Hey, Bernie! Can You Spare a Moment for Amanda Janoo or Nah?

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Recently I wrote a post criticizing Democratic Party bigwigs’ underwhelming support for their gubernatorial candidate Amanda Janoo. During the month of August, not a single Democratic officeholder donated to the badly underfunded Janoo campaign. (A few did donate to her campaign before August 1.) This is looking like a missed opportunity given recent signs of slippage in Gov. Phil Scott’s favorability numbers and the very real signs of life in Janoo’s organization. (She’s holding dozens of canvasses and honk-and-waves in coming weeks, which must mean she’s generating grassroots energy and attracting a lot of volunteers.)

But now it’s time to throw the same shade at Vermont’s very elder statesman, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. To his credit, he continues to work hard and travel his buns off in support of progressive-minded candidates across the country. Ballotpedia keeps a running tab of his endorsements — defined as “official statements, appearances at campaign rallies, and direct participation in campaign ads and materials.” It’s a very long list. In 2026 alone, Sanders has acted in support of 83 candidates across the country. That’s roughly one candidate every three days.

Amanda Janoo does not appear on the list. Nor do I recall Sanders issuing a statement about Janoo or appearing at one of her campaign events or, most valuable currency of all, sending an email to his vaunted contact list seeking donations for Janoo’s cash-starved campaign.

Janoo is a candidate straight out of Bernie Central Casting. She’s a creative, original thinker with a strong progressive streak. Her platform is a close match for Bernie’s. So why no love for the hometown candidate?

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So Are We Getting Any Debates or Nah?

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For many years, the beginning of every Vermont campaign’s homestretch has been marked by a gubernatorial debate at the Tunbridge Fair, broadcast by WDEV Radio. It’s the customary first leg in a series of campaign forums.

Until now. The Fair is this weekend, and the debate was scheduled for Thursday morning. But on Wednesday afternoon, former lieutenant governor and WDEV host David Zuckerman issued a statement touting the event as best he could, but ending with this little wet fart:

Sad. Ken Squier is likely rolling in his grave.

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In Which the High and Mighty Look Down from the Clouds and Determine the Fate of Our Most Vulnerable

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Love the online access for legislative hearings where the audio quality is poor and the view so expansive that you can’t tell who’s talking. It’s even worse when a powerpoint presentation occupies 90% of the screen and all the little people are confined to a small corner.

But the optics seem appropriate when the subject is Vermont’s troubled emergency housing program, taken up briefly today by the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee. (It was one item on a packed agenda, with a mere 30 minutes allocated for multiple witnesses.) There’s something ironically apropos about those remote figures in an ornate room discussing the state’s failure to provide adequate shelter for our neediest Vermonters.

But enough philosophizing. The subject at hand was how the Scott administration is implementing Act 143, the Legislature’s attempt to create a better emergency housing system. In the eyes of advocacy groups, the administration has taken a heavy-handed approach and fast-tracked a new system without much input from outside the boundaries of its own sphincter.

This process has triggered an impassioned response from advocacy groups and helping agencies, up to and potentially including legal action for what they see as the administration’s deliberate flouting of Act 143’s intent. A small next step took place today before JFC, with more hearings to come in the near future. (The Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules is expected to take up the new process on October 1, and there will be a joint hearing of he House Human Service and Senate Health & Welfare Committees on October 9.) Nothing was settled today, but the lines are drawn a bit more clearly now.

Not that that will help anyone caught in the chaos — planned or otherwise — of a situation that seems to have been easily avoidable except that the Scott administration has rarely acted in good faith when it comes to sheltering the homeless. The constant preoccupation is with cost and with making recipients prove they are worthy, instead of meeting a simple basic human need. Or, to put it another way, doing the right thing.

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What If They Held an Election and Nobody Covered It?

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I would not be so bold as to say that our news media are in the tank for Gov. Phil Scott. But their sadly reduced capacity has redounded to the governor’s benefit, over and over again. No one has the bandwidth and/or interest in covering state politics anymore. As a result, recent events that might be harmful to Scott’s popularity have gone completely unreported or, at best, substantially underreported.

Example #1: The legislative hearing that revealed the disastrous state of the administration’s biggest IT project, which includes the budget, human resources, and finance and accounting — a project that touches on everybody in state government and every dollar it spends. This project is so badly off the rails that no one can say how long it will take to fix, how much more it will cost, or even if it will ever come to fruition. That’s not coming from critics, but from top administration officials themselves. I cannot explain why this isn’t a big fat deal.

Example #2: Scott’s attempt to bigfoot the Democratic primary for Chittenden County State’s Attorney. He openly urged Republicans to take Democratic ballots and vote for challenger Bram Kranichfeld over incumbent Sarah Fair George. At best it’s an ethically questionable thing for a self-proclaimed non-politician to do.

