Tag Archives: Phil Scott

The Myth of Democratic Intolerance

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In the wake of primary defeats suffered by business-backed “Democrats” challenging incumbents, Gov. Phil Scott and VTGOP Chair Paul Dame have taken to blaming everyone but themselves. The primary electorate, said Scott, includes “the extremes” among voters, resulting in “more polarization.” Dame put it less politely, saying the VDP “is no place for moderates any more.”

Yeah, well, bullshit.

Here’s what happened. A few people with no history of involvement in Democratic politics decided to run as Democrats. They were allowed to do so. Their campaigns were generously bankrolled by well-known conservative donors, including prominent Republican figures like former gubernatorial candidate Bruce Lisman. They were openly endorsed on primary day by the sitting Republican governor. And the voters opted for incumbent Democrats instead.

That doesn’t make ’em intolerant. It just means they’re not gullible enough to fall for the okey doke.

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Phil Scott’s Cunning Primary Day Plan

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It’s been years since Gov. Phil Scott has had to run a competitive race, and maybe his political team has gotten soft or something. Because when it comes to shooting oneself in the foot, it’s hard to top a Republican governor texting voters in Vermont’s most progressive Senate district on behalf of the centrist candidate. Who, spoiler alert, lost.

I mean, who’s in charge over there? Baldrick?

This wasn’t the governor’s only ill-considered stomp into Democratic primary turf. His team also sent texts on behalf of Elizabeth Brown, faux-Dem challenger to incumbents Tom Stevens and Theresa Wood. Both are committee chairs and influential members of the House Democratic caucus. Ya think they’ll remember this little misadventure with gratitude? Ya think the admin’s relationship with the Legislature just took a small but discernible turn for the worse?

My guess? Either Team Scott is just desperate to move the needle on legislative races or they’ve got too much time on their hands, what with a snoozer of a contest against Dem nominee Esther Charlestin their biggest “challenge.” Maybe they should just take the rest of the year off.

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A Happy Little Primary Night Cash Fire

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Tuesday’s primary election turned out to be a snooze. The most interesting development was how much money was wasted trying to unseat a small number of Democratic incumbents. They all won, as far as I can tell.

Firmly atop the Futility Rankings is former TV anchor Stewart Ledbetter, who finished fourth in the race for three state Senate seats in the Chittenden Central district. He raised almost $60,000 and spent a bit under $40,000 (tentative). He “earned” 3,159 votes, which cost him and his well-heeled donors about $12.56 apiece. Bargain!

Elsewhere in the “beat the Democrats” game, House Ways & Means Chair Emilie Kornheiser brushed off a challenge from business-backed Dem Amanda Ellis-Thurber, while the Waterbury duo of Reps. Tom Stevens and Theresa Wood defeated “affordability” Dem Elizabeth Brown, who spent gobs of cash and didn’t really come close to pulling off an upset.

Two quick takeaways: If there’s an anti-tax revolution brewing in the hinterlands, it did not show itself in the results. At all. And those allegedly smart business leaders just squandered a whole lot of money trying to push the Democratic caucuses toward the center. They might have scored one small victory, as Danforth Pewter chief Bram Kleppner took a Democratic nomination for House in Burlington. But that’s about it.

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More Money Than Sense, and Other Notes from the Latest Round of Campaign Finance Reports

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August 1 was another campaign finance deadline, the last before our August 13 state primary. As usual, there was plenty of interesting stuff to be found. And as usual, there was a dearth of coverage in our sadly diminished media ecosystem. VTDigger waited a few days to put together a solid campaign finance database helmed by its longtime (by Digger standards) data reporter Erin Petenko. But any effort, by anyone, to identify trends or develop insights? Haven’t seen any.

Meanwhile, those who follow me on Elon’s Hellscape know why I’m late to the party. After doing a fair bit of spadework around the deadline, I came down with Covid. It was a pretty severe case for a few days and I’m still on the mend, but I feel able to put words on the screen for the first time since last Thursday.

Anyway, got some things to say. Let’s do the toplines first and then get to the details.

  • While the vast majority of candidates have trouble scratching a few bucks together, there are a few who have more money than they know what to do with. The primary’s one week away, early voting as been going on for roughly a month, and they’re sitting on large quantities of unspent cash.
  • Many of these hopefuls have been generously funded by a cadre of Burlington-area business types, who may look at their investments post-primary and despair at the improvidence of their strategery.
  • Two candidates got a rocket strapped to their backs by those business leaders in July. John Rodgers, running for lieutenant governor, and Rep. Pat Brennan, running for state Senate. They went from near zero on July 1 to huge, nigh unspendable hauls on August 1. Congrats, I guess?
  • Gov. Phil Scott’s campaign has far outstripped Democrat Esther Charlestin. Why his people are bothering to beat the bushes, I don’t know. I remain convinced that he’d be better advised to mothball his campaign and start a PAC — or a Super PAC — and spread his influence around.
  • The oddities around Thomas Renner’s campaign for lieutenant governor continue to proliferate. His fundraising slowed to a trickle in July, but he spent very little and has a sizeable unspent reserve. I still don’t know what his campaign is about. Or who’s running it, for that matter.
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The Scott Administration Would Very Much Like to Convince You That It Cares About Education

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I remember a moment, long ago in a much simpler time, when the Shumlin administration came under scrutiny for hiring communications staffers for multiple state agencies. In fact, hey, here’s the story from Seven Days way back in 2012, reporting that while candidate Peter Shumlin had vowed to cut communications people from state agencies, his administration eventually tried to hire even more of ’em.

