Tag Archives: Rose Lucenti

A Curious Gathering of Lobbyists in a State Senate Primary

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I’ve spent too much time in recent days going over campaign finance reports for all the races for state Senate. Well, all but Richard Westman’s unopposed bid for a [checks notes] twenty-fourth consecutive term in the Legislature. I think I’m safe in skipping that one.

There’s a lot to report, and it’ll be coming your way very soon. But here’s a little something I discovered that’s worth a moment of your time. It’s fairly small potatoes, but it might develop into something more.

The Senate race in the Orange district features incumbent Republican John Benson making his first bid for a full term (he was appointed in January to replace Larry Hart, Sr., who found out that lawmaking is hard work) and two Democratic hopefuls: State Rep. Monique Priestley and retired Department of Labor staffer Rose Lucenti. The seat is historically Democratic; it flipped Republican in the 2024 wave election, so the Democratic nominee will have a decent shot at unflipping it.

Priestley is doing just fine, thanks. She entered the cycle with $6,400 in the bank and proceeded to raise a healthy $23,000. She’s spent a bit more than $6,000, so she entered July with roughly $23,000 in cash on hand. That’s already enough money to compete in a mostly rural district.

Where things get a little intriguing is in Lucenti’s latest report.

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The Watchdog labors mightily and brings forth a mouse

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The readership of this blog has been growing rapidly of late. Part of the new crowd, to judge from the Comments and my Twitter feed, is comprised of conservatives who apparently read this stuff as a form of aerobic exercise: Stimulate the heart rate through aggravation.

One brave Tweeter recently responded to my disparaging comments about Phil Scott’s letter touting “concerning reports,” anonymous, that the Shumlin administration was trying to shoehorn political job-holders into regular state positions.

Scott has kept quiet about the letter ever since, so methinks he realized he had no evidence beyond, according to his office, one single inside source.

(Either that, or somebody told him to STFU because Jim Douglas did exactly that during his exit from office.)

This Tweeter referred to a report on Vermont Watchdog about the allegations, and cited it as the kind of quality journalism that I’d failed to produce.

Well, as you already know, Watchdog is a place where they spell “quality” with a “K”, but I thought I’d better take a look at the article.

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