Mill River Dodges a Bullet, and Other Happy Tidings From Town Meeting Day — UPDATED with Rutland Results

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It was a bad night for Town Meeting candidates who foam at the mouth over mask mandates and the imaginary evils of critical race theory, as VTDigger reports this morning. David Xavier Wallace and Chad Bushway got curbstomped in their bids for Winooski selectboard; likewise for the three Milton candidates who put out a batshit manifesto; Katie Parent was soundly rejected by Springfield voters; Arlington voters said a resounding “no” to former state trooper Luke Hall; likewise for St. Albans’ Keith Longmore and Kingdom East’s Mathew Johnson…

… and three anti-CRTers were turned back by voters in the Mill River Unified School District — by disconcertingly narrow margins. If a handful of votes had changed sides, the antis would have had a majority on the Mill River school board.

How narrow? Incumbent Liz Filskov beat Nick Flanders by 20 votes. Josh Squier turned back QAnon Jewelry Lady Ingrid Lepley by the same margin. And board chair Adrienne Raymond beat Kristine Billings by about 30 votes.

Yikes.

Double yikes with nuts on top.

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Siegel Joins Racine in Mulling Circle

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Two-time statewide candidate Brenda Siegel is “seriously considering” another run for governor, joining former lieutenant governor Doug Racine in the Mulling Circle(TM Pending). Siegel is a citizen Statehouse advocate on poverty, substance use and other issues, known for her seemingly endless energy and willingness to ruffle feathers along the way — a trait rarely in evidence in the polite world of #vtpoli.

“We’re not going to out-nice the Nice Guy,” Siegel said. “Phil Scott has to be off balance. When you ask yourself who’s been able to put him off balance, I think the answer is pretty clear.”

Is that a veiled reference to Racine, also a famously nice guy? Uh, I believe so.

Besides, she added, “I know what it takes to beat the governor. I’ve done it twice.” Siegel was referring to last year’s fight to decriminalize possession of small amounts of buprenorphine, which Scott signed reluctantly, and last fall’s renowned protest in which Siegel and some allies slept on the Statehouse steps for 27 nights until they won major changes in the state’s emergency housing program — changes Scott had stoutly resisted.

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“Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Give Up Sniffing Glue”

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You know, I’d hate to be new Vermont Democratic Party Chair Anne Lezak right about now. She took on the job with hopes of ending a long period of internal turmoil at the ought-to-be-prosperous party.

And now, at the beginning of campaign season, she’s dealing with something of a staff exodus. Three party employees have left in recent weeks, leaving only three paid staffers who have a combined tenure of less than one year. Executive Director Claire Cummings came on board in April 2021; Senate Caucus Aide Sally Short was hired in January; and Data Director Madison Thomas joined the staff less than two weeks ago. And speaking of brief tenures, a reminder that Lezak herself just became party chair in December. They’re probably still wearing name tags at the party offices.

The good news, kinda-sorta: This doesn’t seem to be a case of stampeding to the lifeboats or disappearing in shame, as has happened at VDP HQ in the recent past. Rather, all three have left the VDP for better professional opportunities.

Still, their departures are a big setback for the VDP’s campaign machine at a critical time.

The departees: Party finance chair Kate Olney, who’s given notice that she’s taking a job in VTDigger’s fundraising operation; Spencer Dole, who coordinated the Dems’ House campaign for the last two election cycles, is now field director for Lt. Gov. Molly Gray’s Congressional campaign; and party comms chief Asha Carroll, who’s landed a gig with a national nonprofit organization.

“We’re actively looking to fill all three vacancies as quickly as possible to maintain our momentum,” said Cummings.

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Commence Website Scrub In 3…2…1…

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Well, this is embarrassing.

The Sanders Institute, the vanity project vaguely defined policy nonprofit founded by Bernie and Jane Sanders, has a distinguished list of “Fellows,” a title with few if any actual duties.

It’s impressive. Robert Reich, Bill McKibben, Cornel West, Danny Glover, Ben Jealous, Nina Turner…

… and Tulsi Gabbard.

Oops.

Gabbard used to be an interesting political phenomenon with some solid progressive credentials, but she long ago became an unreliable self-guided policy missile. She just had a star turn at, ahem, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where she “defended parents protesting at school boards, attacked Big Tech censorship and referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as an ‘autocratic leader’ for his response to the trucker protests against COVID-19 mandates,” according to the Washington Times.

I don’t see much of Bernie’s agenda in there.

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Dregs of the Ballot: This Is How You Do It

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In my pre-TMD series on far-right candidates seeking local office, I’ve criticized our news media for taking a cookie-cutter approach to the races. They often put in the absolute minimum effort, and thus fail to reveal the actual agenda of these hopefuls.

Well, I have to say the Bennington Banner hit this one out of the park. In a story profiling a school board race in Arlington, reporter Greg Sukiennik wrote all that needs to be written about the candidate pictured above: Luke Hall, who resigned from the Vermont State Police last year for social media posts in support of the January 6 insurrecrtion.

Posts like “Cheers to the great Patriots in Washington DC,” and “it might be war.”

Yeah, not a good look for a keeper of public order. (Although I suspect that if someone did a social media sweep of Vermont’s law enforcement community, they’d find a lot more Luke Halls.)

The agenda for his candidacy seems to boil down to one thing: He doesn’t like mask mandates.

