Congratulations, I guess? to Paul Dame for his re-election as Vermont Republican Party chair. He overcame a challenge by state Sen. Russ Ingalls in a 50-47 vote at the party’s convention on Saturday.
The margin does not speak of a rousing endorsement for a two-term incumbent. Quite the opposite, in fact. Dame has been in office since 2021, and almost half of the VTGOP’s ruling class wanted him gone? That’s not a positive indicator for Dame’s third term or for the party itself.
Completely absent from the convention, and from the Dame v. Ingalls campaign as a whole, was Gov. Phil Scott. It was a return to his pre-2024 abstention from the Republican political scene, which doesn’t bode well for the party or Dame as we enter a 2026 campaign season likely to be dominated by anti-Trump backlash.
Did the party make the right call? No idea. Ingalls was correct in pointing out that Dame has failed to improve the VTGOP’s dire financial situation, but would the senator have done any better? We’ll never know.
As evidence that he’s taking the party in the right direction, Dame pointed to historic gains in the 2024 election. But did he drive the bus or was he just a passenger? I’d lean toward the latter, for four reasons:
- Dame presided over a calamitous 2022 campaign season and didn’t really do anything different in ’24..
- The VTGOP rode a wave of anti-tax/affordability sentiment that had nothing to do with Dame’s leadership.
- There was a major influx of cash into Republican pockets last year but the bulk of it went to individual candidates, not the state party.
- The party has not been able to capitalize on 2024. Its financial struggles continue.
Whether you believed Ingalls’ version (the party is “broke”) or Dame’s (the coffers are in the low five figures), the truth is, the VTGOP is still far behind the Vermont Democratic Party in fundraising and organization.
And that’s despite the Democrats’ own struggles.
As Seven Days’ Kevin McCallum reported, Dame presented himself as a leader who “works well with the media and has close connections to the [Scott] administration.”
Uh-huh. Connections so close that the governor couldn’t be bothered to show up for the proceedings or lend a public hand to the beleaguered party chair. As for media savvy, I’ve seen precious little evidence of that.
I mean, take a look at the photo at the top of this column. That’s not a deliberately unflattering screengrab by Yours Truly; it’s a photo Dame himself chose to use in his own campaign material. Which also featured this distinctly amateurish bit of graphic design:
Not exactly the work of a media-savvy party leader.
Oh well, he won the thing. Now all he has to do is manage a party that continues to be dominated by its conservative wing and has — at best — an arm’s length relationship with its most popular elected official. If the Republicans hold onto or build on their 2024 gains next year, it’ll be because of tax and affordability concerns, not Paul Dame’s expertise in fundraising, organizing, or massaging the press.
The Vermont Political Observer. 
Here is a story about the state GOP of New Mexico which will be eerily familiar. The parallels to the VT GOP as we know it today, as opposed to, say, the days before the Civil Union Act and Take Back Vermont!, are striking.
The chair of the New Mexico party has been, for the last six years, a man named Steve Pearce. Under Pearce’s leadership, old Republican values — limited government, personal responsibility, fiscal discipline — have given way to something entirely different: bitterness, infighting and incompetence.
A state party chair has two jobs: raise money and win elections. Under Pearce, New Mexico Republicans did neither. Over his six years, Pearce alienated moderates, purged reformers and lost credibility with donors. The party has been unable to put up credible candidates during Pearce’s tenure with the result that the party must deal with a super majority in both state chambers. Like VT, the Democratic chambers are “complemented” by a conservative Republican governor.
Pearce’s own congressional district — once a conservative stronghold — flipped over the years. Oil and gas producers, long Republican core constituency in the state, abandoned ship. Under Pearce, energy companies actually began donating more to Democratic candidates.
Here,the similarity between two moribund state GOP’s ends. Steve Pearce has been nominated by Trump as director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), whose portfolio encompasses 245 million acres of public land and nearly 700 million acres of mineral rights. The BLM regulates grazing, energy production and recreation, uses (and users) that often conflict. A BLM Director must demonstrate competence, credibility and balance. Pearce has demonstrated none of these.But Trump does draw unto himself only the best, the brightest, the sharpest and most competent. Q.E.D.