Well, now we have a job listing from Gov. Phil Scott’s Agency of Education seeking a “Director of Policy, Strategy, and Communications” at an hourly rate of $40.83, which amounts to an annual salary in the $80,000 range.

Okay, so the idea that comms people are a luxury seems kind of quaint nowadays. But wait, there’s more!

The Director, according to the job description, “will oversee a team of three digital communications and policy specialists.”

Yep, that’s right. The Education Agency doesn’t just need a flack. It needs a gaggle of flacks to handle both external and internal communications. This “team” would not only handle the press, legislative relations and interagency communications — it would also serve as a middleman between AOE leadership and its own people.

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Mother Nature’s Punching Bag

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I can remember a time, not that long ago, when we believed the worst effect of climate change on Vermont would be a potential influx of climate refugees — people from coastal areas looking for safe havens in the hills and mountains of our state.

Yeah, about that.

We’re getting hit, very hard and very often, by the consequences of climate change in ways that outstrip all those places we used to look at with more than a touch of Green Mountain smugness. I’ve certainly wondered why people even live in the lowlands of Florida or Louisiana or Texas or why they hold onto beachfront property that’s being eroded away. Don’t they know better? Can’t they see the signs? And why should they expect the rest of us to underwrite their bad decisions?

Yeah, about that.

Rarely, if ever, have I seen a bunch of bad news on any subject to compare with what we’ve seen lately about how Vermont is in the crosshairs of climate change. It all adds up to one conclusion: Far from being immune, Vermont is in many ways uniquely vulnerable. We are at risk. And we’re repeatedly seeking help from others, who could understandably ask why they should bail us out when we insist on living in disaster-prone places like flood plains, riverside communities, or out in the countryside along dirt roads and unpaved driveways that can easily wash away. (Above image: Horn of the Moon Road in East Montpelier, washed out earlier this month.)

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One Neat Trick Phil Scott Could Use to Amplify His Influence

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I’ve written ad nauseam about Gov. Phil Scott’s complete withdrawal from the Vermont Republican Party and how it’s inhibited his ability to govern. Absent his influence the VTGOP has drifted far to the right, it’s so bereft of resources it hasn’t had a single paid staffer in years, its recruitment efforts are laughably poor, and its candidates largely consist of unelectable Trumpers. The result: Substantial supermajorities in the House and Senate, and a flood tide of veto overrides.

But really, I can’t say I blame him. It would be a Herculean task to clean out the VTGOP, and both party leadership and the rank-and-file would not be receptive to his approach. It would be a hell of a lot of work, and would be very likely to fail.

However. There is something the governor could do. It wouldn’t involve dirtying his hands in party affairs. Hell, he could even farm out the real work to people in his inner circle. It’s so obvious that (1) I’m surprised it didn’t occur to me sooner and (2) I’d be afraid to suggest it except that there’s no way Team Scott would ever listen to me.

It’s this: Start a political action committee focused on electing centrists and fiscally conservative but socially moderate Republicans. Let’s call it, for the sake of argument, the Phil Scott Leadership PAC. Or if he’s feeling shy, the Common Sense Leadership PAC.

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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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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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It’s Not Quite George Aiken, But It’s Uncomfortably Close

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This election season is shaping up to be both boring as hell and one for the record books. Really, can you think of a comparable set of circumstances in Vermont or anywhere else? We have a Republican governor certain to win re-election. At the same time, no other Republican on the statewide ballot has a hope in Hades. And despite the governor’s efforts to whip up anti-tax frenzy against the Legislature, the Democrats stand a very good chance at retaining their supermajorities because, well, the VTGOP can barely tie its own shoes. At worst, the Dems will retain substantial enough majorities to frustrate the governor even if they can’t win veto overrides by the half-dozen anymore.

You see this becoming reality in the July 1 campaign finance reports, which feature an all-time dismal performance by the only Democratic candidate for governor. It’s not quite George Aiken level — the longtime Republican kingpin famously spent a mere $17.09 on his final Senate re-election bid — but it’s astonishingly bad.

Gubernatorial candidate Esther Charlestin reported total fundraising of $12,235 for her campaign.

For context, Charlestin is no better than the 12th most prolific fundraiser among Democratic candidates in 2024. She trails every fellow statewide Dem, many of whom are facing token opposition at best. She also lags behind five candidates for state Senate: Dems Stewart Ledbetter, Katherine Sims, Kesha Ram Hinsdale and Martine Gulick, and Republican Scott Beck.

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