You’ve got to give Lenore Broughton credit for persistence. Or maybe slam her for testing that old saying about the definition of insanity. Because she is, in #vtpoli-land, the living embodiment of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Broughton is Vermont’s leading ultraconservative donor. She’s spent $32,620 this year on Vermont political organizations and politicians, and the vast majority are losing causes. (She’s also dropped more than $50,000 so far on the federal level, none of which has gone to Vermont Congressional hopefuls Gerald Malloy or Mark Coester.)

She’s been backing the wrong horses for so long that one might wonder if a candidate might, upon receiving a missive from her, scrawl “Return to Sender” on the envelope and drop it in the nearest mailbox. Problem is, most of ’em can’t afford to. Unlike the candidates backed by the Barons of Burlington, most of the people Broughton supports don’t have any cash to spare.

For those unfamiliar, Broughton is the famously reclusive Burlington resident with a strong aversion to being photographed. (A Seven Days piece from 2012 about a successful attempt to take her picture no longer includes the image, perhaps because the photographer later expressed regret over the whole thing. VTDigger snapped a photo of her at a public meeting, but she was holding a piece of paper over her face.)

Broughton lives in a humble house in Burlington’s Old North End which does not reflect her apparent wealth; she’s the granddaughter of Sewell Avery, head of the Montgomery Ward retail chain most famously remembered for defying the federal government during World War II and being forcibly removed from his office by National Guardsmen on the orders of Attorney General Francis Biddle. “To hell with the government!” Avery shouted at Biddle, precipitating his involuntary exit.

Broughton spends heavily, and ineffectually, on causes and candidates who would have earned Grandpa’s seal of approval. A sampling from recent federal filings: House Speaker Mike Johnson, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, and Senate candidate Kari Lake of Arizona.

She’s spent far more in the past than she has so far this year. In 2012, she dumped more than a million dollars into Vermonters First, a super PAC that supported Republicans in a Democratic wave election. For years she underwrote True North Reports, a right-wing “news” site and radio show that was such a money pit that she finally pulled the plug, a move for which Guy Page will forever be grateful. And when the reproductive rights amendment was on the ballot in 2022, she donated $100,000 to Vermonters for Good Government, a front organization created by Right to Life Vermont because they knew a straightforward anti-abortion campaign would get nowhere. Also in 2022, she teamed up with former VTGOP chair Deb Billado to create something called the Vermont Institute for Human Flourishing, which may or may not still be active; the latest listing on its “Events” page happened in 2023.

This year’s 80 G’s and counting is no big deal for Broughton. Which is good, because she is once again fated to get very little R on her I. She’s given $8,000 to Right to Life Vermont, and $8,500 to the chronically under-resourced and disorganized, not to mention permanently estranged from its only statewide winner, Vermont Republican State Committee.

Her favored candidates for Statehouse comprise a Who’s Who of hopefuls far too conservative for their electorates. A few examples I’ve previously written about, none of whom have a chance of winning:

• Rob North, $1,000
• Renee McGuinness, $1,120
• Andrea Murray, $900
• Joe Gervais, $1,000

In addition to the Broughton Bucks, North has also received $250 from former state representative Warren Van Wyck, remembered as one of the most retrograde members of the House. Getting money from both Broughton and Van Wyck is God’s way of telling you to give up. McGuinness’ donor list has more than its share of red flags: not only Broughton, but also far-right pastor Ed Wheeler ($500) and extremely unsuccessful 2022 House candidate Jon Christiano ($500).

Murray has a bigger pile, but most of it is her own money. Gervais has raised a creditable $22,155, including a couple of entertaining entries: The previously noted $1,500 from Anne McLaurin, a Scottish emigré who has turned her home into something of a shrine to her homeland’s history, and $500 from Mark Breen of Manchester Center who, thankfully for the sensibilities of Vermont Public listeners, is a home builder, not the Fairbanks Museum’s ace meteorologist.

Otherwise, Broughton’s list includes a bunch of people I haven’t gotten around to covering and quite a few I’ve never heard of — but most are running in deep blue districts, often against entrenched incumbents:

• Richard Bailey and Malcolm Teale ($500 each from Broughton), Republicans running in the two-seat Lamoille-2 district that’s been safely Democratic for quite a while.
• Lisa Flanders ($850), Republican running in another strongly Democratic two-seat district against incumbents Jim Masland and Rebecca Holcombe.
• Christine Stone ($1,000), serial ranter on Vermont Daily Chronicle, challenging four-term incumbent Democrat Peter Conlon in Addison-2. Stone has raised a mere $650 from people not named Lenore Broughton.
• Doug Wood ($300), running in the two-seat Chittenden-20 district located mainly in Colchester whose two Democratic incumbents are both retiring. The August primary drew 639 Democratic votes to only 252 Republican, so Wood’s got his work cut out.
• Thomas Charlton ($500), running against Dem incumbent Heather Chase in the Windsor-Windham district. Since both GOP county committees are dominated by Trumpers, I’m guessing he’s a little out there.
• Casey Cota ($500), running as an independent, probably because the “Republican” label would be a death sentence in a left-leaning two-seat district represented by Dems Michelle Bos-Lun and Leslie Goldman.
• Jonathan Griffin ($700), challenging Washington-Chittenden incumbent Dems Tom Stevens and Theresa Wood in a district that proved unfriendly to Elizabeth Brown, a heavily-bankrolled astroturf Democrat who’s now a paid consultant to John Rodgers’ Republican candidacy for lieutenant governor.
• Todd Nielsen ($1,000), taking on incumbent Dem Stephanie Jerome in Rutland-9.
• Wayne Townsend ($1,000), running in the two-seat Orange-Washington-Addison district represented by Dems Jay Hooper and Larry Satcowitz. Townsend ran in 2022, and got his ass handed to him by the Democrats.
• Lawrence “Spike” Whitmire ($1,000), running as an independent in Bennington County, where the Democratic candidates, Rep. Seth Bongartz and Robert Plunkett, look to be heavy favorites for the two available seats.
• Bruce Roy ($500), Republican candidate for Senate in the reliably blue Chittenden Southeast district where incumbent Dems Ginny Lyons, Kesha Ram Hinsdale, and Thomas Chittenden will walk to re-election.

Whew. That’s a whole lot of losers. There are a few places where Broughton might score a win:

• Janet Payne ($500), running in the Windsor-Windham-Bennington district currently repped by independent Kelly Pajala.
• Kevin Winter ($1,000), running in the Rutland-Windsor district where incumbent Dem Logan Nicoll is stepping aside. The August primary vote totals were close, for whatever that’s worth; Nicoll had not faced a Republican opponent in his last three runs for re-election.
• David Bosch ($1,000), running in the two-seat Rutland-2 district currently repped by Republicans Tom Burditt and the retiring Art Peterson. The latter gent has donated a total of $1,058 to Bosch’s campaign.
• Christopher King Howland ($500), running in the Rutland-4 district where incumbent Republican Paul Clifford is stepping aside.

Overall, it looks to be yet another election cycle that will see Broughton being (metaphorically) carried away kicking and screaming against her fate.

In the past, I have written that Broughton is rich enough to become a real force in Vermont politics if only she was half as smart with her money as, say, Sewell Avery. But she’s not. As far as I’m concerned, she can keep on doing what she’s been doing. If nothing else, it’ll help me identify targets for future installments of my “stealth conservatives” series. Anyone who gets money from Broughton is a prime suspect.