Campaign Finance Deadline #1: The Money’s Going to Some Unexpected Places

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So March 15 was the first campaign finance deadline (in Vermont) of 2026, and the second won’t come until July 1, mere weeks before the August primary. Yesterday was a big day, in other words, and there were some clear winners in the field. And not necessarily the winners you’d want, if you were to distribute the available Democratic dollars to the top-priority contests.

Which are, to my eye: Running a credible race for governor, rebuilding the state Senate majority, and knocking Lt. Gov. John Rodgers off his perch. It will be no shock whatsoever to learn that the usual Democratic donors seem to be paying little attention to the gubernatorial, and a lot of cash is being funneled into primary contests for safe Democratic seats. The only race where priority and cash are equivalent is in the Democratic race for lieutenant governor.

One saving grace: Many of the top fundraising candidates were drawing, in part, from unique sources of support rather than draining the mainstream Democratic pool. Many of Nikhil Goyal’s many, many donors, for instance, wouldn’t have given to anyone else.

The race for biggest moneybags of March is a virtual tie between Molly Gray and Ryan McLaren, Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor. They each raised more than $150,000, which is awfully impressive. Lookin’ like a red-hot race there.

Biggest moneybags per capita: state Senate candidate Goyal, who raised the eye-popping sum of $86,193.

Much better than expected: Recently declared Democratic candidate for governor Amanda Janoo, who cleared the $80,000 mark. That’s a really strong start, but she still has a ton of work to do.

Highest burn rate: Treasurer Mike Pieciak, who somehow managed to spend close to $60,000 in the early stages of a race for re-election he’s all but certain to win. Much of that cash went to expensive out-of-state campaign operatives. It’s almost as if he’s laying the groundwork for a seemingly inevitable run for governor.

There are your toplines. For those as obsessed with campaign cash as This Observer, more details follow.

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Lift Rug, Briskly Sweep, Hope Nobody Notices the Lumps

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It’s been a hell of a day under the Golden Dome. The House had a full agenda, with plenty of bills trying to beat crossover deadline. And there were a bunch of resolutions honoring, among other things, Athletic Trainers’ Month, the Month of the Military Child, McNeil & Reedy’s 70th year as a clothing retailer, the Vermont athletes who competed in the 2025 National Senior Games, and East Haven Selectboard member Kirwin Flanders, plus the designation of October 5 as Italian-American Day in Vermont, presumably a sop to those who still bemoan the loss of Columbus Day.

Anyway. It was going to be a big day… and then all hell broke loose.

First came a letter from Speaker Jill Krowinski to House members announcing that Rep. Bob Hooper of Burlington had relinquished his seat on the House Government Operations & MIlitary Affairs Committee because of an unspecified violation of the House Sexual Harassment Prevention Policy. Krowinski further said that Hooper would not be given any other committee assignment in the current biennium, which is as close as a House member can get to Siberian exile.

Then we got a press release signed by almost everyone in the House Democratic caucus* urging Hooper to resign from his seat in the House after “a thorough and diligent investigation… substantiated a claim of sexual harassment against another member.”

*There were 84 signatories out of 87 Democratic House members, including Krowinski**. By my count, the three who didn’t sign were Hooper himself, Mollie Burke, and Saudia LaMont. Burke, for what it’s worth, chairs the House Sexual Harassment Prevention Panel. You know, the folks responsible for that “diligent and thorough investigation.”

*Intentionally or not, the House Dems made it hard to find out who didn’t sign. The 84 members were listed in alphabetical order BY FIRST NAME, which meant I spent a lot of time identifying the three non-signers.

Finally, Vermont Public reported late Friday afternoon that Hooper plans to resign from the House, but not until Monday “so that he could consult with his lawyer and let his constituents know first.”

And thus ended, within a few short hours, a seven-year-long legislative career.

