I’ve been thinking about the need for a plausible, recognizable Democrat to step forward as a candidate for governor with a campaign focused on a big policy idea. This is because so many Dems seem to be playing into Gov. Phil Scott’s hands instead of carving out a recognizable alternative, and because the Vermont Democratic Party has been weakened for years by the lack of a strong, unifying voice at the top of the ticket.

Also because the only Democrat to actually win the governorship in the last quarter-century was Peter Shumlin, who staked his fortunes on single-payer health care and won a hard-fought 2010 primary and three straight statewide elections. He’s the only Democrat to be elected governor since Howard Dean in the year 2000. Some of you weren’t even born then.

So I was casting around for a big policy proposal that could turbocharge a gubernatorial campaign, and I remembered a post of mine from February 2024 which floated the idea of a $250 million housing bond. That’s right, take our solid bond rating and gamble it on the sensible proposition that building more housing would pay off in economic growth and higher tax revenues. You know, like a TIF writ large. It’d be an idea tailor-made for Treasurer Mike Pieciak, who has the expertise to craft such a plan while preventing the wise heads at S&P from catching a bad case of the fantods. And who needs to give voters a reason other than “Everybody likes Mike” to vote for him.

But now, in light of two recent news stories, I worry that a massive housing bond would amount to nothing more than pissing into the wind, that there simply may not be a way out of our housing crisis. At least not without structural economic changes on a scale much larger than our B.L.S.

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