Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman has kinda-sorta-almost conceded his race for re-election. But he did leave a side door open, just a bit, and he should cut it out.

Zuckerman got 44.5% of the vote, while Republican John Rodgers got 46.1%. When no candidate gets a majority, the Legislature technically chooses the winner — although traditionally the top vote-getter is awarded the office.

Zuckerman’s almost-concession came after Peace & Justice Party candidate Ian Diamondstone issued a self-righteous press release calling for Zuckerman to be installed. Seriously, you should read the thing. (It’s attached at the end of this post in all its sniffy, stuffy, Old Left glory. The late Peter Diamondstone would be proud.)

While Zuckerman did concede, or got about 99% of the way there at least, he gave some weight to Diamondston’e argument. The LG’s explanation was, frankly, an exercise in tortured logic, long on the former and short on the latter. Let’s see if I got this straight. According to VTDigger, Zuckerman called Rodgers to acknowledge he’d won… but he thought the Diamondstone statement raised some good points… but he wouldn’t contest the election in the Legislature… but he thought the statement “probably will keep that discussion alive.” Note the passive tense. He won’t keep the discussion alive, but he hopes it will continue without his help.

It’s understandable that a politician facing a shock defeat might try to wriggle off the hook, but the Diamondstone thing is a dead end that can only drag Zuckerman further down. Really now, how much influence do you think the Peace & Justice Party has in Montpelier?

Diamondstone argues that he and Zuckerman are both left-of-center and it’s reasonable to assume that if Diamondstone’s supporters were given a second bite, they’d opt for Zuckerman. We could have proven this if we had a ranked choice voting system, but we don’t. Diamondstone’s voters weren’t given the chance to put a second choice on the record, so we’d just be guessing about their intentions.

Personally, I don’t like this idea any more than I liked Scott Milne’s dicking around after the 2014 gubernatorial election. He toyed for weeks with the idea of contesting his razor-thin loss to incumbent Peter Shumlin before finally conceding. And Milne’s margin of defeat was substantially narrower than Zuckerman’s, so you could say he had a better case for carrying the fight to the Statehouse.

Here’s another thing. The 2022 Democratic primary was a four-way race featuring Zuckerman, trying to regain the LG seat after his unsuccessful bid for governor in 2020, and three mainstream slash moderate Democrats: Kitty Toll, Patricia Preston, and Charlie Kimbell. The outcome was predictable: Zuckerman won with 43.7% and Toll finished about four percentage points behind. But if you add up the votes for Toll, Preston and Kimbell, you get a very clear majority — almost 56% of the vote. If the Diamondstone argument has merit, then Toll should have been declared the winner. But it doesn’t work that way, and I don’t remember Toll even mentioning the idea.

In retrospect, that 2022 primary was a big, bright red flag about Zuckerman’s political standing. Before his run for governor, he’d been a formidable statewide figure. It seems clear that his comeback would have ended right there if the Democrats had united behind Toll. Which is one of many fascinating slash puzzling things about David Zuckerman’s public career, But that’s a subject for another post.

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And now, for those with time to kill, here’s the November 6 press release from the Peace & Justice Party.

 11/6/2024 

For Immediate Release 

The Green Mountain Peace & Justice Party Calls For David Zuckerman To Be Seated As Lieutenant Governor and For A Vermont Popular Front Against The Right

On November 5, 2024, a majority of Vermonters voted in favor of either a progressive or socialist vision for Lieutenant Governor. The Progressive/Democratic candidate David Zuckerman received 47.0% of the vote, and our own Green Mountain Peace & Justice candidate, Ian Diamondstone received 3.9% of the vote. Together, our parties earned a clear majority with a combined 50.9%.

Our state Constitution provides that should a candidate for Lieutenant Governor not receive majority support in a General Election, our state legislature shall elect the occupant of this office. This leads to the possibility our legislature could elect a candidate at odds with the vision of a majority of Vermonters.

The Green Mountain Peace & Justice Party (formerly Liberty Union Party) is a socialist political party. This means our party believes in democracy in every aspect of society – both in the workplace and in our elections. Even though our candidate lost this election, the will of a majority of Vermonters should be respected – and they opposed Mr. Rodgers’ vision for our state. Our legislature should respect that as well.

The Green Mountain Peace and Justice Party believes that workers themselves should own and manage their businesses. Our party believes that basic services – healthcare, housing, education, childcare, eldercare – should be provided as a right to all. We will not compromise with the billionaires and their interests. We therefore have profound political differences with capitalist political parties. We do not endorse their candidates, neither Mr. Zuckerman nor Mr. Rodgers. Ian Daimondstone received the votes of 13,657 Vermonters. Our Party owes a duty to those voters to represent their values.

However, we can also unite on issues when necessary. Due to the election of a radical Republican Party under the authoritarian Donald Trump, we call for the creation of a Popular Front committed to promoting peace, an equitable distribution of wealth, and to resist fascism and the anti-working class agenda of the Republican Party.

As part of this unified front, our Party calls for our legislature to elect Mr. Zuckerman as Lieutenant Governor. While we do not endorse Mr. Zuckerman, our voters’ views align enough with Mr. Zuckerman’s – and against Mr. Rodgers’ – that we feel compelled to encourage the legislature to vote for the candidate that best represents the views of a majority of Vermonters.

The Green Mountain Peace & Justice Party welcomes the creation of a Popular Front to resist the rise of fascism in the United States, and we hereby commit ourselves to coordinating such efforts with allied political parties, labor unions, and environmentalists in the days, weeks, months, and years to come.

In Solidarity For Democracy and In Resistance To Fascism,

Ian Diamondstone and The Green Mountain Peace & Justice Party

Blogger’s Note: Diamondstone’s percentage figures are different from the Secretary of State’s posted results because Diamondstone omits the 20,376 voters who left the LG line blank — a robust 5.5% of the electorate. If you include the blank votes, as the Secretary does, then the Zuckerman and Diamondstone votes add up to a plurality of 48.2% — short of a majority. The omission of the blank votes serves two purposes: (1) A majority makes a better argument for seating Zuckerman over Rodgers, and (2) the fact that Diamondstone finished well behind “Blank” would be an embarrassing thing to publish in a Diamondstone press release.