This vaguely mobsterish-lookin’ guy is Joe Luneau, St. Albans auto dealer and Republican candidate for House in the Franklin-3 district currently repped by Democrat Mike McCarthy. This is the photo he chose to plaster on at least two of the many mailers he’s sent to district voters. Seems like there might have been better choices in his collection, but then some people just don’t photograph well. (See also: Kenney, Ted.)

Someone in Franklin-3 shared scans of the Luneau oeuvre with me, and if the Republicans fail to make significant gains in the Legislature this November, the mindset that produced this stuff will be partly to blame. Luneau’s pitch is that Vermont is a hellscape featuring out-of-control drugs and crime, Soviet-level taxation, and prices so high that everyone’s running for the border. (Narrator: No, they’re not.)

(Not mentioned, at all, is the one thing that could make Vermont an unlivable hellscape, and already has for many: climate change-related natural disasters. Recall that Vermont finished near the top among the 50 states in federally-declared disasters between 2011 and 2023.)

Here’s the problem. The message surely resonates with the Republican base, but does it help reach voters across the divide? Because it’ll have to; Luneau ran against McCarthy in 2022 and lost by 15 percentage points. The same challenge faces Republicans across the state — the need to convince lots of people who voted Democratic in the past — and they seem to be approaching it in the same ham-fisted way as Luneau.

I feel safe in saying that because Luneau had his postcards designed, printed and mailed by NH-based Spectrum Marketing, which has done the same work for dozens of Republican legislative candidates around the state. It’s safe to conclude that Luneau’s bumpf is representative of the effort as a whole.

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