Sugaring Off: Vermont Politics and History, Plain and Simple

On July 1st, former Democratic State Senator turned Republican Lieutenant Gubernatorial candidate John Rodgers’s campaign filed a “no activity” campaign finance report with the Secretary of State. The Rodgers campaign reported that they had raised no money for their WAR CHEST (obligatory war chest reference), spent no money, and rolled no money over from Rodgers’s previous campaigns. In other words:

Imagine my surprise, then, when I checked the campaign finance portal today and saw that Rodgers had made an eye-popping $10,400 ad buy on WDEV Radio Vermont. This is the second-largest media buy made by any candidate in Vermont this cycle, the largest one being Governor Phil Scott’s $20,000 digital ad buy from just three days ago.

I can’t help but wonder, then, where this $10k came from. The contribution limit to statewide candidates from individuals or PACs is $4,480, so it wouldn’t take that many big donors to get up into five figures. However, I didn’t see any of the usual GOP high-dollar donors maxing out to any other Republican candidates in the July 1st filings I looked at.

Also, Rodgers, an agrarian former Democrat with a populist streak, doesn’t strike me as the type to draw a lot of financial support from the Burlington business elite. This also seems especially unlikely given the intervention of some of the aforementioned GOP donors (the Tarrants, Bruce Lisman, et cetera) in the Democratic LG primary on the side of Thomas Renner, the Winooski City Councilor (and friend of the page) who is challenging incumbent David Zuckerman.

The money also could have come from small dollar, grassroots contributors. However, based on his past fundraising track record, it also seems unlikely that Rodgers could have pulled in over $10,000 in small donations between 6/28 (when the July 1st reporting period closed) and yesterday, when his campaign reported the media buy. In his 2020 campaign, where he ran as an independent after failing to submit nomination paperwork before the cutoff deadline for the Democratic primary, he raised $0. In his 2018 re-election campaign, he raised $1925, only $525 of which was from small donors, with the rest largely coming from industry PACs.

In theory, a candidate can contribute an unlimited amount to their own campaigns. However, Rodgers is a self-described working class guy, and it therefore seems unlikely that he would have written himself a $10,000 check.

So where did this money come from? It’s a real head-scratcher. If I were a paranoid conspiracy theorist, I would say that BIG MUSTACHE is committing MASSIVE CAMPAIGN FINANCE FRAUD to get one of their own back into the LG’s office (incidentally, if elected, Rodgers would be the first lieutenant governor with facial hair since Walter K. Farnsworth, who served from 1925 to 1927. I promise you I’m not making that up). Maybe he struck gold or diamonds on his farm. Maybe there has been a groundswell of financial support for Rodgers’s campaign that will show up in the August 1st campaign finance report. Maybe it was just a paperwork mix-up and his campaign filed an incorrect report on July 1st. Time will tell, I hope, because I truly am curious.

If any of you have any insights into the case of the $10k Radio Buy, do please let me know in the comments, on the Sugaring Off social media pages, or via email at sugaringoffvt@gmail.com! Hope you enjoyed this somewhat speculative article, and we’ll see you next time.