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Tired Republican Talking Point is News, According to VPR

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This week, Vermont’s Public Broadcasting ConglomerateTM has been releasing Part 2 of its (obligatory full name here) VPR – Vermont PBS 2022 Poll. And today’s story about one result is a study in journalistic imbalance.

The article is about the above question: Would you recommend that a young person stay in Vermont or leave?

The total result goes right down the middle: A bit more “leave” than “stay” with a sizable tranche “not sure.” Within that, however, Republicans were far less sanguine on Vermont as land of opportunity. A full 63% of Republicans said “leave.” Among independents, that number was 32%, and for Democrats it was 43%.

That’s perfectly fine fodder for a think piece. But the story that came out of the VPBCTM sausage factory was basically PR for a tired Republican talking point. A talking point that’s been repeated so often, for so long, that it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Dregs of the Ballot: Mill River Mafia

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We take you now to the Mill River Unified School District, where a small number of very loud white people are trying to take over the school board. And they may do just that on Town Meeting Day. Voters should be aware of who’s on the ballot, because some of these people are stealth candidates hiding behind bland statements about quality education and transparency and parental involvement. I previously mentioned one of them: Ingrid Lepley, a QAnon believer whose online jewelry business used to offer a bunch of Q-inspired pieces before she partially scrubbed it upon launching her campaign. (And like many of these people, she refused interview requests from Seven Days and the Rutland Herald.)

For the last few years, these folks have been making life miserable for board members, school staff and anyone who tries to watch a meeting with their yammering about critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, and the alleged misbehavior of members who don’t buy their agenda.

This all started in 2020, when the board approved the flying of the Black Lives Matter flag outside Mill River Union High School. This raised the hackles of those who believe that racism doesn’t exist, and that it’s used as a pretext for social engineering by, uh, you know, educators and the elites, and what the heck, maybe George Soros as well. The BLM flag was the original trigger, but the disaffected have added a laundry list of allegations to their agenda.

The electoral landscape isn’t easy to wrap your head around because the district includes four towns (Clarendon, Shrewsbury, Tinmouth and Wallingford) that independently elect board members. But the bottom line is this: The Congregation of the Aggrieved currently hold four of the eleven seats, and could potentially net another three on Town Meeting Day. That’d give them a solid majority.

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At Least She’ll Make It Interesting

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So, former U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan has entered the race for U.S. Senate as a Republican. She launched her campaign with the requisite folksy video that touts her record as prosecutor, trumpets her native Vermonter status, and includes the obligatory barn scene.

And positions herself as a moderate who can “work across the aisle” to Get Things Done For Vermonters. As opposed to U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, who she characterizes as “too left.”

Yes, the Peter Welch whose lowest vote total in the last ten years was 64.4%. Yes, the Peter Welch who constantly boasts of his work with the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. And yes, the Vermont that keeps electing Bernie Sanders.

Oh well, she doesn’t stand a chance anyway. The only way Welch will lose is if he dies before Election Day, and he seems awfully healthy to me.

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Racine Mulls Run for Governor

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Doug Racine, the former lieutenant governor, state senator and Human Services secretary, is considering a third run for the state’s top job. Racine had been considering a candidacy for lieutenant governor, but that field has gotten crowded. He told methat as he was gauging potential support for an LG run, he was encouraged to set his sights higher.

His willingness to run, he said, depends on assurances that he’d have the necessary support from state and federal Democratic donors and organizations. “The question is, is it a viable race or not?” Racine said. “The answer depends on the level of support.” He said he’s getting “a lot of enthusiasm” for his potential candidacy, but “that doesn’t pay the bills.” Especially since, he pointed out, the Republican Governors Association has spent millions on behalf of Gov. Phil Scott in 2016 and 2018.

Although, he said, there’s bit of uncertainty on that front. “I don’t know if Trump would let them” spend on Scott’s behalf, Racine said. “Phil is not the most popular guy in Republican circles.”

“Others who have explored a run for governor have something to lose,” he noted. “I’m retired. It’s not like I’d have to leave my job.” That’s a very real consideration for many — especially since a race against Scott is a risky endeavor.

The 69-year-old Racine was the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002; he lost narrowly in a three-way race with Republican Jim Douglas and independent Con Hogan. He sought the party’s nomination again in 2010, but lost a squeaker of a five-way primary to eventual governor Peter Shumlin, whose margin of victory was a mere 197 votes. He was Shumlin’s human services secretary from 2011 to 2014.

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Dregs of the Ballot: Beware the Humble “Tree Farmer”

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Pictured above is Jason Herron, self-described “maple farmer,” candidate for Select Board in Guilford and believer in a bunch of ultra-conservative nonsense. Like other stealth candidates for local office around Vermont, he presents himself as a simple guy who merely wants “transparency” in town government.

Transparency, as we have seen before, is one of the code words used by far-right candidates in an effort to con mainstream voters. Because, you know, if these candidates came right out and said what they believe, they’d get a tiny sliver of the vote and they know it.

Some of his supporters have been writing letters to local media endorsing Herron in the most generic of terms: “tree farmer,” “open, sincere, honest,” “no hidden agenda.” I have seen three such letters, and they make the same arguments using the same phrases. Almost as if they’re working from the same set of bullet points.

Herron is known among a certain tranche of the community as the organizer and presenter of a series of “educational” events under the rubric of “Constitution Alive!” That sounds benign enough, but “Constitution Alive!” is headed by David Barton, disgraced amateur historian, and Rick Green, identified by a far-right website as “the man Chuck Norris calls a ‘Constitutional Expert.'”

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