Monthly Archives: October 2022

Stealth Conservatives: This Guy Might Actually Be Dangerous

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Submitted for your consideration: Jarrod Sammis, Republican candidate for House in the Rutland-3 district and assiduous scrubber of his past social media activity.

There’s good reason for that. Said activity includes a nice helping of far-right ideology and stuff about guns. Lots and lots and lots of guns. Also, hints of militia leanings.

Until reapportionment, Rutland-3 was a two-person district including Castleton, Fair Haven, Hubbardton and West Haven. It was solidly Republican; its representatives are Bob Helm and Bill Canfield, who rarely drew Democratic opposition of any sort. “Rutland-3” is one-seat Castleton now; the other three towns are in other districts. Helm is retiring; Canfield is running in another district.

Since he won the primary in August, Sammis has been a busy bee. He’s appeared at many campaign events with many fellow Republicans including, um:

In future, I’d advise Governor Nice GuyTM to check credentials before letting himself be photographed with a candidate who (being charitable here) he’s never heard of before. It might come back to bite him in the plausibly moderate ass.

Sammis is opposed by Democrat Mary Droege, a credible candidate. But Rutland-3 looks to be Republican territory, which means Mr. Sammis may well be showing up in Montpelier in January. Here’s what he’d bring to the table.

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Just 60 Minutes of Darren Perron Clutching His Wallet

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WCAX-TV rolled out the carpet for a gubernatorial debate last Thursday, and peppered the two major party candidates with questions that were I think prepared by a Republican consultant somewhere. The theme of the night was “How are you going to pay for ________?”

Housing? Brenda Siegel’s plans “cost money, how does that make Vermont a more affordable place to live?”

Emergency housing? Brenda Siegel, “how will you pay for [your emergency housing plans]?”

Universal primary care? Brenda Siegel, how would you pay for it?

Child care assistance? Brenda Siegel, how would you pay for it?

Do you sense a theme here? Well, I’ve got a couple more.

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Did WCAX Get the Holiday Wrong? (Plus, Bonus Racist Comments!!!)

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WCAX-TV posted this lovely graphic on its Facebook page today. It’s a nice effort to celebrate Not Columbus Day. But how much time did they spend on it, and did they get it wrong?

Today is not “Day of Indigenous People.” It’s “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

That might seem like a niggle, but two other points. First, there’s a United Nations “International Day of the World’s Indigenous People,” which could easily be shortened to “Day of Indigenous People.” It tracks closer than “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

Second, is that a Native American pattern? It looks more like a West African kente cloth. Which would fit in with the UN’s day, but not this holiday. Did a higher-up tell some backroom gofer to grab an Indigenous Peoples’ Day graphic and post it on Facebook without giving it another thought? That’d be my guess. If someone from WCAX can prove this is a graphic produced for this day, I’ll happily post a correction.

Meanwhile, let’s have some fun with the inevitable flood of racist comments below WCAX’s Facebook post.

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Stealth Conservatives: Fox News Is Too Liberal

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Whether you want to or not, meet Samuel A. Douglass, Republican candidate for state Senate in the Orleans district. He’s challenging longtime incumbent Democrat Bobby Starr, which would seem to be a hopeless enterprise. But the district’s boundaries changed quite a bit in reapportionment. There are hopes in Republican circles and a wee bit of fear among Democrats that this guy might actually win.

So it behooves us to get to know Mr. Douglass, because he is one of the most stealthy of this year’s crop of stealth conservatives. He portrays himself as half crunchy-granola country boy and half “commonsense” Republican. The reality, however, is much different. “Fox News is only sort of right-leaning” is a thing he said. He thinks 80% of American journalism is “left-leaning,” and has a favorable impression of Newsmax.

Oh, and he thinks the acquittal of triple murderer Kyle Rittenhouse constituted “justice.” So no, he’s not your grandfather’s Republican.

Douglass’ campaign website is heavy on pictures and light on text. The words he does employ are ambiguous at best, with the faintest of dog whistles penetrating the fog. The closest thing to an agenda is a page entitled “My Focus & Goals,” which runs a bit under 800 words and contains no specifics whatsoever. Still, the nutbaggery can’t be completely concealed.

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This Is Your VTGOP: Another Kindly Old Extremist

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The painfully earnest, or possibly constipated, gent above is Jon Christiano, Republican candidate for state House in the Addison-5 district. Unlike some of his fellow Republicans, he can’t be called a stealth conservative because he makes no secret of it.

This is Christiano’s second bid for elective office. In 2020, he finished fourth in a race for two seats. He got less than 14% of the vote, while the two winners, Ruth Hardy and Chris Bray, got 33% and 31% respectively. Addison-5 is currently represented by conservative Republican Harvey Smith, so Christiano may well earn a place in the next Legislature. (The district got a bit more liberal in redistricting; it lost part of New Haven and gained territory in Middlebury. There’s hope for Democrat Jubilee McGill.)

Christiano has a campaign Facebook page from his 2020 run (with a robust 25 followers) that makes his extremism abundantly clear. Christiano refers to abortion as the killing of “innocent, defenseless babies,” so I think we can count him as a “No” on Article 22. He called the Legislature’s approval of noncitizen voting in Montpelier and Winooski part of the “Progressive, Socialist and Communist” plot to “destroy the Constitution and every aspect of American life.” He shared an article that made some downright bizarre accusations about Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. To wit:

That’s some heady stuff, even by Covid denialist standards.

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Stealth Conservatives: With a Little Help From the Press

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Today’s edition of Stealth Conservatives features two Kindly Old Grandpas, or so their newspaper profiles might lead you to think. On the left, in the photographic sense only, is John Lyddy, the previously discussed election truther running for House. On the right, in every possible sense, is Peter Caldwell, Republican candidate in the solid blue Middlebury House district.