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Where No Democratic Officeholder Has Gone Before

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Meet Amanda Janoo, the first person to declare a Democratic candidacy for governor in 2026. She follows in the lineage of past challengers to Gov. Phil Scott in one very important — and unusual, if not unprecedented — way: No one who has been the Democratic gubernatorial nominee since Peter Shumlin’s last run in 2014, meaning no Phil Scott opponent ever, entered the race while holding elective office as a pure-D Democrat.

And that’s a massive, damning indictment of the Democratic establishment.

Let’s do the rundown.

  • 2016: Sue Minter, former state representative and member of Shumlin’s cabinet, the only Scott challenger who had ever held any elective office as a pure-D Democrat. She’d served three terms as a state representative from Waterbury, ending in 2011.
  • 2018: Christine Hallquist, CEO of the Vermont Electric Cooperative.
  • 2020: Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, who served as a Progressive/Democrat and got little to no support from the Democratic Party or its donor base.
  • 2022; Brenda Siegel, nonprofit executive and advocate on housing and homelessness policy.
  • 2024: Esther Charlestin, co-chair of the Vermont Commission on Women. (She had served on the nonpartisan Middlebury select board.)

And now Amanda Janoo, who’s had a very impressive career completely outside the realm of partisan politics. She has stepped forward at a time when top-tier and second-tier and bottom-of-the-chili-pot Democrats are nowhere to be seen.

Again, a damning indictment of the party and its (cough) leaders.

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At VTDigger, the Outward Signs Continue to be Not Great

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Disclaimers and caveats first. I’m a supporter of VTDigger. It’s an essential piece of our diminishing news ecosystem. I shudder to think where we’d be without it.

Also, I have no inside knowledge. This post, as with my other writing about Digger, is based entirely on what I can see from out here.

And what I can see is disturbing, sorry to say.

The latest shoe to drop is the sudden departure of editor-in-chief Geeta Anand. She moved across the country to take the Digger job last spring, and now she’s moving back after less than a year. It follows on the heels of CEO Sky Barsch’s pending departure, announced in late January.

I don’t know why Anand is leaving so soon, and I’m not going to speculate. But her interim replacement, veteran editor and journalist Susan Allen, will be Digger’s fourth editor-in-chief in 16 months, including two interims. (Credit to Guy Page at the Vermont Daily Chronicle for being the only reporter to point that out.)

That’s… well, that’s just bad, for a newsroom that seems adrift from its original focus.

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A Few Dispiriting Peeks into the Black Box of State Government

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Because I usually finish what I start, the “Drafts” section of this site’s back office is mercifully brief. It contains exactly one unfinished blogpost. That one is more than four years old, and I long ago despaired of ever pulling it off.

Its title is “We Have No Idea How Well State Government Performs.” I honestly believe that statement is true, but I’ve never finished it because it would be an absolute bear to research — to try to catalogue examples of state government failing to work as it should, when I suspect that most examples remain safely concealed in a bureaucratic mountain that gets little meaningful independent oversight.

But three recent news items provide solid evidence in support of the working theory that our state government is not nearly as efficient or effective as it could be.

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Town Meeting: For Me, But Not for Thee?

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This obscure board game sure seems to hold out the promise of nonstop, pulse-pounding action, does it not? Description found online:

You roll dice and move your pawn along a path through the town. There are incidents in your path concerning the town meeting as you progress to the town common. …The incidents are believable and reflects what could actually happen before or during an actual town meeting. First player to reach the town common wins!

And you wonder why “New England Town Meeting Game” has never rivaled Scrabble or Jenga or Hungry Hungry Hippos in the pantheon. Well, it might be more exciting if the players all had to deal with some kind of disability… because in real life our beloved, much-mythologized Town Meeting seems to have a problem when it comes to accommodating disabilities.

So says a new advocacy group, REV UP Vermont, not to be confused with Renewable Energy Vermont. REV with an UP launched on Town Meeting Day* in an effort to focus attention on the plight of people with disabilities who want to take part in local governance.

*to very little notice; did anyone in our media report on the group? Bueller?

