My recent post about the Burlington mayoral election drew a fair bit of intelligent response. Even on Twitter, which used to happen all the time but never in the post-Elon hellscape of X. Much of the discussion came from Democrats with fact-based arguments against the idea that Burlington is a Progressive town. Some good information, which makes me think that Burlington is less a Progressive town and more a swing town that can go either way depending on circumstances and candidate quality. And inspires me to write a follow-up taking a closer look at some telling statistics.

Let’s start with defeated Democratic hopeful Joan Shannon, seen above commiserating with campaign manager and soon-to-be-ex-councilor Hannah King. The failure of Shannon’s campaign was partially masked in the overall vote totals. She did draw 500-plus more votes than Miro Weinberger in 2021, but she badly underperformed Democratic council candidates in wards where there was a Democrat on the ballot. Shockingly so, in fact.

One more thing to emphasize up top: It wasn’t the student vote. Democrats can stop complaining about that. The numbers say quite the opposite; Progressive winner Emma Mulvaney-Stanak performed strongly in non-student areas of the city.

Now for the wards. There were Dems on the ballot in six of the eight wards. Progressive incumbent Gene Bergman had no Dem opponent in Ward 2, while Dem Malik Mines failed to make the ballot in Ward 3 and ran as a write-in, presumably depressing Democratic votes for council. The following analysis was floated on Twitter by Lachlan Francis, chair of the Windham County Democrats; he has an obvious interest in his party’s fortunes, but his reasoning holds weight.

The topline, per Francis: “22% of voters who voted Dem for Council did not vote for Joan for mayor.” Ouch.

If you take the citywide total, Shannon ran 7% behind the collective Democratic Council candidates. If you squint hard enough, that could be statistical noise. But if you remove Wards 2 and 3, Shannon ran 14% behind her Council running mates.

That’s what you call decisive.

Democratic Council candidates amassed a total of 7,354 votes, which is still shy of Mulvaney-Stanak’s 7,612. But if Shannon had just performed on par with them, the race would have been pushed into IRV territory. And if the Dems had candidates in every ward and Shannon matched their total, she may well have won the whole enchilada.

Shannon aside, it was a good night for the Democrats. They lost a Council seat but held onto a working majority. A fair inference is that the public safety message resonated but Shannon did not.

So why did Shannon do so badly? This is informed speculation, so take it for what it’s worth.

Her core message energized her base but failed to garner broader support. She did have a divisive image. And her campaign was much weaker than her opponent’s. Mulvaney-Stanak is a community organizer by trade, and she used her skills to build a strong volunteer operation that more than countered Shannon’s financial edge.

Speaking of, Shannon raised a robust $166,592 as of the March 1 reporting deadline. She had a total of 41 donors who each gave $1,000 or more, so her financial edge was among Burlington’s most affluent residents (and suburbanites). But she failed to capitalize on her fortune: she’d spent only $104,354 as of March 1. I’m sure she spent a bunch more in the closing days, but last-minute expenditures tend to be more ill-considered and less impactful than a more consistent outlay.

Another organizational point: Shannon repeatedly violated campaign finance law by failing to promptly report mass media expenditures. Starting in early February she spent heavily on advertising (online and newspaper), printing (signs and mailers) and postage. But she didn’t report those items until near the end of the month, making a flurry of filings between the 25th and 29th. State law requires that any mass media expenditure over $500 must be reported within 24 hours in the closing weeks of a campaign. If anyone’s feeling vengeful they can file a complaint with the attorney general’s office; to me, it seems like adding insult to injury.

Mulvaney-Stanak ran a careful race on the core issue of public safety, acknowledging the fears of many while outlining a broad response to the issue and refusing to take a stand on that infamous Council vote in 2020 to cut back on the size of the police force. But her profile in the Statehouse is substantially to the left of that, and Shannon could have done more to capitalize on Mulvaney-Stanak’s legislative record.

For instance, Mulvaney-Stanak co-sponsored H.438, which calls for a study of decarceration with a goal of shutting down conventional prisons in favor of “a community-based system of care and rehabilitation.” She signed on to H.88, which would eliminate cash bail for those accused of misdemeanors and take steps toward eliminating cash bail for all defendants. She co-sponsored H.326, which would ban the transfer of Vermont inmates to out-of-state facilities. She lent her name to H.690, which would establish community restitution as a sentencing alternative. There’s probably more; Mulvaney-Stanak is a sponsor on 174 pieces of legislation, and I haven’t closely examined all of them.

Let me be clear, as Bernie would say. I’m not against any of these bills. But Shannon could have used that legislative record to counter Mulvaney-Stanak’s tack to the center and tie her to the Progs’ record on policing in Burlington. It might have limited Democratic ticket-splitting and helped Shannon close the gap. Or even win.

One more speculative point on Shannon: She’s been in city politics for a long time but had never run for office outside her own neighborhood. Her experience was a strength in some ways, but a decided negative in others. She’d never had to appeal to the rest of the city before. Of course, she didn’t even appeal to her own voters as a mayoral candidate; she finished barely ahead of Mulvaney-Stanak in Ward 5.

Which brings me to a Progressive argument that Mulvaney-Stanak’s win is a sign of growing Prog strength. This was put forward by Progressive environmental strategist Rick Morris in an essay posted by VTDigger. He compared the 2024 and 2021 mayoral votes and found that the Progressive nominee ran strongly in traditionally Democratic areas of the city: wards 4-7, where Mulvaney-Stanak did far better than Weinberger’s 2021 opponents.

Democrats were quick to credit — or blame, to be more accurate — high student turnout for Mulvaney-Stanak’s win. In the student-dominated Ward 8, 2024 turnout rose by 4.5% over 2021, a larger increase than in any other ward. But the total number of votes in Ward 8 was far too small to swing the citywide result. And as Morris points out, Mulvaney-Stanak actually did worse in Ward 8 than did Progressive Max Tracy in 2021.

In any case, the town-gown stuff just makes me tired. Yes, it can be a pain to host a major university with all the disruptions it brings. But UVM’s presence brings a multitude of advantages. A college town is more diverse, more economically vibrant, has a stronger and better-educated workforce, and has a much more dynamic cultural scene than a community without a major educational institution. Look at it this way: Would you rather be Rutland? If UVM were magically transported from one to the other, I daresay the fortunes of the two cities would largely be reversed. So stop complaining already.

Back to Morris. He sees Mulvaney-Stanak’s popularity in Democratic strongholds as evidence that the party is broadening its appeal. It’s true that Mulvaney-Stanak did so. But her Council running mates absolutely did not. In Wards 5, 6, and 7, Democratic victors outpolled their Progressive counterparts by margins of better than two-to-one. In Ward 4, the Dem won in a landslide three-to-one margin.

My version of Morris’ theory: The Progressives can be competitive in traditionally Democratic areas of Burlington and they can certainly win elections. They do seem to have a baked-in advantage when it comes to citywide contests, if the last three mayoral contests are any indication. Weinberger won in 2018 and 2021 with less than 50% support, as two competitors split the rest of the electorate. And if you go farther back in history, the Progs have done better in mayoral contests in the post-Bernie era except when a Prog mayor does a lousy job. Bob Kiss’ administration opened the door to the Weinberger era.

But the Progs can’t coast to victory any more than the Democrats can. They need a strong candidate with unified support and a robust citywide organization. They’ll need to learn the lessons of Mulvaney-Stanak’s success and ask uncomfortable questions about why their Council candidates couldn’t ride her coattails.

And above all that, it’ll help if the Democrats choose a flawed nominee who fails to cash in her assets, literal and figurative.