Last week, VTDigger reported that Jim Dandeneau will resign next month as executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party, the top paid staff position. Well, now I can report that David Glidden is also resigning next month as chair of the VDP, its top unpaid position.

Glidden told me his resignation will take effect on February 22, when the party’s state committee will meet to elect his successor. “With Jim exiting, it made sense for the party to have a transition and give the new team a long runway [to 2026],” Glidden said.

The departures were probably inevitable following the Democrats’ historic losses in the legislative elections, although Glidden downplayed any link. “There were bigger issues outside of the party structure that impacted the election,” Glidden said. “The core party functions were decently successful. It was just a really tough environment.”

You can’t really blame Glidden or Dandeneau for the Democratic Legislature’s failure to communicate its successes or find a way to message the property tax situation, Gov. Phil Scott’s effective anti-tax campaigning, or the VDP’s failure to field slash support a competitive gubernatorial candidate, which meant there was no one on a platform prominent enough to counter the governor’s attacks. But there were signs of trouble in the VDP’s finances, and party leaders are responsible for that.

When Dandeneau became executive director, he planned to maintain a full staff throughout the two-year cycle — a departure from the past practice of layoffs after each election and upstaffing in the early stages of an election year. Well, that plan was a bust. The party wound up cutting staff for financial reasons midway through the cycle, and it appears that the election-year hiring wave never happened.

That’s to judge by the VDP’s “Staff” webpage as preserved on the Internet Archive. On April 14, May 15, August 1, and September 30 (four of the days when the Archive screenshotted the “Staff” page last year), the same three paid staffers were listed: Dandeneau, Finance Director Shelden Goodwin, and House Director Liam O’Sullivan. Those three are still listed today. That’s substantially fewer paid staff than the VDP employed in past election years. And while it’s true that the Legislature dug itself a hole, it probably didn’t get as much support from party staff as it can usually expect.

What’s more, the party’s Federal Elections Commission filings show that the VDP actually raised and spent less money in 2023-24 than it did in 2021-22. For the two-year cycle just concluded, the party reported total contributions of $692,556 and total operating expenditures of $606,001. In the previous cycle, total contributions were $729,031 and expenditures were a massive $939,819.

The full financial picture includes massive transfers from national organizations to the VDP and, often, corresponding transfers out again. Some of the national money stays here, and I can’t tell you how much. But the figures in the previous paragraph indicate that the VDP’s own fundraising fell short, leaving it significantly under-resourced during the cycle just concluded.

Traditionally, the VDP chair is an older person with time to devote to a volunteer job, deep roots in the party, and wide connections to the donor base. Glidden was under 30 when he became chair, and is employed full time at Outright Vermont. If he didn’t have enough time to get in the trenches, manage the organization, and lead the fundraising efforts, that’s kind of understandable. But he was an unusual choice for party chair, and there are signs his tenure was not a success.

He’d be far from alone in that regard. The party’s recent history is full of chairs — and executive directors, for that matter — who didn’t last very long and who couldn’t wrangle the challenging task of, as Glidden and many others have put it, “herding cats.” Glidden would not name any potential candidates to succeed him, but did say that “We’ll have a really good pool of folks.”

That may be true, but will it make a difference? Will the party committee make wise choices and give its new leaders the resources and environment conducive to success?Based on track record, the answer to at least one of those questions is “No.” As Dandeneau told VTDigger, “This is a job that kind of chews people up and spits people out.”

They’ve had some talented folks in leadership positions, and some who were less so. It’s been a revolving door either way. While they’re voting for a new chair and searching for a new executive director, perhaps they should ask themselves why a party that’s so successful at the polls — November notwithstanding, they still hold substantial majorities in the Legislature, four of the six statewide positions, and all three Congressional seats — can’t manage some semblance of stability at the top.