Both received the benefit of kid-gloves treatment in their local newspapers. These candidate profile pieces are often cranked out in a hurry, out of a sense of obligation rather than due diligence. But in a day when many Republicans are purposefully concealing their ultraconservative views, our political media need to do better.

In July, the Brattleboro Reformer published an extremely friendly profile of Lyddy, who has repeatedly exposed his extreme views on social media. The uncritical piece depicted Lyddy as a goodhearted retiree who simply wants to serve his community. And it completely ignores his attendance at the January 6 insurrection (and insistence that the Democrats stole the 2020 election), his veiled threats against elected officials and government agencies, and his advocacy for “a brief correction by civil war” to remove Democrats from office.

Yeah, just a brief civil war.

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Does Anybody Else Find It Interesting That Phil Scott is Under 50%?

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So, the poll.

The headlines blare “Scott and Zuckerman have double-digit leads.” True enough. But I find my eye drawn to Gov. Phil Scott’s 48% support in the WCAX-commissioned survey. That seems low for a guy who got 69% of the vote two years ago. Has he really lost that many people?

(The same poll has 63% of respondents approving of his job performance. Why do 15% like his performance but don’t plan to vote for him? Bad breath?)

This is not to avoid the core fact, which is that Scott has a 17-point lead on Democrat Brenda Siegel. He remains the heavy favorite, and the poll contains a fair bit of bad news for Siegel. She has fought and clawed her way up to 31% from basically nothing and nearly doubled her name recognition despite a TV-free campaign. The electoral arc is bending in her direction, but Election Day is coming fast. And many voters will cast their ballots long before November 8. She’ll have to sweep the undecideds plus convince more than a few Scott voters to change sides, and do it in a real hurry.

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The Dem Statewides Are Doing Just Fine, Thanks

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In a post following the September 1 campaign finance deadline, I noted that “three of the big Democratic primary winners emptied their coffers in an effort to get across the finish line.” It put them in a potentially hazardous position for the general campaign.

Well, it would have if their Republican opponents weren’t all unknown, unfunded, and largely unloved.

I speak of Charity Clark (attorney general), David Zuckerman (lieutenant governor), and Sarah Copeland Hanzas (secretary of state). Zuckerman had $16,771 in the bank on the first of September; Clark actually entered September with a $1,200 shortfall, Copeland Hanzas had about $12,000 on hand, but only because she reported loaning her campaign $14,000. So, according to her own report, she had a $12,000 deficit outside of her own pocketbook.

Well, hold on a minute. According to her campaign manager Lizzy Carroll, that $14,000 number was a mistake. The actual self-loan was $3,500, which is not insignificant but it does make her bottom line look a lot better. The deficit falls from $12,000 to about $1,500. (She carried forward a $1,160 surplus from past campaigns, which would lower her real deficit to less than $400.)

So, where are the three of them now?

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When Political Journalism Collapses In On Itself

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The folks at VTDigger, home of The Best Political Journalists In the State, Bar None*, do a lot of good work. But once in a while, they step on a rake.

*As described by Managing Editor Paul Heintz at last week’s gubernatorial debate. Which begs the question, how many political reporters do we have, actually?

The latest Digger digger concerns extremist Republican candidate John Lyddy, who’s running in the Windham-6 district currently represented by retiring Democrat John Gannon. Lyddy is an election truther and self-described January 6 insurrectionist who was outed by the Vermont Democratic Party in a Sunday press release. Digger picked up the release and did the absolute minimum with it.

The real story here is that the Vermont Republican Party welcomes the likes of Lyddy with open arms. In fact, its legislative ticket is loaded with hard-core Trumpers, bigots, and Covid deniers. An organ with the Best Political Reporters Etc. might be expected to go out and get that story — seek out and identify all the extremists on the VTGOP ticket and ask what it indicates about the character and direction of the party and its legislative caucuses. Seems like the “moderates” are being weeded out and replaced with people in the Art Peterson mold.

But Digger didn’t do any of that. Instead, the story was framed as your standard political “he said, he said” story:

Vermont Democratic Party targets GOP over House candidate’s Jan. 6 involvement

See, the real story isn’t that the VTGOP’s door is wide open to the John Lyddys of the world. No, it’s that the Democrats are attacking the VTGOP.

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Roger Garrity Doesn’t Get It

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Note: After several days of holding fast, WCAX quietly removed the story from its website. News Director Roger Garrity told Seven Days, “We are now working with LGBTQ advocates on a message to the community acknowledging the harm that was caused.” About damn time.

The First Amendment is a powerful tool. It can inspire needed reforms, or uncover wrongdoing at the highest level. It can also wreak havoc on unfortunate bystanders.

Enter Roger Garrity, news director at WCAX-TV, an outlet that seems to be trending in the Fox News direction. On September 28, the station ran an irresponsibly one-sided story about a “locker room dispute” at Randolph High School. It extensively quoted a single member of the volleyball team who’s upset about sharing a locker room with a transgender student. She expressed the usual claptrap about “biological males” and at one point said, curiously, “My mom wants me to do this interview.”

See, in real journalism that’s the beginning of the reporting. But WCAX had some hot video and they ran with it, not giving a good goddamn about the consequences. Which are, as VTDigger’s headline put it, a “wildfire of bigotry.”

“It’s been an absolute nightmare. Horrifying. My family is in constant pain from the lies and harassment,” said the mother of the 14-year-old trans student. The story went viral in the conservative media space, triggering the usual firestorm of outrage.

Garrity, having allowed his news team to toss a metaphorical Molotov cocktail into a crowded room, floated the Tucker Carlson excuse: We were reporting the controversy, not the incident itself.

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