Tag Archives: Phil Scott

Outta Nowhere

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Political surprise of the week: This guy taking on an incumbent statewide officeholder.

Guy in question is Thomas Renner, deputy mayor of Winooski and newly declared candidate for lieutenant governor. You know, the office currently occupied by David Zuckerman? Yep, that one.

My initial reaction involved the letters W, T, and F. I mean, he’s 34, he’s held office in the ‘Ski for only three years, has never run anywhere else, and he’s getting a late start. The primary is on August 13, but early voting will begin in about six weeks.

Zuckerman, meanwhile, is arguably Vermont’s most successful state-level politician this side of Phil Scott, having served three terms as LG and a total of 18 years before that in the Legislature. The only blot on his escutcheon: a 2020 thumping at the hands of the governor. But losing to Scott is no shame, and he made a nice comeback two years later by retaking the lieutenant governorship.

But there are reasons not to dismiss Mr. Renner out of hand.

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Howard Dean Needs to Make a Decision

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So I went looking for an image of Howard Dean for this post, and I came across the absolutely perfect specimen: A seven-year-old segment of “Morning Joe” entitled “Howard Dean: Baby Boomers Need To Get Out Of Way Of Young Leaders.” And wearing a Grandpa sweater as he said it:

The baby boomers have got to get out of the way. It’s my generation. I’m happy to advise. I don’t think that we need to be in the forefront anymore.

Maybe the 75-year-old Dean should listen to his 68-year-old self. Or maybe not, I have mixed feelings. But he needs to make a move one way or the other, because the days until filing deadline are flying by and as long as Dean keeps up his Hamlet act, he’s an obstacle to other potential Democratic candidates.

Besides, of course, Poa Mutino. Correction: Mutino is running as an independent, not a Democrat.

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Governor No Prepares to Strike Again — UPDATED With More Potential Vetoes, Yay

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The Vermont Legislature just wrapped up a fairly productive session, all told. Or should I say it will have been productive if Gov. Phil Scott doesn’t whip out the ol’ veto pen (Only in Journalism) and kill a whole bunch of bills.

And by all indications, that’s exactly what he’s about to do.

Might I take a moment to say, once again, that any Democrat who votes for Phil Scott isn’t serious about the Democratic agenda? Because the Legislature will have all it can do to override a couple, maybe three, gubernatorial vetoes. Even when you’ve got a supermajority, overrides are tough. So as long as Scott is governor, the Democratic vision for Vermont will remain frustratingly (or, if you don’t like Democratic policies, hearteningly) incomplete. Especially when it comes to climate change, where the governor is in position to decimate what the Legislature has accomplished.

There’s already been one veto this year, on the flavored tobacco ban. Override failed on a close vote in the Senate. By my unofficial and possibly incomplete count, we are probably in for six more. At least. Here’s the list.

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I Think I Know Why This Man Is Smiling

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For all of Gov. Phil Scott’s tough talk about the budget and how tight we’ve got to be with our money, you might not guess that he and his top officials are due to get some very healthy raises in the new fiscal year.

The Pay Act, H.889, has been floating serenely through the Legislature to little to no public notice. The House has passed it, and I don’t doubt the Senate will follow along before adjournment. I hadn’t heard a peep about it until Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky tweeted this the other day:

Yep, that’s right, 6.4% pay raises for the governor and all his appointees.

To be fair (if only for a moment), that figure is exactly what state employees are getting in their collectively-bargained contracts. But you know, it might have occurred to the governor and his tight-fisted apparatchiks that a voluntary gesture of self-discipline might be in order. You know, in light of the fact that we allegedly can’t afford to provide enough shelter for our homeless population.

Especially the governor himself. Especially when, as Sen. Vyhovsky pointed out, the Pay Act would make him the second highest paid governor in the country.

That’s right. Humble ol’ Gov. Phil Scott is pulling down a top-of-the-heap salary for leading our brave little state. Emphasis on “little,” because if we compared state budgets and governors’ salaries, Scott would lead the pack by a country mile.

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Man Who Claims to Be Above Politics Does Overtly Political Thing

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It may have adhered, by the tiniest hair on its chinny chin chin, to the letter of tradition, but it absolutely blasted the spirit of tradition right to the moon.

I speak of Gov. Phil Scott’s decision to appoint a Democrat to the seat formerly held by the chair of the House Progressive Caucus. The Progs are furious, and they have every right to be.

Scott’s flimsy rationale is that Emma Mulvaney-Stanak ran for House in 2022 as both a Prog and a Dem. Okay, sure, but c’mon now. Mulvaney-Stanak’s political identification is clearly Progressive. She served on Burlington City Council as a Prog. (For a time, she was the only Prog on City Council.) She ran for mayor of Burlington as a Prog. She served for four years as chair of the Vermont Progressive Party, for Pete’s sake.

I don’t care if she ran for House that one time in the Democratic primary. Emma Mulvaney-Stanak is a Progressive through and through, and her replacement in the House should have been a Prog.

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Welcome to the Gubernatorial Spin Zone

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No, I didn’t expect Gov. Phil Scott to accept the Senate’s vote on Zoie Saunders with grace and equanimity. But he shouldn’t be allowed to rewrite the history of that lopsided rejection of his choice for education secretary.

In his press conference one day after Saunders was rejected, he called it “a partisan political hit job” in which Saunders was collateral damage in an attack aimed at himself:

I  think this was a partisan political hit job, so I would say once they get through that and they get their pound of flesh, which they did, it was all against me, that maybe they will come to their senses and see what I see and confirm her, if that’s the path they choose. 

Yeah, well, none of that is true.

