Tag Archives: Myers Mermel

Is the Ethan Allen Institute… Dead?

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Anyone noticed the lack of activity lately from the Ethan Allen Institute? What used to be the closest thing to an idea factory for Vermont conservatism has all but fallen off the map.

Turns out, it’s not your imagination. Here’s how inactive the Institute has been — and for how long.

Its website lists former Senate candidate Jack McMullen as chair of its board. I reached out to McMullen, who told me he resigned as chair in… wait for it… September of 2023.

Yep, more than two years ago, and nobody has bothered to update the website on something as important as the Institute’s top officeholder.

Other evidence of inactivity: The Institute’s website doesn’t list any paid staff. The most recent post on the Institute’s Facebook page is dated March 2023. There’s been only one entry on the Institute’s “Blog” page since January 2024, when longtime EAI stalwart John McClaughry (still listed as the Institute’s vice president, for all that’s worth) announced the end of his long-running series of biweekly commentaries on the page. The Institute has yet to file an IRS 990 form for 2024, which was due in October. And, of course, they’re still listing McMullen as chair more than two years after he resigned.

“[The Institute is] in a dormant stage,” McMullen told me. The cause, he asserted, is the ongoing litigation involving Myers Mermel, who served as president of the Institute for 10 months before being ousted by the board in, ahem, September of 2023. (Also in September 2023, as reported at the time by VTDigger: The State Policy Network, a national organization of state-level conservative think tanks, suspended Ethan Allen Institute’s affiliate status. Currently, SPN’s website lists no affiliation with any Vermont organization.)

Mermel, now owner of WDEV Radio, filed suit for wrongful termination after his dismissal. According to McMullen, the action is still making its way through the courts. “Litigation is very expensive,” McMullen noted, “Representation is costly.”

That’s as may be, but you’d think an organization with deep roots and a well-connected board would be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The lawsuit can’t possibly be the only issue.

This situation came to my attention a few weeks ago when Common Sense Radio ended its long run as the conservative-branded hour on WDEV Radio. The Institute had paid for the airtime for years, but chose not to renew its contract according to Mermel. (He otherwise declined to comment on the record.) The time slot is now in the hands of the Vermont Daily Chronicle’s Guy Page.

My view: The increasingly radical nature of conservative politics may have sidelined the Institute, whose stock in trade was old-fashioned fiscal conservatism and free-market capitalism. I rarely (if ever) agreed with McClaughry or any of the Institute’s other commentators, but they never engaged in conspiratorialism or Trumpian authoritarianism and I respect them for that.

McMullen still has hopes for the Institute’s future. “I think they could revive if they get through the litigation,” he said. I hope they do. There was little to no common ground between the Institute and me, but it was a credible voice in Vermont politics. There’s a hole in our discourse where the Institute used to be.

John Rodgers Has Money Now?, and Other Notes on Mass Media Filings

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Well, well, well. Former Democratic state senator John Rodgers, now running for lieutenant governor as a Republican, seems to have searched for loose change in the sofa cushions and maybe the console of his (guessing here) pickup truck. Because after reporting no campaign activity whatsoever on July 1, he has now gone and spent a cool $10,400 on advertising with Radio Vermont, a.k.a. WDEV Radio.

We won’t know where the money came from until August 1, the next campaign finance deadline, but candidates are required to promptly report mass media expenditures of $500 or more when they occur close to an election. Rodgers filed his mass media report on July 11.

There are some other mass media filings of note, but let’s stick with Rodgers for the moment. I have to think — in a perverse way, I hope — he’s got some serious money behind him and that this big expenditure is part of a broader plan, because spending $10K on radio ads in central Vermont, by itself, is kind of a headscratcher. And I say that as a veteran radio guy whose brain still conjures up the radio version of the naked-in-public nightmare. (Which basically involves every possible interruption or technical problem sabotaging a live broadcast while I’m sitting at the microphone. Yep, radio in the blood.)

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I Understand the Call Letters “WGOP” Might Be Available

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Welp, the other shoe has dropped. Two months after the death of NASCAR legend and central Vermont radio mogul Ken Squier, the stations of Radio Vermont have been sold. Depending on which source you trust, the new owner is failed Republican candidate (and very briefly head of the Ethan Allen Institute) Myers Mermel (Radio Vermont press release) or Mermel and failed Republican candidate and travel mogul Scott Milne (VTDigger). The press release, posted at the Vermont Daily Chronicle, lists Milne as “an investor” and “key advisor,” while Digger bills him as a full partner. Either way, the two men are deeply conservative. Milne somehow got a reputation as a moderate, but he’s a lot less moderate than Phil Scott.

The crown jewel in the Radio Vermont firmament is WDEV, a throwback of a locally-owned, community-oriented station with a mixed format of news, talk, music and sports. The station bills itself as “a forum for all voices to be heard,” although in recent years the loudest voices have come from the right. I expect that trend will only accelerate under its new Republican ownership.

Coincidentally, the call letters “WGOP” are probably available for pocket change. The letters are currently assigned to a tiny AM station in Pocomoke City, Maryland, whose building was destroyed by fire in August 2022. It’s been off the air since then.

I’m a bit sad that the Squier family has exited the scene after owning WDEV since its founding in 1931. I’d be more dismayed by the partisan lean of the new owner/s, except that the station — and all of terrestrial radio — is a mere shadow of its former self.

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A Bit of a Kerfuffle at the Ethan Allen Institute

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Hey everybody, meet Myers Mermel, the new president of the Ethan Allen Institute.

For those unfamiliar, EAI is Vermont’s most prominent conservative “think tank,” best known for such influential operations as the seldom-heard Common Sense Radio and a steady supply of seldom-read opinion pieces. It was headed for many years by former vagabond John McClaughry, who remains a prolific writer of those opinion pieces. After he stepped out of leadership in 2013, former VTGOP chief Rob Roper took the reins. Roper retired last March, and was replaced by serially unsuccessful political candidate Meg Hansen.

Well, Hansen didn’t even last a year. She’s been ousted in an apparently messy process that culminated last night in Mermel’s razor-thin election to the presidency. The vote of the EAI board was reportedly five for Mermel, four for Hansen, and two abstaining.

Here I must pause to delineate established fact from informed hearsay. Mermel has confirmed he is now EAI’s president. He would not otherwise comment. Everything else I’m about to write comes from a single anonymous source, because official mouths are firmly zippered shut chez EAI.

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