Alison Novak, Seven Days’ education reporter and one of the brightest lights in Vermont journalism, has produced another scoop worthy of your attention. She reports that identical “Just Say No” signs have appeared in at least three Chittenden County communities where school budgets were up for vote: Essex, Milton, and South Burlington. The signs bear the imprimatur, in teeny-tiny print, of “CCGOP,” a.k.a. the Chittenden County Republican Committee.

It’s not illegal for an outside political group to try to influence local school votes, but it’s highly unusual. The CCGOP’s reaction to Novak’s inquiry was telling; some ducked and covered, while others offered what the reporter called “confusing — and sometimes conflicting — accounts,” as if they’d gotten caught with hands in the cookie jar. In fact, Milton’s own Republican Rep. Chris Taylor said he was “dismayed” by the signs, and found them “counterproductive” to civil discourse around the budget.

And when you take a closer look at the parties involved, well, let’s just say some familiar faces were on the list.

But first, let’s try to unpack the ink-cloud of responses given by CCGOP officials. The committee’s finance chair said he didn’t authorize the expenditure. Its vice chair, Ron Lawrence, said CCGOP bought the signs (without the finance chair’s knowledge, hmm) on behalf of some “town-oriented committees.” The only two committees he named were VPACT of Milton and SPEAK VT of Essex, two far-right organizations that oppose critical race theory and DEI and Black Lives Matter and the usual stuff of QAnon conspiracy nonsense. Lawrence later walked back his initial account, saying the signs had not been purchased “specifically” for either group, whatever that means.

CCGOP chair Janet Metz offered Novak yet another version, this one straining the bounds of logic and grammar.

“The [Chittenden County Republican Party] was not involved in the planning for or production and distribution of the ‘no’ signs. I was initially asked to place our information on the signs and agreed, but in the end they were paid for through private donations. Obviously, they went to print before that decision was made.”

She refused to identify the sources of those “private donations.” I could offer a guess or two, starting with Vermont’s leading donor to conservative lost causes, Lenore Broughton.

Questions, so many questions. Why would Metz agree to place CCGOP’s name on signs that were not planned, paid for, or produced by CCGOP? Who asked her to do so? Who was going to fund the signs before the “private donors” stepped forward? What “decision” is she talking about in her last sentence?

Metz closed with the hope that “we can put this issue behind us,” which I bet she does.

More about Metz. In addition to chairing the CCGOP, she is also chair of something called the Vermont Republican Women’s Coalition, not to be confused with the Vermont Federation of Republican Women or the state party’s VT Women’s Group. The only trace I could find of the VRWC online is a Facebook post announcing a meeting of its northwest chapter in February 2019. Not exactly a bustling concern.

Metz also appears to be a pro-lifer who publicly opposed S.37, which has since become law as Act 15. Among other things, Act 15 prohibits “false and misleading advertising” by so-called problem pregnancy centers. You know, the ones that entice pregnant women by offering pregnancy-related services and then browbeat them with pro-life propaganda? Yeah, them. She’s a fan.

Oh, and she’s also a Phil Scott appointee! She serves on the Labor Department’s Employment Security Board.

As for Ron Lawrence, he is best known in these parts as co-organizer of a bus ride to the January 6 insurrection, an escapade I dubbed the CovidCruiser because none of its participants wore a mask of any kind during one of the lowest points of the pandemic on a 20-hour round-trip ride to D.C.

January 2021 was a big month for Mr. Lawrence; that’s also when he posted a petition on Change.org calling on Governor Scott to leave the Republican Party. That’s right, Lawrence wanted to eject the VTGOP’s only proven statewide vote-getter. Smart.

Turning to the groups Lawrence initially claimed to be helping, VPACT is Vermont Parents Against Critical Theory (because “Race” would have ruined the acronym?). One of its claimed principles is “transparency,” which is a laugh because you can’t find the name of a single member on its website. Its “Contact” page is inactive. All of its articles are said to be authored by “admin,” no actual names.

In truth, VPACT is largely the creation of Alison Duquette and Scott O’Brien, conservative agitators who were elected to the Milton School Board in March. (It was a rare triumph for Duquette, who had been defeated in previous campaigns for school board and state representative.) Would it surprise you to learn that neither Duquette nor O’Brien responded to Novak’s request for comment?

SPEAK is basically VPACT South, or perhaps vice versa. It’s all hot and bothered about the evils of DEI, which is indoctrinating our innocent children into believing that traditional gender roles are toxic (well, they are), that racism is an engrained aspect of our society (well, it is) and — horrors! — forcing them to Use Pronouns!!!

As with VPACT, none of the brave souls leading this principled movement are willing to attach their names to the SPEAK website. Nope, they’re just “deeply concerned” citizens. But they are one-up on VPACT in that they actually have contact information. It’s, uh, “speakvermont@gmail.com.” How generic.

So that’s the crowd behind the “Just Say No” signs, and the bumblers who can’t fashion a convincing account of how the signs came to be and who paid for them.

Just a reminder that this is the official Republican organization in Vermont’s biggest county and one of its most ardently liberal. The county whose Statehouse delegation includes 47 Democrats and/or Progressives and a whopping three Republicans. (Two of whom serve in a district split between Chittenden and Franklin Counties.) I was going to say the CCGOP is useless, but it’s worse than that. It’s preventing the Republican Party from being competitive in Chittenden County. It’s contributing significantly to the Dem/Prog supermajorities in Montpelier. And its leaders can’t concoct a believable explanation for its ham-fisted efforts to influence local school votes.