A Competitive Gubernatorial Primary? Hell, Yeah

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As expected, Aly Richards has declared her candidacy for governor, becoming the second person willing to take on S.S. Phil Scott, the Nimitz class aircraft carrier of #vtpoli. And I am all for it.

Richards is the former head of Let’s Grow Kids, the organization that led the charge for improved child care. She’s currently chair of the University of Vermont Medical Center board, which puts her in kind of an interesting (uncomfortable?) position when it comes to the hot-button health care affordability issue. I mean, considering that UVMMC is widely seen as The Big Bad of Vermont’s cost crisis.

The first to enter the race was Amanda Janoo, an economic policy expert with the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. Each brings a unique and intriguing skill set to the race. I’m not here to compare their resumés or agendas; I just want to cheer the simple fact that two very talented people actually want the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in the same year, a blessing we haven’t enjoyed since 2016.

Conventional wisdom would say a competitive Democratic primary is a resource drain, putting the winner at an even greater disadvantage against a popular incumbent who hasn’t been beaten in literally forever. He’s been in politics since 2000 — amazing for a self-professed non-politician, right? — and his next election defeat will be his first.

But I say, to hell with conventional wisdom. Bring on the primary!

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For Local News Day, I Dream of a Bottom-Up News Ecosystem

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Oh, looky here, we’ve got another billionaire with a plan to “save America’s newspapers.” Have we learned nothing from Jeff Bezos?

I mean, maybe Florida-based 73-year-old David Hoffmann is the real deal who will do what Bezos and Alden Capital and whatever Gannett brands its processed news-ish product these days have failed to deliver: A viable, profitable model for relevant journalism. But seriously, how many eggs am I willing to put in the billionaire savior basket? Especially since Hoffmann is a micromanager who daily pores over the 140 papers he’s invested in with a red felt-tip pen, thinks that the Associated Press leans “sometimes a little to the left,” and believes that ultra-local “boosterism” and “pivoting toward paywalls” are the keys to making money in the news business.

Oh, also, this is his “home.”

Just a regular guy. Puts on his pants one leg at a time. With the help of a valet, I’m sure.

But I digress, bigly. I’m here to spin a fantasy in honor of April 9, “Local News Day,” a “national day of action connecting communities with trusted local news.” (Maybe I’ll see you at the LND event at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library?)

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Come One, Come All to Dr. Gregory’s Patent Medicine Road Show

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The Poppin’ Fresh of Vermont’s far right, Gregory Thayer, is at it again. He’s hitting the road with a clown car’s worth of extremists ready to yammer about the conspiracy theory du jour.

For the record, the grammatically-challenged* (“Townhall” one word? Two “opportunity”?) twice-failed candidate for lieutenant governor is the mastermind who gave us a dismally under-attended series of pro-Trump rallies in 2025, He was also a featured speaker at a 2025 “Parent’s (sic) Rights in Education” (read: anti-trans and DEI) event in the Statehouse. And he spoke at a 2022 anti-critical race theory bitchfest in Montpelier.

*A southern Vermont correspondent points out that it’s the “Fullerton Inn,” not the “Fallerton.” Seriously, this guy is an accountant. Would you hire him to do your taxes?

Oh, and how could we forget the Klar Klan Kruiser, the Thayer-organized anti-critical race theory traveling circus of 2021? And of course, Thayer’s masterstroke: the CovidCruiser that took a busload of mask-free Trump defeat denialists to Washington, D.C. for the January 6 insurrection.

The guy gets around. And here he comes again, with a pair of “Townhalls” (sic) next week in Chester and Montpelier on the subject of ELECTION INTEGRITY, a.k.a. them damn Democrats are tryin’ to steal the vote!!! And just look at this Murderers’ Row of participants.

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A Couple More Tidbits from the Phil Scott Presser

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Last week’s edition of Gov. Phil Scott’s weekly bitchfest press conference centered on his opposition to the House’s FY2027 budget, which basically involved the governor defining “compromise” as “forsake your own position and do what I want,” and also featured him continuing to complain angrily about “bias” in a Vermont Labor Relations Board whose members are (1) appointed by himself and (2) bound by law to be “neutral” and “impartial.”

But there were a pair of passages that should not be allowed to fade into the impenetrable murk of Phil Pressers Past. So before we move on to new business (a competitive race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, hooray), let’s enter them into the public record.