Example #3: What the Scott administration has done to Act 143, the Legislature’s attempt to reform the emergency housing program. I’m preparing to write a full post about this. For now, I’ll just say that Scott signed it and immediately began subverting it. His administration has devised its own plan that certainly violates the spirit of Act 143 and probably the letter of the law as well. Carly Berlin, a reporter shared by VTDigger and Vermont Public, did post a story about this on September 1, but it didn’t explore the full extent of the administration’s skulduggery. Otherwise this sorry affair has gone pretty much uncovered. It ought to be a scandal.

Example #4: In late July, the University of New Hampshire Survey Center published a poll showing that one-half of Vermonters “have a positive overall view of socialism, while only about four in ten have a positive view of capitalism,” and “a plurality have a positive view of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).” (It also showed Donald Trump’s popularity at an all-time low of 22% in Vermont, bwahahaha.)

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All the Weirdness with County Republican Committee Finances

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(The above screenshot was taken on the evening of September 9. As of this writing, on the afternoon of September 10, you can still see this on the Bennington County Republicans’ homepage. Which kind of sums up the tactical and strategic genius of the VTGOP’s county party committees.)

This week, I’ve spent waaaay too much time digging through campaign finance reports from September 1. I’d already done the requisite review of statewide candidates*, and then I started looking around at political committee reports, a jungle where few choose to enter.

*Not sure if it’s really “requisite” anymore since our major media completely ignored the filings. Sigh.

And boy, did I ever hit a rich vein of weird.

What I found, in brief, is that the Vermont Republican Party continues to struggle financially, but some of its county committees are raking in the cash while others have little to nothing. The well-funded committees are in solidly Republican or uncompetitive Democratic counties, so the money is kind of pointless. And the fortunate committees are spending their loot in very different ways, many of which seem irrelevant to the presumed goal of winning elections.

I’m telling you, none of it makes sense. Some of it might trigger legal jeopardy if there was any oversight or enforcement regimen for campaign finance. Which there is NOT, at all.

Here’s a little soupçon to whet your appetite.

The Orleans County Republican Committee spent $15,000 on travel expenses for Lt. Gov. John Rodgers.

I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

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Remember the Great Anti-Police Protests in St. Johnsbury? Yeah, Me Neither.

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Ah yes, the golden days of the early ’20s, when hordes of left-wingers took over the streets of St. Johnsbury and the town’s progressive leadership responded by cutting the police department’s budget.

Oh wait, you say that didn’t happen?

Well, then explain this.

The briefly (and marginally) successful “defund the police” movement in Burlington is being blamed — several years later — for the Queen City’s struggle to fight crime, substance use, vandalism, and fears about public safety. And yet, according to VTDigger’s Kingdom correspondent K. Fiegenbaum, the town of St. Johnsbury is suffering from exactly the same suite of problems.

As are most or all of Vermont’s other cities and towns, from Rutland to Bennington to Brattleboro to St. Albans to Montpelier and beyond.

It’s almost as if the root causes lay beyond a certain city’s brief dalliance with trimming police budgets. It’s almost as if the problems are systemic, statewide, beyond the capacity of any local or county official to control. Even when, as in St. J, St. A, and Rutland, those officials are predominantly Republican and not at all “woke.”

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The Barons Seem Uninterested in Saving John Rodgers’ Bacon

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The second most notable results from the September 1 campaign finance disclosures were about the race for lieutenant governor, and they once again show that incumbent Republican John Rodgers is in some trouble. Maybe a lot of trouble.

Two years ago, his campaign was buoyed by a wave of four-figure checks from the folks I call the Barons of Burlington: the moguls, developers, landlords, and others capable of making large donations to favored candidates. From July 1 onward, Rodgers’ 2024 campaign finance reports were riddled with familiar names: Pomerleaus, Pizzagallis, Tarrants, Bruce Lisman, Ray Pecor, Doug Nedde, etc., all kicking in sizable donations. The flood of cash may or may not have been the deciding factor in Rodgers’ win over incumbent David Zuckerman, but it sure as hell didn’t hurt.

This year, however, something has changed. The Barons are almost entirely absent from Rodgers’ filings. He did receive $1,000 from Ernie Pomerleau in August, but otherwise his September 1 report was barren of Barons. As a result, Rodgers lags far behind Democratic nominee Molly Gray in total fundraising and cash on hand. (Gray has received $2,250 from former Rodgers backer Brian Boardman plus $2,000 from ski resort tycoon Win Smith, so the balance of Barons tips slightly in her direction.)

Gray’s lead in spendable cash is kind of stunning, since she had to weather a costly primary battle while Rodgers faced no Republican opposition. The bottom line: Gray has raised $412,000 for the campaign to date compared with Rodgers’ $143,000. Gray has spent $339,000, and reported cash on hand totaling $73,000. Rodgers has somehow managed to spend $118,000 despite the lack of a primary challenge, and has only $26,000 in the bank.

