Category Archives: 2024 election

The Progressives Have a Retention Problem

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Latest from the developing 2024 campaign in Burlington: Not one, but two Progressive city councilors will not seek re-election. The departures of Zoraya Hightower and Joe Magee will leave only two incumbent Progressives: Gene Bergman, elected in 2022*, and Melo Grant, elected last March.

Yep, the most tenured Progressive councilor will have been in office for only two years.

Not that they’ll lose a whole lot of seniority. Hightower is currently the senior Prog, and she’s only been in office since 2020. And that’s the thing: the Vermont Progressive Party has a severe retention issue — not only in Burlington, but in the Statehouse as well. The result is a party spinning its wheels and having to work very hard just to not lose any ground.

*Note: Bergman may have been elected fairly recently, but he’s been around Burlington politics for a long time and, in fact, served on what was then the Board of Aldermen in the late 80s to early 90s.

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A Meh Candidate for a Meh Campaign

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Well, okay then. VTDigger has confirmed what was originally reported eleven days ago by Guy Page of the Vermont Daily Chronicle: Miro Weinberger, the outgoing mayor of Burlington, is thinking about a run for an unspecified (but almost certainly gubernatorial) statewide office.

Digger might have had the decency to credit Page for being first, but the standards for crediting rival news outlets around here are, shall we say, highly elastic. The first and last rule seems to be, “Avoid giving credit at all times if at all possible.”

Anyway, so what about a Miro run for governor? You won’t be surprised, given my view of his tenure as mayor, that I’m not doing any cartwheels, metaphorical or otherwise.

But sure, what the hell, why not? Assuming Gov. Phil Scott seeks a fifth term, and why wouldn’t he, then the Democratic nomination will be about as valuable as an expired pet food coupon. Might as well be Miro as anybody else. Any Democrat with serious statewide aspirations is going to sit this one out, just as they did in 2018, 2020, and 2022. But in Miro’s political condition, taking that coupon to the checkout could be a gamble worth taking. He’s got nothing else going on.

I will offer a word of warning, though.

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Draft Phil Scott, We Barely Knew Ye

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We have apparently seen the last of the invisible-except-on-Twitter “Draft Phil Scott” effort, which put forth a plausibly earnest belief in the potential national appeal of our indisputably popular Republican governor. I never took it seriously because, well, I see no path forward for Scott or any candidate who’s not a creature of the far right.

The arguments in favor of Scott: He’s the most popular governor in the country (true); he’s a real man of the people (that’s his image, certainly); he is particularly popular in the Connecticut River valley (okay); that popularity would give him a shot at success in the historically pivotal New Hampshire primary (nah); and a strong showing in the Granite State could make him the candidate of choice for those seeking an alternative to arch-criminal Donald Trump.

Well, if I hadn’t jumped off the bandwagon before then, that last imaginative leap would definitely lose me. Because the Republican Party of DPS’ imagination hasn’t existed since a lifetime ago. And I’m talking the lifetime of senior-discount-takin’ Yours Truly, not any of you young whippersnappers.

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The Loneliest Overwhelmingly Popular Governor in Town

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At last week’s press conference, Governor Nice Guy spent much of the time wearing his Frowny Phil mask. Lots of unpleasant subjects: The still unsettled emergency housing program, all the veto overrides, plus Auditor Doug Hoffer’s scathing report on his pet administrative project, the Agency of Digital Services, which gave him the opportunity to unfurl an obviously scripted and vigorous defense of ADS. (Outgoing ADS Secretary Shawn Nailor was in on the presser for no reason at all, just in case some reporter asked about the agency. When the question did arise, Scott and Nailor just couldn’t stop trumpeting the former’s vision and the latter’s execution.)

On top of all that, he had the opportunity to wallow in his profound political isolation. Not a lot of fun for a politician with an approval rating of, what was it, 163 percent or something?

Gov. Scott was clueless about how we’ve arrived at the point where an historically popular leader is on the short end of historically lopsided legislative supermajorities, and had no idea what he might be able to do about it. Plus he made it clear that his divorce from the Vermont Republican Party is complete and irrevocable.

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