The new cover story in Seven Days is an absolute classic in what that newspaper does best: Deep dives on Vermont issues, entertainingly written and festooned with telling anecdotes.

The subject is Raj Bhakta, wealthy founder of theif-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it WhistlePig Whiskey brand and archconservative Catholic. The story, compellingly told by Brian Nearing, covers Bhakta’s string of broken promises regarding the former campus of Green Mountain College in Poultney. (Funny how these Jesus Dudes have no problem going back on their word.) Six years ago he was seen as a, pardon the expression, savior for the campus and the area’s economy; now he’s cutting ties with the project in a way that promises to thoroughly screw the town and its taxpayers.

You should read the story for yourself. I’ll just mention a few of the low points of the Bhakta oeuvre, as documented by Nearing:

• He first came to public notice as a contestant on Donald Trump’s reality show The Apprentice.
• During a 2006 run for Congress in Pennsylvania, he “he rode an elephant into the Rio Grande accompanied by a six-man mariachi band” to draw attention to border security issues. (He lost by a two-to-one margin.)
• After buying the GMC campus in 2020 with grand promises of redevelopment, he immediately started “rubb[ing] people the wrong way” in Poultney by dressing “like an aristocrat,” …”park[ing] his collection of luxury cars on the glossy floor of the former college gym,” and joining a public Zoom meeting “brandishing a cigar in front of a painting that appeared to depict him as Napoleon,” among other things.
• Bhakta has “sparred frequently with state and local officials, even as the town sought to grease the skids for his project.”
• During his ownership, the campus has fallen into disrepair and would, at minimum, require substantial investments just to restore any shred of usefulness.
• The status of GMC’s extensive and valuable library seems to be a mystery.

And worst of all for Poultney, his current plan is to donate the entire shebang to some kind of nonprofit enterprise whose goal is shoring up Western civilization and instigating the “spiritual revival of our Christian faith,” which hey, if it was true to the Gospel I’d be in favor, but Bhakta’s Revised Version sounds like white nationalism. If he finds a sucker taker for the campus, the town would lose a major source of property tax revenue — and still be on the hook for providing water and sewer services, which would be a huge burden.

As I read Nearing’s piece, I got strong and unpleasant Tom Monaghan vibes. I’ve told this story before in connection with Paul Belogour, the native of Belarus who moved to southeast Vermont a few years ago and started snapping up properties and businesses — including The Brattleboro Reformer, The Bennington Banner, and The Manchester Journal.

So far Belogour’s stewardship appears to be largely benign, although I have heard rumblings that newspaper staff tread very lightly around his interests. But that could change anytime; rich dudes with more money than sense are prone to serial enthusiasms and unexpected abandonments that leave others holding the bag.

See also: Bezos, Jeff. And Bhakta, Raj.

Bhakta is a closer match to Monaghan than is Belogour, who might be a quirky rich guy but isn’t (as far as I know) a religious nutcase. The Monaghan comparison is bad news for the people of Poultney or anyone else who has put their trust in any of Bhakta’s promises.

The Monaghan file, in brief. He and his brother opened a pizza joint in the college town of Ypsilanti, and he built it into the Domino’s Pizza empire. A real American success story. And then stuff happened:

When his business matured, he went on a spending spree. He collected rare automobiles, he built a dramatically-designed Domino’s headquarters on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, he built a farm slash petting zoo on the headquarters’ grounds, amassed a multi-million-dollar collection of Frank Lloyd Wright designs, drawings, correspondence, doors, windows and more, he bought a Gulfstream jet and a helicopter, and he spent a half billion dollars building Ave Maria, a planned community in Florida operating along very strict Catholic principles, and the associated Ave Maria University. And he bought an Ann Arbor radio station and renamed it WPZA, because pizza, get it?

Oh, and he also bought the Detroit Tigers.

At a fortuitous moment in franchise history, as it turned out. He bought the Tigers in 1983, and the following year the Tigers won only the fourth World Series title in their oft-undistinguished history. It was fun while it lasted, but Monaghan proved to be a penny-pincher with a short attention span. He allowed key players to leave when they got too expensive, and he started complaining incessantly about the team’s classic but aging home park, Tiger Stadium. In 1992 he sold the team — ironically, to fellow cheap-pizza baron Mike Ilitch, founder of Little Caesars.

But enough about the baseball team of my youth and continued fandom. Monaghan is an extremely devout Catholic and a major contributor to Opus Dei, a secretive organization that’s been called “the most controversial group in the Catholic Church today.” Monaghan is rumored to be big on self-flagellation, among other things. (If you’re jonesing for a pizza whose main ingredient might just be cardboard but you don’t want to support a zealot, you’re in luck: Monaghan sold the business in 1998, in part because his religiosity was the source of bad publicity, who’d a thunk it.)

(He sold it to Bain Capital, the hedge fund where Mitt Romney then hung his hat.)

The city of Ave Maria has seen controversy almost since its founding, including this lovely little number from the Miami New Times. Monaghan’s Ave Maria University made the news most recently as the site of a major measles outbreak; one suspects very low vaccination rates on campus.

In short, Monaghan knew One Neat Trick, but you’d have been advised to keep your eyes wide open if you were involved in any enterprise under his control. And now you know why I get Tom Monaghan vibes from Raj Bhakta. My best to the good people of Poultney; they’re gonna need it. I’d hate to have my interests tied in any way to either of these two whackjobs.