A Curious Candidacy in the Windsor Senate Primary (Updated)

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This, friends and neighbors, is Ben Brickner, Democratic candidate for state Senate in the Windsor district.

Practically oozes Vermontitude, doesn’t it? Appropriately faded ballcap, fleece quarter-zip, jeans, rurally appropriate dog, outdoorsy backdrop. Touch of gray in the close-cropped beard. His campaign website leans heavily on his service as chair of the Pomfret selectboard. Cool.

But looky here. This is also Ben Brickner.

Tempting to offer a remark about the Hair Club for Men, but that would be mean. So let’s get to the heart of the matter. The bespoke-suited Ben Brickner is a partner in the New York City law firm Person Ferdinand who specializes in “corporate finance, securities, and capital markets transactions,” according to the Pierson website. Pierson is headquartered in NYC but has 18 offices around the United States plus an outpost in London. Kind of a big deal.

You won’t see a hint of that in any of his campaign materials, nor in a flattering story about his candidacy in The Mountain Times.

What’s more, Brickner’s July 1 campaign finance filing is a real eye-opener. He has raised a stunning $65,000 so far, including 18 maximum individual contributions of $1,940 plus another seven gifts of $1,000 or more.

That would have been virtually unprecedented for any state Senate race until 2024, when the Barons of Burlington threw their weight behind several Republican candidates for Senate and, well, Stewart Ledbetter. But I doubt there’s ever been any candidate for any office in Windsor County who’s raised anywhere near $65,000.

If you live in the Windsor district, you should expect a flood of mailings from Team Ben before the August primary. He spent only $12,000 as of July 1, so he’s got more than $50,000 burning a hole in his pocket.

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A Curious Gathering of Lobbyists in a State Senate Primary

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I’ve spent too much time in recent days going over campaign finance reports for all the races for state Senate. Well, all but Richard Westman’s unopposed bid for a [checks notes] twenty-fourth consecutive term in the Legislature. I think I’m safe in skipping that one.

There’s a lot to report, and it’ll be coming your way very soon. But here’s a little something I discovered that’s worth a moment of your time. It’s fairly small potatoes, but it might develop into something more.

The Senate race in the Orange district features incumbent Republican John Benson making his first bid for a full term (he was appointed in January to replace Larry Hart, Sr., who found out that lawmaking is hard work) and two Democratic hopefuls: State Rep. Monique Priestley and retired Department of Labor staffer Rose Lucenti. The seat is historically Democratic; it flipped Republican in the 2024 wave election, so the Democratic nominee will have a decent shot at unflipping it.

Priestley is doing just fine, thanks. She entered the cycle with $6,400 in the bank and proceeded to raise a healthy $23,000. She’s spent a bit more than $6,000, so she entered July with roughly $23,000 in cash on hand. That’s already enough money to compete in a mostly rural district.

Where things get a little intriguing is in Lucenti’s latest report.

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The Money Race Is, As They Say, Heating Up. In Some Precincts, Anyway.

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The first of July marked the most important pre-primary campaign finance deadline for Vermont candidates. The occasion was marked by a depressing lack of coverage in our respectable media. VTDigger ran a boilerplate piece that reported a bunch of numbers but offered little insight. Seven Days and Vermont Public didn’t do anything, as far as I can tell. Our daily papers are a wasteland for political coverage and I rarely watch local TV news, which is largely an exercise in cranking out enough easy content to space out the advertising.

Which is a damn shame because there are definite points of interest, and because this is the most meaningful pre-primary snapshot of the money races. The previous deadline of March 15 was so early that some major candidates (Aly Richards, for instance) had yet to toss their metaphorical hats in the ring. The next deadline of August 1 is very close to primary day, so whatever might be revealed in those reports won’t have much of a chance to sink in.

Altough that’s kind of a moot point since the media is largely ignoring campaign finance altogether. If there was a nuclear revelation to be found, chances are nobody would notice and it would go unreported.

So let’s get to the July 1 numbers and what they tell us about Campaign 2026.

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Hey, We’ve Got a New Poll and… Phil Scott is Vulnerable??

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Speaking from experience, one of the biggest mistakes political pundits can make is writing political obituaries for Gov. Phil Scott. He is the grand champeen of Vermont politicians, having gone undefeated since his original election to the state Senate way back in 2000. If he wins re-election in November, he will have done what no other Vermonter has managed: winning six gubernatorial elections. He’s a couple years shy of Howard Dean’s record tenancy in the corner office, but Dean first became governor upon the death of Dick Snelling. He was elected governor “only” five times.

Still, a new opinion poll brings some bad news for Scott. He remains the overwhelming favorite to go where no pol has gone before, but the bloom is coming off the rose. Storm clouds can be seen on the distant horizon. There are perceptible dents in his previously spotless Teflon coat. The tires are showing signs of wear.

