Tag Archives: Convention of States

Sludge Seeks Its Own Level

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You may have been asking yourself, “Self, whatever became of Gerald ‘Deploy’ Malloy?” I mean, could the guy who was convinced he was going to beat Peter Welch (spoiler alert: he didn’t) have simply fallen off the face of the earth? Surely he’s found something productive to do with his time!

Well, good news and bad news.

Malloy has found a new cause, but it’s a complete loser. He has deployed himself into the Convention of States, a fringey conservative cause. He’s been named the CoS’ Veterans Coalition Director for the state of Vermont, whatever that means. It’s nice that he’ll have something to do with his spare time. Not so nice that he’s signed onto a doomed cause that only serves to underline his political extremism.

And he’s not alone! Fellow travelers Vicki Strong and Ericka Redic have also signed on to the CoS. Former state lawmaker Strong will be the group’s Legislative Liaison for Vermont. Redic, host of the seldom-watched YouTube series “Consistently Irritating” [checks notes] sorry, “Generally Irritable,” is the CoS’ state videographer.

To call the CoS cause in Vermont “quixotic” would be an understatement. It’s not even going anywhere on a national level; it’s DOA in Bernieland.

The CoS was first mentioned in this space in connection with one Jason Herron, who ran for local office in Guilford last spring under the guise of a humble tree farmer who merely sought transparency in town governance. Herron is the state coordinator for the CoS, which I guess makes him Malloy’s boss?

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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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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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