Standard caveat: Money isn’t the only factor in a campaign, and Rodgers does have the incumbent’s advantage. But pre-primary polls by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center showed weakness in Rodgers’ position. The disparities in fundraising prowess and cash position are more evidence that Rodgers is on the back foot. And the reticence of the Barons suggests they might just see him as a lost cause.

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A Potentially Seismic Development in the Vermont News Business (Postscript Added)

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We may have just seen the first in a series of moves that could transform journalism in Vermont — for better or worse, but more likely the former.

The five-newspaper Vermont Community News Group, a locally-owned for-profit enterprise, is being acquired by the National Trust for Local News. The Colorado-based nonprofit is young (achieved tax-exempt status in 2022) but growing rapidly (2024 revenue $53 million). Its mission: to protect and sustain local news operations. In its own words:

The National Trust for Local News is protecting these vital civic assets and transforming them into a resilient, uniquely scalable non-profit news organization. Our goal is to harness local newspapers to build a more equitable and vibrant future for local news, nationwide.

I don’t know anything about the National Trust, but it seems to be legit. Its leadership includes an impressive array of people with experience in journalism, nonprofit enterprise, and (somewhat worryingly) the corporate world. (McKinsey? Ew.) It forswears donations from those with political agendas, and promises a hands-off relationship with its outlets’ editorial policies and journalistic standards.

Here’s why this could be a seismic event for Vermont journalism. When the National Trust enters a new state, it takes no half measures. It has operations in three states (Colorado, Georgia, Maine) and owns a total of 65 outlets so CNG’s five weeklies seem like a beginning, not an end. Based on track record, I assume the National Trust has made a thorough study of our news ecosystem and has decided it’s a promising market. I wouldn’t be surprised if it snaps up a bunch of local news outlets and maybe some bigger ones. (Some of our daily papers? VTDigger? Seven Days?) It could soon be a dominant force in Vermont journalism.

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Vermont Democrats Offer Amanda Janoo a Hearty Backslap and… That’s About All

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The latest round of campaign finance reports is in, and it looks like Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amanda Janoo is suffering the same fate as the other challengers to Gov. Phil Scott. She’s getting the cold shoulder from her party’s top officials and elected leaders.

Janoo raised $112,000 in August, bringing her campaign total to $415,000. Even if she still had all that money in the bank, it wouldn’t be enough to seriously contend with the governor. But she spent most of it in a costly primary against Aly Richards, so she enters September with a measly $59,000 in cash on hand.

Scott, who has barely even tried to mount a campaign, has five times as much in his kitty. And we’re practically in the home stretch; a bit more than two months remain before Election Day.

I ran into fellow Vermont Political Observer Kevin Ellis in the food coop earlier this week. He asked me what Janoo needed to do to win. “Everything,” I said. For starters, I said she needed a strong September 1 finance report: a minimum of $200,000, and preferably something north of $500,000. I didn’t honestly expect her to crack a half mill, but she certainly needed to do better than one-fifth of that.

Caveat: Money isn’t everything. Grassroots enthusiasm helps. But you can’t run an effective statewide campaign without at least some cash. You’ve gotta get on TV in a substantial way, to try to eat into Scott’s huge advantage in familiarity. Janoo doesn’t have nearly enough, and her shortfall sends a loud signal to the monied class: Don’t waste your money.

Janoo did very well with small-to-medium donors, racking up page after page of gifts in the range of $50 to $500. She got very few large donations. Conspicuous by their absence from her donor list: Democratic Party bigwigs and elected officials. That’s a dirty goddamn shame, and a stain on the party’s soul. If it has one.

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The Republicans Choose a Candidate for Chittenden State’s Attorney Who Doesn’t Want the Job

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This is a much younger Jace Laquerre (age 17 at the time), seen here with his beau ideal during the 2016 Republican convention. As he said at the time, “I got involved in politics through Senator Rand Paul, who inspired me to get involved through his principles of liberty and limited government.” At the time, Laquerre boasted of his involvement in “Young Americans for Liberty, Students for Life and the NRA.”

Fast forward to 2026, and Laquerre, now in his late 20s and sporting a J.D. Vance-style close-cropped beard, has just been chosen by the Chittenden County Republicans to run against incumbent Democratic State’s Attorney Sarah Fair George. This, despite the fact that (1) he’s not an attorney, and (2) he doesn’t actually want the job. (He is, according to his LinkedIn page, a software engineer. Something something relevant skills and experience.)

See, the Republicans didn’t field a candidate for the position. George’s Democratic primary opponent Bram Kranichfeld won the Republican nomination thanks to write-in votes from Republican voters who failed to heed (or misunderstood) Gov. Phil Scott’s advice to vote for Kranichfeld in the Democratic primary in order to defeat George. Kranichfeld then declined the “honor” of the Republican nomination, which allowed the county Republican committee to name anyone else as a replacement.

Anyone, it would seem. Including someone who isn’t qualified and, need I repeat myself, doesn’t want the job.

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