First, we have Scott reiterating his commitment to nuclear energy, which he’s never actually proposed with any specifics because it’d be politically radioactive (see what I did there). And second, we have Scott claiming that any homeless people who are unsheltered in Vermont are doing so voluntarily. Because sleeping in a car is such an appealing lifestyle?

Let’s start with nukes. “I’ve long been a supporter of nuclear energy,” Scott said. “Even back in my days in the Senate, I voted in opposition to shutting down Vermont Yankee.”

Ah yes, Vermont Yankee, the trouble-prone, mismanaged power plant that left nuclear energy with a permanent black eye to most Vermonters. Yeah, that’s what we need: another Vermont Yankee!

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The Soft Megalomania of Phil Scott

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It’s been quite a while since I forced myself to endure one of Gov. Phil Scott’s weekly press conferences. I know, it ought to be appointment viewing for Your Political Observer, but I’m my own boss here and I feel free to follow my muse and limit the self-sacrifices. Every gubernatorial presser takes a couple nibbles out of my soul.

But after his angry, neo-Trumpian press release about this week’s Vermont Labor Relations Board decision, I felt like I had to see how he’d follow up in his weekly presser.

And boy, did he ever. It was a festival of self-pity and blamecasting. Nothing is his fault; every problem we face is because of the incompetent spendthrifts in the Democratic Legislature.

(After seeing this performance, I’ve upped the odds on whether he will seek another term; if the chances of him running were 95%, they’re now at 99. And it’s gonna be a nasty campaign, although swaddled in his famously avuncular style. He’s got such a collection of receipts to cash in, he’s gonna need at least one more election cycle to clear his cache. Hell, he might stick around out of sheer spite until we’re asked to re-elect Phil Scott’s Head in a Jar in the year 2050.)

It’s the governor as innocent bystander. Which is a real stretch, considering that he is by far the most powerful person in state government. He is the chief of an executive branch with thousands of employees. His appointees run every department and agency. The Legislature, by contrast, consists of everyday people who get paid a pittance and have little to no staff support.

Let’s count ’em, shall we? The leaders of the House and Senate have one full-time staffer apiece. Each chamber has a small central staff to handle operations and paperwork. Each committee has a single staffer. The entire Legislature has two small support operations: the Joint Fiscal Office and the Legislative Counsel. Compare that to the small army of administrators, bureaucrats and line workers at Scott’s beck and call.

He runs the joint. If he can’t find ways to work across the aisle, that’s on him. I realize it’s no fun to face Democratic majorities for nearly a decade. But it’s his job to find common ground with opposition lawmakers who, after all, have as much of a mandate as he does. He has failed to do so, and that’s why so many of our problems have gotten worse during his tenure.

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Signs of Strife in Democratic Circles

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I don’t know if there’s a fire, but there’s suddenly a hell of a lot of smoke around the Vermont Democratic Party. It’s not a great look at the beginning of a very important election season.

Within the last few days, some harsh criticism of party policies and leadership has come from four Democrats not known as troublemakers. Three are longtime Democrats who have held positions of responsibility in the party or in public office. The fourth is a respected figure in local politics whose bid for higher office had been strongly promoted by the party. The list in brief, followed by details:

  • One of the two leading Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor has accused the VDP of actively favoring the other top contender.
  • One of the Democrats’ best hopes for regaining a state Senate seat has cut short his campaign, citing “irreconcilable differences” with the party over fundraising and strategy.
  • A current Senate candidate has accused the party of violating the tradition of neutrality in primary contests and effectively selling its favor to chosen candidates.
  • A 2024 Senate hopeful says the VDP failed to deliver promised support to his candidacy through its much-touted “Coordinated Campaign.”

If one or two of these things had happened, you might chalk it off to sore losers or misunderstandings. But four, in a matter of days? That’s either a remarkable coincidence or a troubling pattern.

Now, let’s get to the particulars.

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See, The Problem with the Titanic Was Not Enough Captains

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Last week, the unions representing staff and faculty at Vermont State University kind of tossed a grenade in the punchbowl. Not that anybody noticed, even though they issued a press release about it.

On March 25, leaders of VSU bargaining units from the American Federation of Teachers and Vermont State Employees Association sent a letter (available online here) documenting a dramatic trend of administrative bloat at the financially challenged university.

