Hey, time for an update on the races for state party chairs! Feel the excitement!

The Vermont Democratic and Republican parties are electing chairs this month. Both races are contested, but that’s where the similarities end. The Democrats are conducting a polite, restrained kind of election, while the Republicans seem to be borrowing heavily from Lord of the Flies.

We’ll do the Republicans first because (a) it’s a lot more entertaining and (b) their election comes first. The VTGOP’s convention is this Saturday the 8th, while the Democrats convene the following Saturday.

Since last I wrote about these contests, incumbent VTGOP Chair Paul Dame has been on one. He’s been campaigning at a furious pace and, ignoring Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment, chastising those who dare support the other candidate, state Sen. Russ Ingalls, who hasn’t been shy about firing back.

On Tuesday afternoon, Seven Days’ Kevin McCallum posted a story about the Republican contest headlined with the hackneyed descriptor “Heats Up,” a cliché for which McCallum bears no responsibility. The editors write the headlines.

Anyway, the race was indeed heating up — and it’s gotten much hotter since then. McCallum reported on a series of candidates’ forums in which Ingalls complained of the VTGOP’s poor financial state. Ingalls said the party was functionally “broke,” and claimed that donors have promised to open their wallets if he becomes party chair.

Dame denied the “broke” charge — but kind of underlined Ingalls’ point by saying the VTGOP had $27,000 in cash as of early October. I mean… that’s not “broke,” but it’s peanuts compared to the money needed to run a statewide political operation.

That’s about as spicy as things got in McCallum’s telling, but a November 6 story by the Vermont Daily Chronicle’s Guy Page turned things up to 11.

Page reported on an anonymous postcard sent to Vermont Republicans that cited a decline in party finances under Dame’s management — and asserted that he was drawing a salary of $60,000 a year for what has always been a volunteer position. (The VDC story included screenshots of the postcard, which was printed in black and white and was seemingly designed by someone with no graphic skills whatsoever.)

In response, Dame sent an email to party members complaining that “my opponent’s campaign has been entirely focused on tearing me down… instead of instilling the hope we need.” He touted “Team Progress.” a slate of candidates for top party offices who presumably support his retention as chair. But the real stinger was in a postscript referring to Ingalls supporters as “cowards who… tear us apart and trash our party to the press.”

Ingalls fired back: “If you made it to the bottom of the email you saw Chairman Dame call all of you cowards for supporting me. Let me be very clear, you are not cowards.” He denied any responsibility for the postcard, but pointed out that Dame had not “refuted or disputed how much he has been paid” or the postcard’s assertions about party finances being “on the verge of bankruptcy.”

Wow.

Whoever prevails in this race will head a deeply divided party in poor financial state heading into a 2026 election that’s likely — if this week’s returns are any indication — to be a referendum on Donald Trump in a deep blue state. Not great. In this case, perhaps condolences should go to the winner, not the loser.

Meanwhile, the Vermont Democratic Party is about to elect a new chair. There are two known candidates in the race, each of them young men seeking a post that’s traditionally gone to an older, established Democrat with strong ties to party donors. But hey, at least they’re not trying to bite each other’s throats.

The two known hopefuls are: Lachlan Francis, campaign consultant and outgoing chair of the Windham County Democrats, and Justin Willeau, a member of the Orange County party committee and former chair of the town Democratic committee in Vershire. Their campaign pitches emphasize their experience and plans, and not a word is written about the other guy in the race.

To judge by their respective resumés, you’d have to say that Francis has the inside track. Willeau is probably not well known outside of his home county, while Francis has been active in campaigns and party activities across the state. His campaign website features photographs of himself alongside St. Pat Leahy, Sen. Peter Welch, U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, and former governor Peter Shumlin. He boasts endorsements from powerful Democrats including three former party chairs (Dottie Deans, Jake Perkinson, Bruce Olsson), one member of the Democratic National Committee (Ryan McLaren), and three former DNC reps (Tim Jerman, Mary Sullivan, Billi Gosh), plus Martha Allen, former president of the Vermont-NEA.

Willeau, meanwhile, offers a plain-text essay on his Substack page that begins with his operation of a pop-up coffee bar as a community-building exercise at the end of the Covid pandemic. In a similar vein, he proposes starting a project called “Democrats Build… where the party organizes at least one service project in every county each year” as a way to build trust within the party and with the electorate.

The third section in Willeau’s essay is about fundraising, which emphasizes the “need to communicate a vision and a plan.” He offers no specifics about the plan, although he refers to his previous Substack writings about “turning ideas into operating principles, and operating principles into actions.” That’s nice, but how many members of the VDP state committee have read Willeau’s blog?

Surprises do happen in politics, and it’s possible that Willeau’s outsider status might be appealing to a party that has cycled repeatedly through chairs and paid staff for more than a decade. There’s also a potential downside to Francis’ resumé; he and fellow Democratic operative Nick Charyk operated a campaign consultancy in 2024, and their two biggest clients were losers: state Senate candidate Stewart Ledbetter and longtime senator Chris Bray, Perhaps Francis will argue that his experience has taught him what not to do.

Still, I’d be stunned if Francis doesn’t win. The new chair won’t face as dire a set of circumstances as the Republican, but VDP leadership is an unforgiving job that “chews people up and spits people out,” as one former party official put it. There have been more failures than successes in recent years, and even the successful ones don’t usually last very long. And the 2026 campaign season is already in progress, notwithstanding the popular myth that we don’t start electioneering until the Legislature adjourns.

The new VDP chair’s biggest challenge, besides rebuilding party finances in record time, will be trying to coax a credible, widely recognized candidate into the race for governor. The early outlook on that front seems unpromising, and I don’t think the new chair, whoever he is, can really do much to change that.