media. Only 2% of headlines dealt with the war. The economy became front and center, eclipsing the war. And there was very little talk about the horrors of the last eight years under the Bush Administration. Said one commentator, "The American people just wanted to move on." Whether this remains their attitude in the coming months remains to be seen. But there is still a huge body of citizens who believe that George Bush and his associates should be held accountable for all the harm they brought to this nation.

Initial assessment: No doubt a lot of savvy Republicans voted for Sorrell because Republican nominee Karen Kerin was a long-shot candidate. Her 19% probably came from rote Republican voting. Sorrell never received serious opposition before and this was the first time a Republican nominee entered the race. Sophisticated Republicans certainly did not want to see Bush prosecuted for murder in Vermont. As one supporter told me, "What do you expect? That the Republicans were going to sit back, watch TV and eat popcorn?"

This was definitely a party-line election. The Democratic Party voters may have been so excited about Obama that they voted Democratic for everything.

"Our biggest challenge," I said in interviews during the campaign, "is to counteract rote party-line voting during an election with high voter turnout." This was probably an understatement. With only two months to campaign (I entered the race in early September), I had hoped that Vermonters, who by and large hate Bush, would respond to my message (and indeed, Vermonters voted for Obama overwhelmingly, 66% to McCain's 33%, making Vermont the first state to announce on election night) but OUR CAMPAIGN concluded that that was not able to get my message out to enough voters in time, despite excellent TV spots on cable TV and radio and some half page ads in the newspapers.

The buys for these ads only amounted to around $8,000, not much in the media world but greatly appreciated by the campaign, especially since the fund came primarily from small donors. On average the radio spots ran 3x per day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon, once at night. If you really want to hit your message you need about once per hour, especially coming in last-minute in a campaign.

Moreover, The Prosecution of George Bush for Murder, while apt for a book title (though even here the major media stayed away) was a difficult theme to present in a campaign. There was simply not enough time to educate people about criminal law and its unusual application in the case of George Bush. It took Vince Bugliosi a whole book to explain that, not exactly an easy task to replicate in a sound bite or in short campaign literature or ads. Not that it was his intention to get involved in a campaign. He had hoped a DA or Attorney General would come forward. When none did -- at least not yet -- he came in solidly behind my candidacy. But the educational barrier for voters on this issue could not be breached in the short time I had to campaign.

This, coupled with the incumbent's misrepresentations of what Vince Bugliosi and I were trying to achieve (with Sorrell insisting that war crimes could only be tried in the Hague, thereby dismissing out of hand the possibility of trying Bush under state murder statutes)deterred otherwise sympathetic voters from even considering the notion.

No matter how often WE argued that Bush was to be prosecuted in Vermont not for war crimes but for murder under Vt. murder statutes, Sorrell brushed off OUR assertions and the media did too. So voters were left with the impression that it was impossible to bring Bush to justice in Vermont.

We should also factor in the stock market meltdown right after I announced my candidacy in September and widespread fears that state services will be drastically cut back. I made it clear that supplemental funding for prosecuting Bush would be raised from private citizens (something DA Jim Garrison did in New Orleans to prosecute Clay Shaw for conspiracy to murder JFK).

The Attorney General, of course, must deal with many issues that affect voters, including vital economic issues like predatory lending practices and gas gouging. I articulated my positions on many other issues -- with my pledge to shut down the aging, embrittled and dangerous Vermont Yankee nuclear plant as a particularly big issue in the campaign -- but understandably, the prosecution issue is the one which grabbed the headlines.