On Town Meeting Day in Burlington, the Progressive Party has an opportunity to do what (according to Seven Days) it has never done before: Hold the mayor’s office and a majority on City Council at the same time. City Democrats are doing their best to ensure that doesn’t happen. And a lot of “their best” came straight from the city’s biggest name in real estate, the Pomerleau family.

We just found this out because the Burlington Democratic Committee has just filed its first campaign finance report for this year’s Town Meeting campaign season. The filing was 17 days late by my count. City party chair Andy Vota, in an email exchange, blamed the delay on difficulties with the Secretary of State’s new filing system which took multiple consultations to work out. Understandable. But as it worked out, the filing came immediately after Seven Days published its big pre-election article on the campaign, so the story makes no mention of the BDC’s fundraising or its highfalutin’ sources.

By state law, candidates and committees involved in Town Meeting Day elections must file financial reports 30 days and 10 days before election day. The BDC will have to turn around quickly to meet the second deadline. Missing the February 2 deadline is not nearly as egregious as the BDC’s 2020 violation, which resulted in a $2,500 fine for failing to file any disclosures until months after Town Meeting Day. (It’s quite unusual for campaign finance law violations to draw any penalty at all; normally, they can get off scot-free if they belatedly correct errors and omissions.)

So… how much does the party have and where did it come from?

The BDC reported raising $15,227, of which almost two-thirds — a cool $9,000 — came from Ernie and Patricia Pomerleau of the powerful and well-connected Pomerleau real estate and property management enterprise. The next most generous donor was attorney Jake Perkinson, a former chair of the state Democratic Party and a frequent backer of centrist Dems, who gave $2,500. Another $1,000 came from the campaign committee of Council President Ben Traverse, who’s not up for re-election this year, and former councilor (now Superior Court Judge) Tim Doherty kicked in $752. No one else gave more than $250. (Small donors, giving less than $100, accounted for only $550 of the city committee’s total haul.)

Where did the money go? Almost one-third is labeled “Loan Repayment” to Adam Roof, former councilor and city committee chair. The only other four-figure expenditure is $2,611 to Pawprint for printing and mailing postcards.

Cross-checking: East Ward Democrat Allie Schachter has reported receiving a $2,601 “in-kind” donation from the Burlington Democratic Committee. And the BDC had previously reported a mass media expenditure of $2,500 to Pawprint for postcards. The numbers are a bit off, but let’s call it even.

The Pomerleau money arrived in BDC coffers in January, and the postcards were bought at the end of that month. We can’t prove that the Pomerloot directly paid for the pro-Schachter postcards. But if so, it would be a violation of the legal limit for maximum contributions from a single source to a Town Meeting Day candidate.

It’s noteworthy that the BDC paid for a mailing on behalf of a candidate who has raised almost as much as the BDC itself. As of February 2, Schachter had reported raising $13,486 in cash. Add in that BDC-funded postcard mailing, and you have over $16,000 in total support. Top donors to her campaign: Mike DeSanto of Phoenix Books ($1,200), Steven Polli of POLLI Construction ($1,000), the Pomerleaus (a combined $750), Perkinson ($500), Dave Farrington of Farrington Construction ($500), and attorney Andrew Waxler ($500). You’d recognize some of those names from my Barons of Burlington reports.

The BDC’s mailing on Schachter’s behalf helped her keep plenty of cash for the home stretch. Her campaign had spent only $5,205 as of February 2. She has far more cash on hand than Progressive opponent Kathy Olwell, who has raised a total of $2,331. (Olwell’s biggest contributor is herself; she’s given more than $1,000 to her own campaign.)

The other Democrat in a contested race, the South Ward’s Ranjit “Buddy” Singh, has raised substantially more than Schachter — or the BDC, for that matter. On February 2 he reported total fundraising of $16,525 plus another $290 in in-kind donations, and total spending of $6,127. (More than $5,000 of that total went for printing and mailing.) That left him with more than $10,000 in cash on hand, even if he didn’t raise another dime.

Major Singh benefactors include people named Pomerleau ($1,250), Mark and Anne Singh Mandel of Madison, Wisconsin ($750), and the following $500 donors: Dave Farrington, Jake Perkinson, former councilor Karen Paul, hotel operator Jay Canning, engineering design firm head George Martin, Adobe exec Theresa Membrino, and attorney James Burns. Some Barons, and many non-Baron members of what we might call the Leunig’s Frequent Diners Club.

Singh’s Progressive opponent, Jennifer Monroe Zakaras, raised $7,483 as of February 2 and reported spending only $1,108, leaving her with a healthy balance if not as much cash as Singh. Zakaras works remotely for the University of California San Francisco, and listed quite a few donors from California.

I looked back at the last couple of city elections to see if Schachter and Singh’s fundraising totals are outliers. The answer is: they are, but not by a huge amount. Not yet, anyway. In 2024, Traverse raised more than $13,000 for his re-election bid; the other two who exceeded $10,000 were both Progressives: Councilor Carter Neubieser and losing candidate Lee Morrigan. In 2023 only a single candidate hit five figures: Jason Van Driesche, who challenged longtime incumbent Joan Shannon for her Democratic nomination and lost. Schachter and Singh have already raised more than anyone in the past two years, and could go well over $20,000 by March 4 if need be.

The motivation is there for Club Leunig, because those two elections could swing the balance of power in city government. The current Council includes five Democrats, five Progressives, plus Independent Mark Barlow, who’s running for re-election with Democratic backing. Effectively the Dems have a one-seat edge, but two of their seats are at risk. If the Progressives can take even one seat, they would hold a majority in support of Prog Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak. The stakes are high, and members of the city’s comfortable class are opening their wallets in hopes of ensuring that the Dems’ majority remains intact.