Tag Archives: Phil Scott

For VTGOP Chair, Abstention Was the Better Part of Valor

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The Vermont Republican Party executive committee tried to keep the lowest possible profile in deciding to waive its rule against nominating convicted felons*. Understandable; even the most diehard Trumpers possess some capacity for embarrassment. Their meeting last Wednesday was a closed-door affair. If it was recorded, which I doubt, the audio or video have not been made public. The party did not disclose the vote total; its press release said only that the Trump exemption passed by “a narrow margin.” And don’t expect any details from the written record of the proceedings, which party chair Paul Dame characterized as “some kind of minutes” that “don’t capture the nature of the discussion necessarily.”

*As I predicted it would. Went way out on a limb there.

Yeah, well, sure.

But as it happens, I have received a breakdown of the vote from a highly reliable source (who is not a member of the committee, and that’s all I’ll say about them). And wouldn’t you know it, Dame could have blocked the exemption — but he chose not to cast a vote at all.

Brave man.

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Penny for Your Thoughts, Madam Secretary

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I only have one question about two state senators filing a lawsuit over the appointment of Zoie Saunders as interim education secretary after her nomination for the permanent job was rejected by the Senate.

Why only two senators?

Well, I do have another question: What must Saunders be thinking? If I were to guess, it’d be something along the lines of “How did I get myself into this?”

She quit a job she’d barely started in an area that had been her home for years and moved her family a thousand miles north, just to be used as a political shield by the Scott administration and see her reputation dragged over the coals. And this legal challenge could prevent her from serving at all.

My sympathy is limited because she’s a grown-up who made her own choices and she freely accepted a job that she’s unqualified for, but there is a human being in the middle of this uncomfortable mess.

Now, back to the first question: Why did only two senators sign onto the lawsuit?

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Making Two Lists and Checking ‘Em Once

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Now that the truly historic veto override session is over, it’s time to take stock of my fearless, or possibly feckless, predictions about what bills Gov. Phil Scott would veto and which vetoes would be overridden by the Legislature.

But first, let’s acknowledge a masterful performance by legislative leadership, a phrase that doesn’t often escape my virtual lips. Even with supermajorities, overriding a gubernatorial veto is a nettlesome task. You’ve got to make sure all your people are (a) present, not a small item when dealing with 180-odd individuals (some odder than others), and (b) absolutely unified on every vote, including some toughies.

The House and Senate held a total of 15 override votes in a single day, and they won 13 of ’em including a clean sweep in the House. Just scheduling 15 votes in two chambers on one day is fairly amazing, let alone winning 86.67% of ’em.

As for my performance…

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Phil Scott Presents: Stupid Map Tricks!

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What you see above is a portion of Gov. Phil Scott’s latest masterstroke: A map of Vermont showing all the land that would get enhanced protections under H.687, the housing/Act 250 reform bill he vetoed last week. He thinks the map proves his point, that the bill goes way too far on conservation and not nearly far enough on encouraging development. Just look at all those yellow and brown areas! The Legislature is out of control!

However… I do not think his map means what he thinks it means.

This map reminds me of the Republican electoral maps showing who won each county. They show that the vast majority of the country’s physical space voted Republican, and help fuel stolen-election conspiracy theories. Truth is, Republicans win the big empty parts of the country while Democratic strength is mainly in population centers. And since our system involves one person, one vote — not one acre, one vote — well, the map is deeply misleading and proves nothing.

Same with Phil Scott’s H.687 map. It proves nothing.

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The Joys of Willful Ignorance

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Phil Scott’s veto pen must be hotter than ol’ No. 14’s engine block at the finish line of Thunder Road because he’s racked up a fresh batch of vetoes this week, bringing his lifetime total over the half-century mark. Yep, he’s now vetoed 52 bills (according to the State Archives’ list of veto messages) including eight this year alone. Reminder that the previous record-holder was Howard Dean with a measly 21. And Dean served 12 years as governor while Scott’s been in the corner office for a mere seven and a half.

(Gubernatorial Trivia Time: Dean first Wielded His Veto PenTM to strike down a bill that would have legalized the sale of sparklers. Yes, really. His letter is a marvel of fearmongering; Dean wrote that sparklers may “appear innocuous,” but are, in fact, “quite dangerous,” burning at temperatures of “between 1600 and 2000 degrees,” and they “caused more than 1,000 emergency room visits” in 1989 alone. Which sounds like a lot, but 300 times as many people go to the ER with dog bites, and I don’t see anyone trying to ban dogs.)

We eagerly await the Legislature’s override session on Monday, where seven bills could be on the table. (An override of the eighth, a ban on flavored tobacco and vapes, failed in the Senate in April.) I’ll give you my back-of-the-envelope rundown of likely overrides in a tick, but first I’d like to point out three vetoes where the governor happily displayed his ignorance of the subject matter and of the process that went into the bills.

