Category Archives: 2023 election

Rutland, Hotbed of Liberalism

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The radical socialists pictured above are members of Rutland Forward, a group whose motto is “We Believe in Making a Rutland for Everyone.”

Wow. That kind of thing will not go over well in Vermont’s fortress of commonsense, blue-collar conserva—

Wait, what? All the Rutland Forward candidates were winners in Tuesday’s election?

Yep. Not only that, but Rutland Forward’s two candidates for school board finished first and second.

And not only that, but city voters overwhelmingly approved not one, not two, but three infrastructure bond issues. How shockingly generous of them.

I’m not saying that Rutland Forward is the Progressive Party South. They don’t espouse any really controversial positions. They talk about meat-and-potatoes stuff like infrastructure, downtown development and even crime. But they do want to leave behind culture-war debates like the Rutland High mascot issue and opposition to a plan to locate Syrian refugee families in the city. In context, “Forward” is a subtle negation of the forces that would drag Rutland backward — or prevent it from becoming, you know, “a Rutland for everyone.”

That’s not just me saying so. It’s reflected in the angry post-election muttering of defeated incumbent Thomas DePoy.

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Burlington Backs the Blue… and the Blue

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I don’t know if Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger smokes cigars. But if he does, he may have lit up a celebratory Arturo Fuente Opus X last night after the city election results came in. It may have been his best political day since maybe December 7, 2020, the day that Councilor Ali Dieng launched his bid for mayor. Dieng’s entry opened the way for a split in the anti-Miro vote, giving him an extremely narrow victory over Progressive Max Tracy.

Thus endeth the history lesson. Point is, everything came up Miro last night. His Democratic Party netted one seat to gain a plurality on City Council, and the voters resoundingly defeated the Progressive-backed ballot question on establishing an independent police oversight commission. The new Council will feature six Democrats, four Progressives and two Independents — one of whom, Mark Barlow, won the endorsement of city Dems. If you count Barlow as a Dem vote, Weinberger will have a Council majority behind him for the first time in his 11 years as mayor.

For the Progressives, last night was a disaster. The police board question lost by almost a two-to-one margin, while the party scored a single win against three losses in contested races for Council.

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The Dregs Find Their Own Level

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Time for a victory lap.

In the past several weeks, I wrote a series of posts about far-right extremist types seeking local elective office. Well, I couldn’t be more pleased to report that all but one of them lost on Town Meeting Day. The exception: Jennifer Cole Patterson, who beat The VPO Curse and somehow won a seat on the Franklin West Supervisory Union school board.

Funny thing. She won handily, but her fellow Fairfax fruitbat Daniel Mincica got absolutely trashed. Hard to discern a trend there.

In general, there weren’t nearly as many ultraconservatives on Town Meeting Day ballots as there were last year. Some of them, I’m sure, managed to avoid exposure. But my sense is that fewer of them are bothering. The vast majority lost in 2022. Maybe they’re getting the message?

Now, let’s run down the rest of the Dishonor Roll.

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Stealth Conservatives: Only the Finest in Artisanal Small-Batch Dog Whistles

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You may; have noticed I haven’t posted as many pieces about far-right candidates for office as I did last winter and (especially) last fall. That’s because I haven’t heard about that many of ’em. And I suspect one of the reasons is that those extremists are getting better at hiding their true colors.

Concrete evidence of this comes to us from Fairfax, where two candidates for school board in the Franklin West Supervisory Union are verrrry carefully walking the line between signaling their presence to conservative voters and unmasking themselves to the rest of the electorate. But if you stay quiet for a moment and listen, you can hear the high-pitched whines floating faintly on the breeze.

People like this, it must be said (again), are cowards. They fear that their true beliefs could cost them an election, so they’re hiding — in fact, they’re running a scam on the voters.

The Fairfax duo are Jennifer Cole Patterson and Daniel Mincica. Their Facebook pages are nothing more than collections of family photos. Their campaign announcements on the Fairfax community Facebook page emphasize the customary conservative talking points: Transparency, emphasis on core academics, and fiscal responsibility.

Who can argue with any of that? I can’t. But the devil is in the details.

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Return of the Guy Who’s Definitely Not Racist, Not Even a Little Tiny Bit, How Dare You Suggest Otherwise

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This is kinda-sorta another installment of “Dregs of the Ballot” except, well, this one’s an incumbent. But what an incumbent he is.

