Throughout the campaign season I wrote about the Barons of Burlington, a bunch of well-heeled men — well, almost entirely men — and their obviously coordinated effort to buy a bunch of state Senate seats. They wrote fistfuls of four-figure checks to six Republican candidates for Senate plus their choice for lieutenant governor, Democrat-turned-Republican John Rodgers.

So, now that the dust has settled and the campaign finance reports are nearly complete*, it’s time to answer the musical question: Did the Barons buy the election?

*Final reports are due December 19, but the bulk of the money has been accounted for by now.

The obvious straight-line answer is yes. Their seven chosen candidates swept the field, reducing the Democratic/Progressive majority from 23 seats to 17 with the tie-breaking LG vote going to the Republicans.

The less obvious answer is, well, not really. There is abundant evidence that their money didn’t swing the election — that the Republican gains would have happened anyway.

For starters, there was no equivalent outlay in House races. The Barons concentrated their efforts in the Senate, which was seen as a more achievable target. And yet, the Republicans made equivalent gains in the House. This wasn’t about money; it was about anti-tax sentiment in Vermont and the reddening of rural areas nationwide.

But if the Barons didn’t “buy the Senate,” they did affect the process in one highly significant way: It just got a hell of a lot more expensive to run for state senate. It used to be that, Chittenden County aside, you could comfortably run a Senate campaign for $20,000 or less. From here on, if you’re an incumbent in a competitive district or you’re taking on a sitting senator, you’d better be able to raise $50,000 or more. It’s small money by national standards, but it’s a quantum leap in Vermont politics.

This year, two candidates raised and spent more than $70,000. Two more cleared $60K. The 10 most expensive Senate campaigns each cost more than $40,000.

By contrast, in 2022 only two Senate candidates raised more than $25,000. Number one by a mile was Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale*. In a district featuring three Democratic incumbents running for three safe blue seats, she raised $74,969, two and a half times as much as any other candidate for state senate. A distant second was fellow Chittenden Southeasterner Thomas Chittenden at $30,456. Third was Windham’s Wendy Harrison, who raised $24,032 in her first run for Senate.

*Ram Hinsdale was something of a financial unicorn. She raised boatloads of money in 2021 when she was either running for Congress or planning to, and seems to have shifted a bunch into her Senate campaign fund after dropping her Congressional bid. Still, she went on raising and spending when there was no need for it. Maybe we should stop thinking of her as a progressive?

The comparison between 2022 and 2024 is unfair in one big way: There were many more competitive races this year, so it’s to be expected that the campaigns would have spent more money. But this much more?

The Barons forced the Democrats and their allies to try to keep pace. And by and large, the Dems did so. Of the top ten most expensive Senate campaigns this year, five were Republican and five were Democratic.

Here’s another surprise: Of the top ten fundraisers, only four actually won their races. Six of ’em lost. That includes the late (politically speaking) Stewart Ledbetter, who lost his Democratic primary even though he was the number-three fundraiser among all Senate candidates for the entire cycle. (Yes, Ledbetter outraised all but two Senate candidates even though his campaign ended on Primary Day.)

Which brings me to a question I asked during the campaign: How much can you effectively spend on a Senate candidacy? The districts are too small for TV ad buys, and even radio is of questionable value. And you can only spend so much on mailings before unwilling recipients stop paying attention and start cursing your name.

But it’s less about effective deployment and more about deterrent value. Just as a serious presidential candidate had better raise a billion dollars or have an army of plutocrats on speed dial, a serious candidate for Vermont Senate will need to be able to tap into some deep pockets. It’ll keep many a hopeful from entering the field, and it may effectively block the Democrats from making a serious play to regain the seats they lost this year.

Oh, and it will also shift the Dems toward the political center. And make it that much harder for small-p and capital-P progressives to compete.

Here are the top ten Senate candidates in fundraising by my count:

• Rep. Patrick Brennan, $75,087 raised, $80,392 spent. He’s #2 in fundraising, but his final report will likely fill in that $5,000 gap between income and outgo, which would push him to the top spot.
• Rep. Katherine Sims, $75,384/$73,503, for the honor of losing to a Republican who barely cracked the top 10.
• Cue the sad trombones: Stewart Ledbetter, $68,557/$59,545
• Rep. Scott Beck, $62,392/$61,696 (Yes, he edged out Ledbetter in spending, but he did it in a much longer campaign.)
• Sen. Andy Julow, $55,040/$53,855
• Steven Heffernan, $48,483/$49,275
• Sen. Christopher Bray, who has yet to file his mid-November report. As of 11/1, he’d raised $42,6087 and spent $47,837. Bray could surpass his nemesis Heffernan but I doubt it, because the good senator did the bulk of his spending in the primary campaign.
• More sad trombones: Andrea Murray, who reported raising and spending identical totals of $41,618.85. That’s either great planning or a remarkable coincidence or some funny green-eyeshade stuff. Extra sad trombones: More than three-fourths of her total — $33,462 in all — came from her own pocket. What did she get for her investment? She finished a distant fourth to three Democratic incumbents and barely outpolled her two Republican ticket-mates who hardly campaigned at all.
• Beck opponent Amanda Cochrane, $40,800/$41,259
• Samuel Douglass, whose totals of $40,856/$27,460 were impressive by traditional standards but nowhere near Sims, his Democratic opponent

Honorable mention: Larry Hart Sr. got a very late start but finished 11th in Senate fundraising at $35,358/$32,782.