The Republicans’ candidate for lieutenant governor, John Rodgers, is seen as a potential winner for the victory-starved VTGOP: a centrist politician who served in the Legislature as a Democrat and might pull moderate voters away from incumbent Progressive/Democrat David Zuckerman.

Well, maybe we should pump the brakes on that one. Because to judge by the above graphic, Rodgers has taken a Wile E. Coyote-style dive into the deep end of conservative Republicanism.

Two things of note. First, he’s endorsing Andrea Murray, a far-right candidate for state Senate in deep-blue Windsor County. He promotes Murray as “a moderate woman,” which is a goddamn lie. Murray and her husband August were described by the Valley News’ Jim Kenyon as the “ringleaders” of the move to get rid of John MacGovern as chair of the Windsor County Republicans. MacGovern is a very conservative fellow and a very active Republican, but he is not a fan of Donald Trump. That was too much for the Murrays and their ilk; they undertook a long, noisy, divisive, and ultimately successful effort to oust MacGovern. They were so het-up over MacG’s apostasy that they actually filed a lawsuit against him and the Vermont Republican Party. A suit that was basically laughed out of court, but whatever happened to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment?

There is more, much more, to say about Ms. Murray, but that will have to wait for an upcoming post. For now, let’s move on to point two about Mr. Rodgers.

Which is, look at the company he’s keeping.

Rodgers is endorsing Murray in a joint project with his new best buds Wendy Wilton and John Freakin’ Klar, which means he has made common cause with two highly notable right-wingers. That’s not a “moderate” thing to do by any definition.

Wilton is a former Rutland city treasurer who made a failed bid for state Treasurer back in 2012, challenging unelected incumbent Democrat Beth Pearce. She’d been deputy treasurer under Jeb Spaulding and ascended to the top job when Spaulding took a top post in the Peter Shumlin administration. Pearce had never run for office and was considered vulnerable. Wilton ran a tough campaign featuring unsubstantiated accusations of misspending by Pearce, which earned Wilton a critical editorial in the Burlington Free Press. Wilton had the extremely generous backing of Lenore Broughton’s ill-fated Super PAC, Vermonters First, which spent very heavily on TV ads touting Wilton’s candidacy.

It didn’t work. Pearce turned out to be a born campaigner, Broughton’s big spend was a bust, Vermonters First hit the dustbin of history, and Wilton never sought statewide office again.

Wilton now lives in Milton, so let the bad poets rejoice. She appears to have joined forces with the notorious Allison Duquette, featured in this space for outlandishly fringey views. Duquette couldn’t come close to winning a seat in the House, but she and her friends have managed to wangle a majority on the school board thanks to an all-out campaign against wokeness. From what I hear, her tenure has been quite the rocky road, but that’s a subject for another time. My point, for now, is that Wilton seems to have made some unfortunate political alliances

Then there’s “Farmer” John Klar, polemicist and two-time losing candidate. Klar ran against Gov. Phil Scott in the 2020 Republican primary, which went just as well as you’d think. He then challenged Democratic Sen. Mark MacDonald in 2022. MacDonald suffered “a mild stroke” less than a month before the election and essentially stopped campaigning, but still took 55.5% of the vote to Klar’s 44.1%.

In that campaign, Klar presented himself as a common sense fiscal conservative. Unfortunately for him, he’d left a long and easily discoverable trail of opinion pieces reflecting some truly off-the-wall views.

And now, here he is making joint endorsements with Wendy Wilton and putative centrist John Rodgers. Who’s apparently willing to debase himself by touting Andrea Murray as “a moderate.” I don’t think Rodgers ever had a shot at winning the Lite-Governorship, but he’s making his task even harder by choosing to ally himself with prominent members of the VTGOP’s right wing.