Enough half-baked analogies. Since there are no polling organizations in Vermont, we have to settle for this offering from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. There are a bunch of interesting numbers to be found, but let’s start with the bloom and the clouds and the dents and the tires.

Scott’s favorability rating, whose customary habitat is in the stratosphere, now sits uncomfortably close to 50%. In matchups with relatively little-known Democratic opponents, he comes nowhere near a majority. And only one-third of Vermonters think the state is headed in the right direction.

And now, the details.

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So Brenda Siegel Was… Right? All Along

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When I’ve had conversations with someone in Vermont officialdom and the name “Brenda Siegel” comes up, it usually elicits a bit of a grimace. Siegel isn’t a comfortable character. She’s direct, some would say abrasive. She’s a fierce advocate for an unpopular cause. When she walks into a legislative hearing, the assembled lawmakers brace for impact. When she earned the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2022, the party offered some support but endorsements were few and the donor class shunned her campaign.

And now that H.938 has become law as Act 143, she ought to be taking a nice long victory lap. She did issue a press release; otherwise I suspect she got right back to work.

Act 143 is far from perfect, but it’s a much better law than any of our political leaders really wanted. It’s an attempt at creating a comprehensive response to homelessness instead of the box of Band-Aids that is the hotel/motel program. Crucially, it requires for the first time that the state’s homelessness response system must comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. I bet you thought that was a given, but apparently not.

There are other heroes in this story — House Human Services Chair Theresa Wood and Rep. Jubilee McGill for starters — but it wouldn’t have happened without Siegel’s tenacity and willingness to be unpopular in the service of her cause.

And in the category of poetic justice, End Homelessness Vermont, the nonprofit she founded and ran on a shoestring, is now part of the official system. The state’s FY2027 budget includes a $200,000 appropriation for EHV, which will now work alongside state agencies to try to lift the unhoused into safe, productive lives.

Gee, maybe she could have been a good governor after all.

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Strap In, It’s Time for Another Touchdown on Planet Hank

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I hate to give this douchebag the slightest bit of publicity, because it’s what he thrives on. But “Planet Hank” Poitras is someone who needs to be taken seriously. He cannot be ignored. Because he could very well be a rising star in Republican circles. (Governor, any comment?)

Poitras is seen above in a video he posted online himself. Yep, this is his favored public presentation. The problem is, he apparently holds a position (or two) of responsibility in the Vermont Republican Party, and he’s been creating a bunch of AI-generated attack videos aimed at U.S. Rep. Becca Balint and Sen. Bernie Sanders — videos being eagerly shared by Republican Congressional candidate Mark Coester. Poitras is the kind of bare-knuckles antagonist who tends to float upwards in the turgid swamp of Donald Trump’s America.

And now he’s elevating himself to the status of Crime Victim Slash Martyr, a casualty of the widespread lawlessness he gleefully chronicles in his cheap-ass “Cops” knockoff videos.

In case you missed it, Poitras claims to have been the target of a home invasion and deadly attack. The alleged assailant is a young man who was the subject of one of Planet Hank’s breathless videos. The man has been arrested and is in custody. And so far, all we have is Poitras’ word for what happened.

If you think I’m exaggerating, remember that while the Brattleboro police officially cut off any cooperation with Poitras, he has many friends in the department — perhaps including the officer/officers who wrote up the incident. And then ponder this quote from the judge who oversaw the arraignment hearing:

There may be more to the story than is obvious from the affidavit.

So the judge smells something fishy? So do I.

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If You Want Renewable Energy, You Have No Business Voting for Phil Scott

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Last week, Gov. Phil Scott reached another landmark. Not in a good way, and not that anyone noticed. He vetoed two bills, S.230 and H.710. According to the Vermont State Archives, they were his 63rd and 64th vetoes*, which means he has issued more than three times as many vetoes as any other governor in the history of the state. (Howard Dean is in second place with a measly 21, and he was in office longer than Scott.) That fact should not be overlooked when this guy professes a devotion to working across the aisle and getting things done and (cough) not being a politician.

*As of this writing, VSARA lists 62 Scott veto messages but has not officially posted S.230 and H.710. Just in case anyone follows the link and tries to fact check.

This post concerns the latter veto, which borders on the inexplicable — even for a veto-crazy chief executive. The House passed H.710 on a lopsided 108-30 vote, and it was so uncontroversial in the Senate that no one asked for a roll call. It passed without a recorded vote.

