GOP challenger Scott Milne and, more broadly, Republican interest groups say the state's economy has suffered under his leadership. A television ad by the Republican State Leadership Committee, a group promoting Republican candidates, says Vermont has 3,000 fewer workers and it rattles off the names of a number of businesses that have closed. Matthews said that during an election season many imagine that governors and state legislatures are capable of reversing entrenched national trends. There are Vermont workers, especially at the upper end of the income distribution, who are doing well and in fact doing better and there are Vermont workers at the lower end of the distribution who are actually doing worse.