Chris Viens is running for another term on the Waterbury Selectboard, where he currently serves as vice chair — having resigned as chair in November 2020 after suggesting, at a public event, that maybe we should segregate the police so we could, you know, have Black cops police Black people and white cops watch over The Rest Of Us.

I mean, that’d take care of the whole Black Lives Matter problem, wouldn’t it?

(Pay no attention to Memphis.)

All right, you might be thinking, he made one gaffe and took responsibility. That’s settled.

Well, except for two things. First, it’s not the only questionable thing he’s said. And two, his resignation announcement was an absolute disasterpiece of self-pity and blame shifting that, to my ears, was far worse than his original segregate-the-police remark. And although it’s more than two years old, it warrants a trip down Memory Lane.

Now the good people of Waterbury can make up their own minds on Town Meeting Day, but I’ll just note that there are three candidates on the ballot for two selectboard seats and Viens is the only one I know of who’s said some truly ignorant things in public spaces.

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Hey Wallingford, Your Trustee Is an Absentee

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Back in March 2021, Bruce Moreton was elected to a three-year term on the Mill River Unified Union School Board (MRUUSD, pronounced exactly as spelled) as a representative of the town of Wallingford. Six months later, by all appearances, he moved to Rutland.

He has, again by all appearances, lived there ever since.

Ya like that, Wallingford?

This story comes to us by way of the Rutland Herald, which reported on February 16 that the Wallingford Board of Civil Authority had removed Moreton from the town’s voter checklist.

He’s ineligible to vote in Wallingford. Will he have to give up his seat on the school board?

The MRUUSD includes Clarendon, Shrewsbury, Tinmouth, and Wallingford. Each town gets to elect its own Board members. Clarendon and Wallingford have four seats apiece, Shrewsbury and Tinmouth each have one. Rutland is conspicuous by its absence.

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Dregs of the Ballot: This Guy Again

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In case you haven’t had the pleasure, allow me to introduce you to Tim Boltin, candidate for Barre City Council in Ward 1. Boltin owns Delicate Decadence, a downtown bakery, and this isn’t his first run for office.

Back in 2021, Boltin was one of two hardcore Trumpers who ran for City Council. The other was the infamous Brian Judd, who lost his race and refused to accept the result. His fruitless legal challenges took more than a year to resolve, and the only result was a waste of the city’s time and resources. Boltin also lost, by a 57% to 43% margin. He did not take the city to court.

Judd isn’t running this year but Boltin is, challenging Emel Cambel, the person who beat him in 2021. This time, Boltin is trying to conceal his extremism behind a bunch of bland, content-free statements and noises that, ahem, never mention city policy or city government. He also scrubbed his Facebook page of the offensive content that branded him a far-righter in 2021. Unfortunately for him, I harvested some of those posts back then, and you can find them here.

I’ll just briefly recap if you choose not to click on the link. Boltin posted a meme showing an incredibly stereotypical Mexican guy (big sombrero, mustache, etc.) with the caption “Mexican Word of the Day: BODYWASH. Biden was on TV but no BODYWASH him.” Hardy har har. Then there was a photo of President Biden with the caption “My Head is So Far Up China’s Ass, I Shit Fortune Cookes.” Another image made fun of Biden’s alleged senility. A fourth was the inevitable attack on Nancy Pelosi.

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Return of Dregs of the Ballot: The Flamethrowing Farmer

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Attention voters in the South Hero school district! If you’re looking for a school board candidate who believes there are two and ONLY two legitimate genders, the 2020 election was fatally tainted by fraud, Vermont is a totalitarian state and its media “actively censor” conservative viewpoints, and higher education has been taken over by “Marxist (i.e., Centralized Control) professors,” then cast your vote for Robert Fireovid!

On the other hand, if you think he’s a dangerous extremist, please vote for someone else. Anyone else.

Fireovid considers himself a victim of our socialist culture, and believes the schools are leading our children down the primrose path of gender fluidity. He has written that he would seek to bar teachers from teaching about “alternatives to heterosexual practices” or asking students to declare their preferred pronouns. He would examine school libraries for any materials that “contain sexual content or discuss gender fluidity.” He would also prevent the district from punishing school staff who insist on using “pronouns consistent with a student’s actual physical sex,’ which I assume means whatever they’ve got in their pants.

You want that on your school board?

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