Author Archives: John S. Walters

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About John S. Walters

Writer, editor, sometime radio personality, author of "Roads Less Traveled: Visionary New England Lives."

Stealth Conservatives: A Leopard Can’t Change Its Spots, But It Can Try to Pass as a Cheetah

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Meet Kathi Tarrant, mom, musician, teacher, and Republican candidate for the Vermont House in the Washington-Chittenden district currently represented by two Democrats, Tom Stevens and Theresa Wood.

Ms. Tarrant might not like it that I topped this piece with a picture of her at the August 2021 Patriot Rally on the steps of the Statehouse. The event was captured on video by the good folks at Orca Media, and you can see several speakers talking about the poor attendance. And you can see Tarrant talking about the federal lawsuit she filed against Gov. Phil Scott over his mask mandate. Yep, she’s one of them.

But that’s not how she’s presenting herself in the race for House. Instead, she’s donned the garb of a garden-variety conservative — to the right of Phil Scott, but not quite off the deep end. In a candidates’ forum sponsored by ORCA and another of my former employers, The Bridge, she managed to avoid subjects like the Covid vaccine and climate change denialism (“CO2 is NOT a pollutant”) and weather conspiracy theories and her membership in 802Freedom, the online community of anti-vaxxers and their ilk.

Instead, we got anodyne language about carbon taxes, ballot security, supporting law enforcement, fixing the housing shortage by unleashing the landlords, doubts about cannabis legalization, Second Amendment absolutism, and opposition to Article 22 over its wording, not its intent.

Now, it’s possible that she’s completely changed her political orientation in the past year. But it’s much more likely that she’s trying to pass as a standard conservative when in fact she’s way out on the fringes of political discourse.

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Un-Stealth Conservatives: The Wild Bull of Bennington-1

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This… THIS… is the photo that Bruce Busa chose as his campaign portrait. Sadly, it’s a decent reflection of his politics.

Busa is the Republican candidate for Vermont House in Bennington-1, currently represented by Democrat Nelson Brownell. This isn’t Busa’s first run for office; in 2018 he was an independent candidate for U.S. Senate. Bernie Sanders won with more than two-thirds of the vote. Busa finished ninth out of nine candidates with 914 votes, or a whopping 0.34% of the total.

So here he is again. He’s not a “stealth conservative” because he makes no bones about who he is. But his candidacy is yet another stain on the Republican brand in Vermont.

High-, or lowlights. Busa believes that the combination of Article 22 and the Global Warming Solutions Act could lead to state-mandated abortions. He thinks school shootings are the schools’ fault. He wants creationism taught alongside evolution. And of course he’s dead set against the Covid vaccine.

Oh, almost forgot. He attended the January 6 insurrection, and he thinks it was a false flag operation incited by Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

He also endorses the platform of the Bennington Republican Committee which, I didn’t realize they had one. Of course I was curious.

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Stealth Conservatives: The Guileful Apiarist

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Hey, it’s another Essex Republican! To be specific, Roger Drury, retired member of the Vermont National Guard, proud dad, hunter, maple sugarer, and beekeeper. Now, those are some impressively Vermonty bona fides! Almost as good as fermenting your own kombucha!

Aamong all the stealth conservatives I’ve profiled in this series, Drury comes closest to actually pulling it off: Maintaining a veneer of reasonable conservatism and keeping the extreme stuff safely hidden.

But he can’t quite do it. Spend enough time looking at his record and public statements, you start to see stuff. He’s a climate change denialist, he’s against abortion, he thinks our southern border is wide-open, he’s in favor of parents getting into the weeds of school curriculum, he thinks a lack of “personal responsibility” is the cause of high health care costs.

Oh, and he thinks cannabis legalization may be a cause of our opioid crisis.

Yeah, there’s actually quite a lot.

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Stealth Conservatives: A Formerly Respectable Attorney

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Here’s Tom Kelly, candidate for Vermont House in Barre City, former Washington County state’s attorney, former Lamoille County deputy state’s attorney, since reduced (of his own volition) to addressing a crowd of anti-vaxxers.

