Tag Archives: Ranjit “Buddy” Singh

The Burlington Democrats Are Taking an Awful Lot of Republican Money (and Leaving Quite a Bit of It Unspent)

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The second and final round of pre-Town Meeting Day financial disclosures is in, not that anyone in the media paid the slightest attention. The deadline was February 22, so I’m in the “belated” category. Apologies. Had other stuff to get to. Plus, honestly, I felt fairly confident that I could leave it for a few days because campaign finance reportage has practically disappeared from our Incredible Shrinking Media Landscape.

Headline: The two Democratic candidates in competitive races for City Council are raking in the cash, as is the Burlington Democratic Committee. (Reminder: If the Dems win both, they retain a working Council majority. If not, the Progressives would assume the majority.) The Dems’ fundraising far outpaces their Progressive counterparts and any other Council candidate in recent history. And a lot of it is from the upper classes of the greater Burlington area, people who’d be donating to Republicans if the Burlington Republican Committee wasn’t such a disaster. (These donors include many of the Barons of Burlington and others who did, in fact, donate to Republicans in the 2024 general election.)

Subhead: The Dems had left a lot of money unspent as of February 22, which probably means they didn’t expect to raise this much cash. The Town Meeting season is so tightly compressed that there’s no time to redo your strategy because you can suddenly afford more mailers or yard signs or advertisements or balloon clowns or whatever. The upshot: The Barons aren’t getting nearly the full bang for their bucks.

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Burlington Democrats are Spending Big to Defend Their Council Majority With a Lot of Help from the Leunig’s Frequent Diners Club

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On Town Meeting Day in Burlington, the Progressive Party has an opportunity to do what (according to Seven Days) it has never done before: Hold the mayor’s office and a majority on City Council at the same time. City Democrats are doing their best to ensure that doesn’t happen. And a lot of “their best” came straight from the city’s biggest name in real estate, the Pomerleau family.

We just found this out because the Burlington Democratic Committee has just filed its first campaign finance report for this year’s Town Meeting campaign season. The filing was 17 days late by my count. City party chair Andy Vota, in an email exchange, blamed the delay on difficulties with the Secretary of State’s new filing system which took multiple consultations to work out. Understandable. But as it worked out, the filing came immediately after Seven Days published its big pre-election article on the campaign, so the story makes no mention of the BDC’s fundraising or its highfalutin’ sources.

By state law, candidates and committees involved in Town Meeting Day elections must file financial reports 30 days and 10 days before election day. The BDC will have to turn around quickly to meet the second deadline. Missing the February 2 deadline is not nearly as egregious as the BDC’s 2020 violation, which resulted in a $2,500 fine for failing to file any disclosures until months after Town Meeting Day. (It’s quite unusual for campaign finance law violations to draw any penalty at all; normally, they can get off scot-free if they belatedly correct errors and omissions.)

So… how much does the party have and where did it come from?

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