Tag Archives: Gerald Malloy

So, Anything Happen While I Was Out?

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Well, today’s confluence of events — the Legislature desperately careening toward adjournment on the day of the filing deadline for major-party candidates — was inevitably going to produce a flurry of political happenings. Most, frankly, were no surprise. The major exception: House Speaker Jill Krowinski’s decision to bow out of the Legislature. More on that below, but let’s shoot through the rest of the headlines.

Phil Scott runs for a sixth term. Not a surprise at all. He’s got to be enjoying life more now than during the Democrats’ supermajority years, and he’s still got to see himself as the only person who can forestall Democratic hegemony. But if he wins and serves out his next term, he will set the all-time record for longest serving Vermont governor — displacing Howard Dean, whose record for vetoes was shattered by Scott long ago. And Scott has already surpassed Dean on one electoral score: Dean only ran for governor five times, and this is Scott’s sixth gubernatorial campaign. He’s already entered new territory on that score.

The prediction markets are finally warming a bit to #vtpoli, and becoming more on point. Kalshi’s “Vermont Governor Winner?” proposition has “Republican Party” at 86% and “Democratic Party” at only 7%, which seems about right. Wednesday morning, those odds were 73% Republican and 27% Democratic. One thing changed in the last 36 hours, and that was Scott formally announcing his candidacy. Also seems about right.

Pieciak declines. In other unsurprising news, Treasurer Mike Pieciak pissed on the dying embers of gubernatorial speculation by officially filing for re-election. His decision not to seek the corner office, he said, was due to a difficult past year in his personal life including the loss of both parents and separation from his husband. But it’s a disappointment for Democratic wishcasters who saw him as their best hope for beating the governor. (Despite his decision, Pieciak remains the second favorite on Kalshi to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, far behind Aly Richards and a skosh ahead of Amanda Janoo.)

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So the VTGOP’s Big Plan Is… Try to Take Jane Kitchel’s Senate Seat? Is That It?

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Previously we looked at the dire financial straits of Esther Charlestin’s candidacy for governor, where she barely cleared $12,000 in a race that calls for, by Howard Dean’s reckoning, at least 164 times that much money. Now it’s time to look at the Republican side of the ledger, where pretty much everybody can rightly cry poverty.

With one notable exception.

That would be state Rep. Scott Beck, running for the Northeast Kingdom Senate seat currently occupied by retiring Democrat Jane Kitchel. Beck has raised a rather stunning $35,565. (His likely Democratic opponent, Amanda Cochrane, has raised a respectable $7,165 and enjoys Kitchel’s active support.) Beck appears to be the only Republican candidate who has raised more than enough money to run a respectable race. Besides, of course, Gov. Phil Scott, The Exception To Every Republican Rule,

More to the point, Beck and the governor are about the only two Republicans who aren’t complete embarrassments when it comes to fundraising. Which shows you just how desperate the party’s situation is.

The VTGOP ought to be in a position for a nice little comeback in the Legislature, threatening to end the Dem/Prog supermajorities that imperil every single one of Scott’s many, many, many vetoes. And they’re not.

Instead, the wistful eyes of the donor class have largely turned to putative Democrat Stewart Ledbetter’s bid to wrest away a Senate seat from liberal Democrat Martine Gulick or Progressive firebrand Tanya Vyhovsky. Ledbetter has amassed the largest campaign kitty of any Statehouse candidate thanks primarily to Burlington-area business leaders. You know, the very people who would historically be bankrolling Republicans.

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DIspatches from an Alternate Earth

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Been having long, weird dreams lately. Last night, I had written a big, expansive rock opera that involved a multitude of performers and was getting its premiere performance. The night before, President Lincoln and Congress were enacting a series of reform bills aimed at improving the war effort. Now I seem to be dreaming of a world where Vermont Republicans are reacting to the Donald Trump verdict with surprising adherence to principle…

Montpelier, Vt. — Following the unanimous conviction of Donald Trump on 34 felony charges, leaders of the Vermont Republican Party are distancing themselves from their party’s putative nominee.

Gov. Phil Scott, who has long refused to support Trump, went a step further today. “The verdict ought to disqualify Donald Trump as our party’s nominee,” he said in a statement released by his office. “If the Republican Convention persists in nominating him, I will have to consider leaving the party and running for re-election as an independent. I cannot see myself sharing a ticket with that man.”

Other party figures didn’t go quite so far, but were unsparing in their reactions to the verdict.

Paul Dame, VTGOP chair, noted that “On our website, we proudly say the VTGOP ’embraces the principles of the United States and Vermont Constitutions. Our platform is built on the foundations of those documents.’ To be true to our core beliefs, we must abide by the legitimate processes of the legal system. Unfortunately, our convention delegates are pledged to Trump, but I would urge them to limit their support to the bare minimum and make no public statements on behalf of the Trump campaign. This is a dark day for the Grand Old Party.”

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Hey, Let’s Take an Early Check on the Republican Ticket and… Oh.

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The Vermont Republican Party has a long record of losing statewide races except when the name “Phil Scott” is on the ballot. Scott is still undefeated for the entirety of his political career going all the way back to 2000, when he rode the anti-civil union wave* into the state Senate. Otherwise, it’s been solid goose eggs for the VTGOP in statewide contests since the Jim Douglas era, if memory serves.

*Seems unbelievable now, but the Republicans nearly swept Washington County’s three Senate seats that year. The late Bill Doyle** finished first, Scott second, and Republican J. Paul Giuliani almost ousted two-term incumbent Democrat Ann Cummings. But we were all much older then, we’re younger than that now.