How the respectable have fallen.

Kelly served two four-year terms as Washington County’s top prosecutor. His six-year tenure at Lamoille County ended with his firing in November 2021 due to his refusal to take the Covid vaccine or wear a mask at work. His talk before the anti-vax group Health Choice Vermont happened a couple of weeks later, and it’s the usual overheated rhetoric about freedom and tyranny.

Here’s his measured view of the vaccine requirement: “Are we in the midst of another attempt to enslave America? To enslave Vermont?”

He also blasted his boss’ “decision to require me to wear a mask at all worksites (like a proverbial leper) and submit to periodic testing.”

Oh, the tyranny. God help this man if he should ever suffer actual tyranny. He’s way too soft for that.

The usual campaign coverage, with one notable exception, completely fails to chronicle his hardcore anti-vax views.

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Joe Benning Shows Up in Surprising Company

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Note: Sen. Benning has weighed in with a comment. It’s in the Comments, but I’ve also added it to the end of this post.

So there’s this right-wing fringe organization called Vermont Stands Up which you’ve probably never heard of, and neither did I until a couple days ago. It’s a freedom-lovin’, vaccine-hatin’, government-shrinkin’, gang o’ rascals who say the most pressing issues facing Vermont are “the COVID crisis of the past two years, the ensuing mandates, sanctioned discrimination against the unvaccinated, and threats to informed consent and bodily autonomy.” I’m sure we all agree.

VSU also promises “to provide authoritative resources, guidance, and outlets of support for community action.” We’ll get to their idea of “authoritative resources” shortly, and you won’t want to miss it, but first…

The organization’s website has a page called Freedom Champions. It’s a long list of approved candidates. Many of these Champions have appeared in my “stealth conservative” list and others await their time in the spotlight. John Klar is on the list, naturally. Stephen Bellows, 9/11 truther and graphene eradicator. Lynn and Lloyd Dike, two of the rabid clan of Republican candidates in Addison County. Rebecca Pitre, who sees Drag Queen Story Hour as “an atrocity.” Rob North, who says we could end Lake Champlain pollution by unleashing the farmers. Nichole Loati, who believes the housing crisis could be solved by unleashing the landlords. To name just a few.

And there, right in the middle of this list of VSU-approved candidates, is Sen. Joe Benning, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor who’s often referred to in the press as a moderate. Not true; he’s very conservative, but he’s not a nut.

So how is it that he appears on this list of Vermont Stands Up-approved Freedom Champions? It can’t be just because he opposes mandatory motorcycle helmets.

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Couldn’t Happen to a Nicer Bunch of Nimrods

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Remember this little number? The newspaper ad placed by a bunch of Addison County Republican candidates with the long list of extremist talking points? Fentanyl in Halloween candy? Gender-affirming medical care is human mutilation? Carbon dioxide is good for the planet?

Funny thing. Five of the seven “co-signers” tell the Addison Independent that they did not sign it, and do not agree with the ad’s assertions.

They are all deliberately vague about which ones they disagree with because the ad is, at best, only about 10% kookier than they are, and they don’t want to offend the QAnon types in their base.

The person responsible for the ad is the kookiest of them all, state Senate candidate Robert Burton, last seen wowing an audience (especially Sen. Ruth Hardy) with his boldfaced assertion that “Climate change is a hoax.”

The details of this fiasco, per the Addy Indy, are simply delicious. But the story leaves a couple of big questions unanswered.

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This Meeting of the Mutual Degradation Society Will Now Come to Order

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John Klar and Phil Scott, two peas in a pod.

Scott, so respected as a man of principle, has thrown his principles out the window as he desperately seeks to block the Democrats from winning veto-proof majorities.