You may recall H.710 from the outrageous objections made by Republican Sen. Steven Heffernan, Addison County’s extremist-in-moderate’s-clothing. Mind you, Heffernan wasn’t arguing against the bill; he merely wanted to postpone its effective date by two years so its potential impact could be studied further. His completely imaginary concern was that Vermont farmland was being gobbled up by giant solar arrays, and H.710 might accelerate that trend. Despite his objection, he didn’t offer a “No” vote, nor did he request a roll call.

His concern, as I reported earlier, exists solely in his own mind. The actual amount of farmland given over to solar is vanishingly small.

But wait. That thought, or something even more insidious, also exists in the mind of Phil Scott. Because he whipped out his veto pen and consigned H.710 to the dustbin of Stuff He Doesn’t Like.

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The Decline of a Once Great Radio Station Continues Apace

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Here’s a phrase that’s probably never been said before: “Soon we’ll be longing for the golden days of Guy Page.”

And here’s another: “Mary Beerworth is the sane person in this group.”

Allow me to explain. Guy Page of the conservative “news” site Vermont Daily Chronicle has announced the end of his association with WDEV Radio, where he had been holding down the 11:00 a.m. weekday slot with his call-in program “Hot Off the Press.” He is, in fact, taking his talents (such as they are) to WVMT Radio in Colchester, where he will host the 12:00 noon slot Monday through Friday.

That, in itself, wouldn’t induce me to write. What put this story over the top was the list of luminaries who will collectively occupy the timeslot forsaken by Mr. Page. All of them have made previous appearances in this space in notably dubious circumstances.

Oh man, you’d better be sitting down for this.

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The Rich Scent of Astroturf Descends Upon Our Verdant Landscape

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This, my friends, is what you get when you ask Canva’s AI illustration tool to render “Vermont landscape.” And it’s a great example of the stuff you see when you visit websites or social media feeds for conservative candidates or causes.There’s a lot of AI usage; there are also things like tech bros defending rural Vermont and sudden-onset farmers with possibly inoperative staycation programs. In short, there’s a hell of a lot of astroturf in the conservative ideosphere.

These groups and individuals allegedly believe that rural Vermont is a precious resource, central to our very identity, and the people who live there are the true, authentic Vermonters, not those miserable lefty masses huddled in our “urban” communities. And yet these people present themselves with an inauthentic feel that makes you wonder what the hell is going on.

With AI maybe it’s a rights issue, not wanting to pay for copyrighted photography. Or maybe it’s just too haaaaaaaaard to do a DuckDuckGo image search. Or possibly, spitballin’ here, these color-saturated simulacra reveal something about the fakeness of the message itself. Because the Golden Age of the “real Vermont” — you know, the time before the unkempt flatlander rabble of hippies and Bernie Sanders fans descended upon the Green Mountain State — never actually existed.

So, when Sen. Russ Ingalls’ The Vermont Party posts a(n AI image of a) lapel pin saying “Make Vermont Vermont Again,” what year or time period does he have in mind?

I’m guessing it’s before the construction of the interstate freeway system, the development ranked by longtime journalist Chris Graff as the most consequential in recent Vermont history*. Before the freeways came, Vermont was a sleepy backwater that was difficult to navigate, so hardly anybody bothered to try. The freeways made our state much more accessible, enabling the arrival of those damn hippies and progressive types who eventually staged a hostile takeover of Vermont’s social order. (Never forget, Romain Tenney died for your sins.)

*Census data confirms Graff’s hypothesis. Our population grew extremely slowly from 1900 to 1960. The freeways triggered three decades of double-digit growth, sending our population from 360,000 to 563,000.

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We’re About to Get a Good Read on How Crazy the Vermont Republican Party Is

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Sad to say, but we’ve arrived at the point where Scary Eagle Man is the only sensible choice.

That’s because Gerald Malloy is running for the Republican Congressional nomination against hyper-manly-man Mark Coester, seen here in an AI-generated video purportedly wagging his finger in U.S. Rep. Becca Balint’s face. I’d dare him to try that in real life. He’d find out just how scrappy that little dyke can be.

And if the Republican primary electorate chooses Coester over Malloy, then we’ll know for sure that Gov. Phil Scott’s version of Republicanism is well and truly dead. Because if there was any doubt about whether Coester is a certified far-right whack job [Narrator: “There wasn’t“], he removed it in one brief conversation with Seven Days’ Kevin McCallum.

In said conversation, he addressed McCallum as a “libtard fuck,” and later added this gem: “These commie fucks in Vermont pass whatever garbage fuckin’ laws they want to. They can do what and they can kiss my ass…”

As a loyal member of the Vermont Commie Fucks Club, let me say I am honored to be a target of Mr. Coester’s spittle-flecked outburst. (Disclosure: I’m just guessing about the spittle, but I think I’m on safe ground.)

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