**Correction: “The late Bill Doyle” is still with us at age 97. My apologies.

Otherwise, the top of the Republican ticket has featured tons of fringey no-hopers with a sprinkling of old-fashioned conservatives. Lately it’s been more of the former, as the far right has seized control of the VTGOP apparatus. And it’s looking like 2024 will be no exception. Not only do we have the soundly defeated Gerald Malloy making another bid for the U.S. Senate, but the even more soundly defeated Gregory Thayer has staked his claim to another bid for lieutenant governor. (The Vegas wise guys have set the over/under on joint campaign appearances featuring Thayer and Scott at… zero.)

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Scary Bird Man Returns to Clutter Our Rights-of-Way, Haunt Our Children’s Dreams, and Suffer Another Lopsided Defeat

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Gerald Malloy, fresh off his razor-thin defeat at the hands of Peter Welch in 2022, is ready for another go. Having lost to Welch by a mere [checks notes] FORTY PERCENTAGE POINTS, Malloy thinks he can do far better against [checks notes again] the most popular Vermont politician of our century, Bernie Sanders.

Yep, Scary Bird Man is running for Senate. Again. Optimistic or deluded? You make the call.

I hope you’re ready for a return of the most bizarre yard signs in Vermont history: an eagle staring you directly in the eye, accompanied by the cryptic legend “Deploy Malloy.” You know, the signs described by VTDigger as “simple yet arguably menacing”? Now available in a wide variety of merch, including some high-test nightmare fuel for the kiddies.

Yikes.

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Malloy Deploys Him Some Word Salad

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You could be forgiven if you’re confused about whether Gerald Malloy’s Twitter feed is a maladroit attempt to articulate his views or a piece of anarchic performance art. Lately, the unsuccessful 2022 Republican candidate for U.S. Senate has been deploying a mish-mash of anodyne observations and conservative talking points with plenty of ALL CAPS thrown in for good measure.

We’ll run down some of the more entertaining examples, but first I must address the above Tweet, which prompted me to write this post. Malloy posits the late musician/composer/activist Clifford Thornton as an exemplar of THE AMERICAN DREAM, I guess? Based solely, it would seem, on the fact that Thornton titled his first album Freedom & Unity. I seriously doubt that Thornton had Vermont in mind when he made that record, and I suspect that if he knew he was being championed by Gerald Malloy, he’d be spinning in his grave.

The real Clifford Thornton was a practitioner of free jazz, the radical mix of cutting-edge art that cared not for melody or harmony or traditional structure. He was associated with avant-garde greats like Archie Shepp, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, and Anthony Braxton. A critic wrote that Freedom & Unity was “a natural extension of the music of Ornette Coleman.” There is precisely zero chance that Malloy has actually listened to any of Thornton’s music.

But that’s not the weird slash ironic part.

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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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He Knows When You’ve Been Bad or Good, and If You’ve Been Bad He’s Giving You Something From the VTGOP Gift Collection

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I hope you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet because now’s your chance to please the Coolidge lover in your life. And we’ve all got one of them, haven’t we?

Pictured above: Two items from the “Coolidge Was Cooler” line of VTGOP merch. All five items feature the same hastily-photoshopped image of Calvin Coolidge sporting a pair of aviator sunglasses. See, Coolidge was cooler than Joe Biden of aviator sunglasses fame. Ha ha, cough.

This is the best design available from the Vermont Republican Party’s online “SHOP” page. Hard to believe I know, but the rest of the collection is even sadder.

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Scary Eagle Man Election Eve Anecdote FAIL

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Gerald Malloy made the customary Election Eve rounds of all 14 Vermont counties today. The antepenultimate stop was in Rutland, where his visit sparked a touching memory of an early encounter that fortified him for the long road ahead.

“Dolores Luebke,” hmmm….

Would that be the Dolores Luebke who’s served as chair of the Pawlet Republican Committee? The Dolores Luebke who’s a Second Amendment absolutist? The Dolores Luebke who has repeatedly made baseless accusations of election fraud against former state representative Robin Chesnut-Tangerman, who’s now running to retake his old seat?

Yeah, if that’s the kind of “substance” Malloy possesses, allow me to fervently hope he loses by a truly embarrassing margin.

Receipts!

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LIe Down With Dogs…

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Ah, what a happy group of Republicans! There’s Gov. Phil Scott, Lite-Gov candidate Sen. Joe Benning, and U.S. Senate candidate Gerald Malloy. I can’t identify all of the other people, but I know quite a few.

Next to the governor is state Sen. Russ Ingalls, almost certainly the most conservative person in the Senate. The people in the back row behind Benning are House candidates Lloyd and Lynn Dike, state Rep. (and VTGOP vice chair) Samantha Lefebvre, and House candidate Joe Gervais. Front row, yellow shirt, state Senate candidate and far-right rabble-rouser John Klar, who posted the picture on his Facebook page. The three on the right are three House candidates: Rob North, James McClay, and Jon Christiano. (North is the subject of an upcoming “steath conservative” post.)

That’s a whole bunch of extremists in the company of Smilin’ Phil.

I previously wrote that the extremists have taken over the Vermont Republican Party. They’re in party leadership, they’re on the state and county committees, and they constitute a goodly share of the Republican ticket.

Until now, Scott has kept his distance. Not any more. He has made common cause with the nutbars. Phil Scott owns this Republican Party and should be made to answer for every one of the people in this photograph.

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