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The Gambling Industry Is Evolving at Warp Speed. Our Laws Have Fallen Behind.

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I’ve been pondering a post about the gambling industry since print refugee Derek Brouwer’s insightful story was posted on February 3 — if you missed it, please go back and read it. But things have escalated tremendously, and the situation is quite a bit worse than it seemed when Brouwer, reported on all the holes in Vermont’s oversight of legalized gambling.

It almost seems quaint to list the issues Brouwer identified, but let’s have a go.

  • The gambling industry is growing rapidly, up by nearly 20% in 2025 compared to its legalized debut in 2024.
  • Betting on football and basketball are flat, while the growth is in relatively obscure sports. Which by their obscurity, are more prone to fixing and other abuses. And gambling on sports you know nothing about is a big flashing indicator of addictive behavior.
  • “A complete picture of Vermonters’ sports betting habits is not available” because the regulatory agency “publishes very limited data.”
  • Vermont collected $7.2 million in taxes from the regulated industry — but spent less than 15% of that on programs aimed at problem gambling.

That’s all plenty bad. But the prediction markets are throwing a big ol’ bomb into Vermont’s patchwork oversight regime.

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The Fate of the Innovator Is Not Always Pleasant

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I’ve been thinking for a while about BETA Technologies, a.k.a. The Great White Hope for jobs and economic growth in the post-IBM era. Those thoughts have crystallized around a recently-published story by VTDigger’s Theo Wells-Spackman entitled “An Inside Look at Beta (sic) Technologies’ Big Plans for Vermont.”

(I guess we need an AP Style Guide ruling on whether the name is all caps or not but it’s listed on the stock market as BETA, so I’ll go where the money is.)

The story was well done. But it was an example of how an article can be diligently executed but still compromised by its concept. The most frequent offender in this regard is the class of story about “Local Residents Oppose [insert development plan here].” The usual evils are renewable energy installations, cell towers, and proposals for new housing. By their very framing, these accounts give more weight to the opposition — who get the lion’s share of the quotes and the column inches. Supporters are less often heard from if at all, and developers tend to stay away from active engagement because they fear it will just make things worse.

In the case of Wells-Spackman’s piece, “An Inside Look” is fun and exciting, but no matter how hard the reporter tries, the final product is going to make BETA Technologies look good. The shiny factory, the face time with company leaders and supportive officials, all nice. If you begin with “a private tour” of the factory, and you’re kind of already in the host’s back pocket. Access journalism, I think they call it.

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The Most Infuriating Fundraising Appeal I’ve Ever Received (and That’s Saying a Lot)

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Got an email today from your friend and mine, Treasurer Mike Pieciak, that just made me mad. The more I thought about it, the madder I got.

Pieciak, for those just joining us, has all but foresworn a run for governor in favor of an almost certain run for re-election. He won without breaking a sweat in 2022 and 2024, and will likely face another hopeless Republican this year. He had nearly $200,000 in his campaign account as of the last reporting deadline, July 2025.

And he’s actively fundraising.

Not only that, he’s fundraising with all the artificial urgency he can muster.

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Put on Your Hazmat Suits, We’re Paying Another Visit to Planet Hank

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Now we know exactly how sincere Hank Poitras was in his non-apology for his racist, misogynistic online history. Because what you see above is the chair of the Windham County Republican Committee cackling and sniggering his way through an OnlyFans video depicting a sex act, which he gleefully shared on his YouTube channel in an effort to defeat a candidate for school board in Chester.

Shared, need I add, in apparent violation of OnlyFans’ Acceptable Use Policy.

This story was reported by The Chester Telegraph’s Cynthia Prairie, and no one comes out of it looking good. But the main point for my purposes is, should Hank Poitras occupy a position of influence in the Vermont Republican Party? I cannot see how party chair Paul Dame or Gov. Phil Scott can possibly tolerate his presence.

The details, outlined as briefly as possible because of the very high Ick Factor:

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