Klar is on a lower perch with less at stake, but this is a stunning self-abasement for him as well, He claims to operate on nothing but his own curious set of principles. But after years of railing against the Quisling of moderation, even seeking to challenge Scott in the 2020 primary, Klar is happy to get into bed with the governor to win a seat in the state Senate.

This picture does, after all, constitute a mutual endorsement.

(By the way, love the shoutout to Lenore Broughton’s doomed political action committee in the headline.)

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Felker Video Gets the Zapruder Treatment

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Hey, remember the Felker Kerfuffle? When the anti-trans chair of the Burlington Republican Committee accused attendees at this year’s Pride Parade of assaulting poor old Fred Sergeant, Stonewall vet turned cranky anti-trans old man? The alleged incident got a huge amount of attention in the teeny-tiny far-right ecosystem of Vermont journalism. At a September event held by the Pride Center, Felker tried to wring more juice from the lemon by leading a small band of protesters defending Sargeant’s honor.

Felker made his accusations. There was seemingly no evidence, so it seemed like a Rashomon situation that would never be resolved.

Turns out, Felker videotaped the entire Pride Parade “assault.” He never publicly released the video even as he continued to cry foul because it shows no assault by any legal standard. Certainly nothing that threatened Sargeant’s personal safety in any way. If there was anything like a physical attack, Felker failed to capture it on video.

I know this because someone got hold of the video and posted the entire 18 minutes on YouTube. Feel free to watch it yourself. I have, and I took extensive notes. You’ll pardon me if I go on at length. But there are no word counts in blogging, so I can Zapruder this baby if I see fit.

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Stealth Conservatives: Who’s the Stealthiest One of All?

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Ohh, there he is again, Smilin’ Phil just having a grand old time with another stealth conservative. Starting to be a pattern.

Except in this case, not only did the governor pose for a photo, he met with the candidate “to discuss campaign strategies.”

The gentleman on the right, photographically and ideologically, is Rob North, Republican candidate for House in the Addison-3 district currently represented by Democrats Matt Birong and DIane Lanpher.

North is thought to be the VTGOP’s best hope of avoiding a complete shutout in Addison County, and you can tell he listened to the governor because his campaign is swaddled in a thick protective coating of performative moderation. Also, for some reason, North has virtually no online footprint. He’s got a completely anodyne campaign Facebook page, but no personal social media accounts at all.

Unfortunately, there are cracks in the façade. He went and opened his yap at a candidates’ forum and showed himself to be an opponent of climate action, a free-market absolutist, and possessor of some rather… unique… views on water pollution. Also, North sent Birong and Lanpher a couple of rabidly anti-abortion emails last winter, before he became a candidate. Also also, North is an active member of a far-right evangelical denomination that bars women from church leadership, prohibits divorce, and believes the Earth is 6,000 years old.

But first, his campaign website. You know how Republicans like to run on “restoring balance” to the Statehouse? Well, North’s website is “balancedvermont.com”. He’s all about the balance. In an odd way it makes sense; he’s far right enough to cancel out a couple dozen Democrats.

This is where we’re at. Phil Scott would rather have a misogynistic Young Earth climate denier in the House than deal with a Democratic supermajority.

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Un-Stealth Conservatives: Old Man Yells At Cloud

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I was on my way to compiling another “stealth conservative” post (coming soon) when I came across this guy: Robert Burton, retired ER doc, Republican candidate for state Senate in the Addison County district, and a climate change denier so ardent, so forceful, that he made Ruth Hardy’s eyes bug out her head.

Well, I can’t swear that his rhetoric and her reaction are cause/effect or random coincidence, but I can tell you that Burton’s rhetoric could make any reasonable person’s eyes pop.

Burton has no chance of winning in a race against Democratic incumbents Hardy; and Chris Bray, but his commentary is just too delightful to pass up.

The occasion pictured above was an Addison County candidates’ forum held on September 22 featuring all the House and Senate candidates from county districts. Pretty unwieldy event. Not much time for any single candidate to stand out. Still, a few of them them managed the trick. None more so than Dr. Burton here.

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