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Even By Phil Scott Standards, This Is a Stupid Veto

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Gov. Phil Scott’s dozens upon dozens of vetoes fall into three rough categories:

  • Principled, which involve an honest philosophical difference between Republican executive and Democratic/Progressive Legislature.
  • Easily avoidable, in which Scott proffers an objection that could have been easily cleared up with a little effort during the session.
  • Transparently phony, in which Scott gins up some excuse for a veto because if he came right out and disagreed with a bill’s premise it might damage his “moderate” image.

Today’s veto of H.645 is a combo platter of number 2 and number 3, a particularly toxic blend. The bill would ensure equitable access to restorative justice programs. In other words, kind of a squishy criminal justice reform that wouldn’t appeal to someone who wants to be tough on crime. For instance, Phil Scott.

But instead of addressing the issue directly and risk tarnishing his centrist cred, he claimed that he had to veto the bill because it lacked the necessary funding to put it into practice. (His veto message is very brief and includes no hint of any other rationale.)

Implementation of the measure would be handled by the Attorney General’s Office, and unfortunately for Scott’s chosen rationale, AG Charity Clark quickly replied that her office could handle it with no problem, at least for the next fiscal year, with its existing resources.

Yeah, kind of embarrassing.

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Whatever Happened to the Great Phil Scott Recruitment Drive of 2024?

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When the leader of your party describes your candidate recruitment effort as “disappointing,” it’s a sign that things have gone off the rails. So said VTGOP Chair Paul Dame to Seven Days’ Kevin McCallum, and then added “It’s one of the smallest recruitment classes that we’ve had in the last 10 years.”

Can confirm. I spent a few hours poring over the Secretary of State’s list of candidates who have filed for major party primaries. There may be a few late adds; the deadline was last Thursday, and as of Monday morning the Elections Office was still checking petitions. But what we’ve got so far, by my count, is a total of 69 Republican candidates for House. Which sounds a little bit respectable considering they’ve only got 37 seats right now.

Except for this: At least 30 of those candidates have no shot at winning. There are a few Republican primaries where someone’s gotta lose, a few repeat candidates who have been uncompetitive in the past, and a lot of Republican candidates in deep-blue districts. In other words, the VTGOP has no better than the longest of longshot chances at eliminating the Democratic/Progressive supermajority in the House. They’d have to run the table in competitive districts and hold all their current seats.

On the Senate side the Republicans have 25 candidates, but I count 14 who are not competitive. The R’s do have a shot at ending the Senate supermajority thanks to some key Democratic departures, but that’s all it is: a shot.

So what happened to Gov. Phil Scott’s “pledge” (McCallum’s word) to recruit moderate Republican candidates? Either it was a failure, or it never happened at all.

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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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Darkness on the Edge of the Capitol Complex

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A good piece of political journalism will accomplish two things: It will explain what’s been happening and give you a peek at what’s ahead. VTDigger’s Sarah Mearhoff accomplished both in her recent look back at the 2024 legislative session, specifically the bitter divide between Gov. Phil Scott and the Dem/Prog supermajorities. It’s obvious that the rarely healthy relationship took a measurable turn for the worse in 2024.

The best bit — the Rosetta Stone that explains it all — goes back to the very end of the 2023 session, when the Legislature overrode six Scott vetoes. That’s a huge number. Overrides have been extremely rare throughout Vermont history. I haven’t done a deep dive, but I’ll bet that six is the all-time record for a single year. Scott comms director Rebecca Kelley called the veto session “eye-opening,” and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth believes that was when the governor changed course:

“I think at that point, they had their own existential moment where they said, ‘We have to get super aggressive and go after these people,’” Baruth said.

Longtime Statehouse lobbyist Rebecca Ramos noted the “breakdown in communication” this year and added there was “just not a lot of interest in repairing it.”

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So What Did Howard Dean Mean by “Scorched Earth”? (Updated With MORE Phil Scott Fails)

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On Monday, former governor Howard Dean ended his brief dalliance with running against Gov. Phil Scott by explaining that his only path to victory was “a scorched earth, negative attack campaign” out of character with Vermont politics, and that he refused to be the one to inject our system with that kind of vitriol.

Okay, well, at the time it seemed like a hollow, self-serving rationale — more acceptable to a politician’s ego than “The polls showed me way behind” or “I found out I couldn’t raise enough money” or maybe even “Turns out half of Vermont doesn’t even remember me.” But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered:

What would a scorched earth campaign against Phil Scott look like?

Secondary question:

Would it work?

I can think of two potential scenarios; one really doesn’t meet the definition and the other would be doomed to fail. So I’m still wondering if Dean had some brilliantly Machiavellian concept that could bring down Governor Teflon or if he was just bullshitting his way off the stage. I suspect the latter.

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