I must emphasize, as I did when VTDigger’s union went public over the use of AI in the newsroom, that unions typically don’t like to do this. They don’t go public with labor/management issues unless they feel it’s the only course left to them. Unions would rather negotiate and reach agreements.

So when a union takes this step, you know things are serious. And if they’ve got their facts right, then Vermont State University has some big problems.

Well, some more big problems. Which they don’t need, as they’re already in a struggle to survive.

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Here’s One Guy Who’s Glad Vermont Has No Ethical Guardrails for Local Officeholders

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Seems to be a bit of a kerfuffle down Chester way. It goes back a couple weeks, but it hasn’t been noted beyond local press accounts.

At its March 18 meeting, the Chester select board was doing a bit of routine annual business: designating newspapers of record, where official notices are to be published. And boy, did board chair Lee Gustafson try to pull off an unconstitutional power play. His behavior ought to warrant an ethics investigation except that, well, the underfunded, understaffed state Ethics Commission has washed its hands of local ethical issues due to a lack of resources. So he’s probably off the hook.

The select board ultimately voted to continue with two papers of record: The Chester Telegraph and The Vermont Journal. But Gustafson used his position of authority to try to kneecap The Telegraph’s journalistic independence. If he’d had his way, The Telegraph would have been cut out.

The Telegraph is a proud independent local paper that often punches above its weight. The Vermont Journal, generally speaking, is not much of a paper. It describes itself as an “upbeat” publication and most of its content is more fluff than substance. (Its “News” section consists largely of repurposed press releases.) However, it did itself proud in reporting on Gustafson’s attempted bullying of The Telegraph. The Journal’s was the most complete account, since The Telegraph took a very restrained approach for some understandable reasons.

But let’s get back to what happened, viewable on the select board’s YouTube channel.

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Oh, the Postality

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I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more desperate, pathetic hiring campaign than the one happening right now at the Montpelier post office. There are posters and flyers on every available wall, door, fixture, and column, plus a small stack on the service counter. The vast majority are black-and-white photocopies, so they’re obviously sparing every possible expense. There’s also one sad little bunch of slowly deflating helium balloons sitting off in a corner, communicating the exact opposite of gaiety and celebration.

It’s almost as if nobody with any options wants to work for a deeply troubled entity with terrible working conditions, a management focused entirely on cost-cutting, and a chief executive who just issued a warning that the enterprise is running out of money. All under a president who, at best, doesn’t give a damn, and at worst is actively undermining the operation in order to wreak havoc with mail-in balloting.

Yeah, if I were looking for work, I might opt for convenience store clerk (or trash hauler, see below) over mail carrier. Which is a damn shame, considering that the Postal Service used to be a haven of reliable, rewarding blue-collar employment.

The desperation of the hiring effort is reflected in the quality of service being delivered — or not being delivered — in my neck of the woods. The mail carrier on our route resigned about a month ago. On her last day, she told a neighbor that she’d been working 70 hours a week and couldn’t take it anymore. She also said there was no one in line to replace her, and we should expect to get deliveries once a week or so.

Neat. It wasn’t too many years ago that a USPS plan to end Saturday deliveries sparked so much outrage in Congress that it was quickly abandoned. Now, once a week? Maybe? Indefinitely? Forever? The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves?

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Those “Agitators” Are Democracy’s Best Hope, Sir (Updated)

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This is a big, complicated subject, and there’s no way I’m going to do justice to all its facets — or even mention them all — in a single blogpost. But let’s start with Burlington police chief Shawn Burke blaming “agitators” for triggering conflict at the infamous March 11 ICE action in South Burlington.

Yeah, well. First, the real “agitators” at the scene were the goon squads from ICE, conducting a wrong-headed, overly aggressive action designed more for intimidation than law enforcement. If not for them, there would have been no protest at all. (Scorecard: The ICE agent who started it all has officially acknowledged he was mistaken, and the three people taken into custody have all been released. So what exactly did it accomplish, eh?)

Second, I’ve been hearing officials blame “agitators” for causing all the trouble since my teenage years at the height of the Vietnam War, and it goes back even farther than that. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., outside agitator extraordinaire.

Third, well, effective agitation seems to be our best tactic in the face of galloping authoritarianism, so Chief Burke can spare me the pearl-clutching. The official processes of our putative democracy have proven to be largely ineffectual. Is it any wonder that some are choosing to take it to the streets?

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