A total of 19 senators voted against Saunders because of her scanty resumé. She’d barely served any time at all working in public schools — as a teacher, principal, district staffer, or janitor or lunch lady or bus driver for that matter. And she had little to no experience managing a sizable bureaucracy, which ought to be a prerequisite for being a cabinet secretary of any sort.

And if this was a case of “it was all against me,” then perhaps the governor could enlighten us about all the other times the Senate rejected a gubernatorial appointee. I can cut to the chase there: It’s never happened before.

As if that load of codswallop wasn’t insulting enough, the governor also accused the Senate of failing to perform due diligence:

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“I Am Big. It’s the Pictures That Got Small.”

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Howard Dean floated onto his balcony this afternoon, favored the adoring crowd below with a regal wave, turned his back, and disappeared into the billowing curtains.

Okay, not really. What he did was issue a lengthy, self-indulgent statement about his dalliance with running for governor that didn’t actually make a commitment either way. In other words, stay tuned!

Methinks he’s getting a kick out of having #vtpoli-land hanging on his every word for the first time since he ran for president nearly a generation ago.

All he said about running was that he would hold “a press event when and if I file.” Curiously, he then sent a text to VTDigger declining its interview request because he is “not doing interviews until I file.”

Until, eh? Not “Until or unless”? Freudian slip? Intentional foreshadowing? Misdirection for the sake of drama? Only Dean knows for sure.

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Well, At Least It Wasn’t the Most Violent Thing to Ever Happen in a Senate Chamber

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Wow. Not only did the state Senate reject Zoie Saunders’ nomination as education secretary, it did so on a lopsided 19-9 vote. That’s a damning indictment of how out of touch Gov. Phil Scott was in choosing her. I mean, it’s still unclear whether a Vermont Senate has ever rejected a cabinet appointee, much less by a better than two-to-one margin.

And of course the governor immediately appointed Saunders as interim secretary, effectively flipping the bird at the Senate. This won’t do anything to improve his turbulent relationship with the Legislature, but I doubt he really cares about that. If anything, this might presage a flurry of vengeful vetoes that would vault Scott’s all-time record into permanently unbreakable Cy Young territory. Hooray for Governor Nice Guy!

And, well, if condolences are ever in order for someone who just “won,” it’s for Zoie Saunders. She takes on a daunting challenge with an understaffed Education Agency and with the entire educational establishment wishing she would just go away and with two-thirds of the Senate rejecting her. I am convinced she was not the best choice for the job, but man, she’s sitting at the poker table with a deuce-seven off suit. Brutal.

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Team Scott Tries to Count to 15 and Comes Up Short

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Ruh-roh, Raggy. Something has gone off the rails in Montpelier.

After several days of lobbying the Senate and slamming its critics, the Scott administration has asked the Senate to, um, postpone its confirmation vote on Zoie Saunders, the governor’s choice for education secretary. (The development was first reported by VTDigger’s Ethan Weinstein and later confirmed by Seven Days’ Alison Novak.)

You know what that means: They don’t have the votes. Which would be perhaps the most embarrassing failure in Scott’s seven-plus years in the corner office. He’s had vetoes overridden before, but that happens to every governor. These confirmation votes are usually perfunctory. Lower-level appointees have, on rare occasion, been rejected, but I haven’t seen any reference to the last time a cabinet nominee was sent packing. Certainly the administration didn’t foresee any trouble, considering that Saunders quit her job in Florida, moved her family to Vermont, and began working as education secretary, all before her confirmation was in the books.

Still, they should have seen it coming. What did they expect, when they nominated someone who’s patently unqualified for the job?

So of course the governor owned up to his mistake and BWAHAHAHAHAHA no he did not. He blamed the whole thing on “misinformation, false assumptions, and politicization” of her nomination by critics and opponents.

Which is a bunch of Grade-A Joe Biden malarkey. The criticism is focused on Saunders’ lack of experience in public schools, her long tenure at a for-profit charter school operator, and — at least from me — her nearly complete lack of any actual administrative experience.

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Things Are Getting a Bit Tetchy In and Around the Saunders Nomination

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Sparks are flying in what is essentially a proxy battle over Zoie Saunders’ nomination as education secretary. Hours before she was approved on a 3-2 vote in the Senate Education Committee, former state board or education chair Krista Huling appeared before the House Education Committee dishing some dirt on the process that led to the hiring of Dan French in 2018 and asserting that Gov. Phil Scott “does not have a public vision for education,” and in fact, wants the public school “system to collapse.” The timing of her testimony, while Saunders’ fate lies in the balance, cannot possibly be a coincidence.

I wrote about that yesterday, but there have been developments. First of all, Gov. Phil Scott’s chief of staff Jason Gibbs apparently hightailed it to House Education as Huling was wrapping up, to complain to committee chair Rep. Peter Conlon about her testimony. This was reported, based on anonymous eyewitness accounts, by Seven Days’ Alison Novak*, and today I confirmed it with Conlon. He would not go into specifics; “It was a private conversation,” he told me, “but [admin spokesman] Jason Maulucci’s comments to Seven Days pretty much summed up the conversation.”

*But not, curiously, by the diligent Diggers at “Final Reading.“ To be fair, they had to save room in the column for the red-hot news about House Speaker Jill Krowinski’s new betta fish.

It must have been a hot little confab, considering that Maulucci characterized Huling’s testimony as “unsubstantiated lies from an individual with a demonstrated political agenda.” (Huling left the board in order to serve as campaign manager treasurer for former education secretary Rebecca Holcombe’s run for governor.) Which raises the question, why in Hell does Gibbs think he can barge into a legislative committee and upbraid the chair for calling a witness? He may run the executive branch, but committee chairs can call whatever witnesses they want. Even ones that might possibly have a bias. Which is, as near as I can tell, every last one of ’em.

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