Sugaring Off: Vermont Politics and History, Plain and Simple

The bulk of Tuesday night’s excitement was in the numerous contested Senate primaries on both sides of the aisle. This year saw another big year of retirements and challenges to entrenched incumbents. Let’s begin at the beginning.

Addison

Addison County (plus Rochester, Buels Gore, and Huntington) saw Rep. Caleb Elder of Starksboro challenge incumbents Chris Bray of Bristol and Ruth Hardy of Middlebury. Elder put up a respectable challenge, coming within a few hundred votes of knocking off Bray, but was unable to overcome the power of incumbency and his lack of strength outside his House district in the northeastern reaches of the county.

Hardy, the chair of the Senate’s Government Operations Committee, ran away with the lead here, which I suspect is due to her commitment to constituent services and that she started campaigning in earnest well before the more tenured Bray. Bray’s massive barrage of direct mail in the closing weeks of the campaign may well have saved him by turning out his voters, but it doesn’t seem to have done much to expand his margin over Elder.

Bennington

Bennington County saw more excitement than usual this cycle following the retirement of Sen. Brian Campion and the passing of the late Sen. Dick Sears after the primary filing deadline. Rep. Seth Bongartz of Manchester, who ran to fill the seat vacated by Campion, was the easy victor in the Democratic primary. His chosen running mate, Bennington County Deputy State’s Attorney Rob Plunkett, ran a successful write-in campaign that received more votes than the late Sen. Sears to clinch the second Democratic nomination. Manchester Selectman Thomas West’s strategy of encouraging voters to vote for Sears so that he could attempt to win the nomination through the county committee appears to have failed.

Bongartz and Plunkett will face former Republican Rob Gervais and former Democratic State Rep. Cynthia Browning, who is running as an independent, in the general election. Browning might have enough name ID around the Northshire to make this interesting, but I don’t see an easy path to victory for either her or Gervais.

Caledonia

Both primaries in the race to succeed Sen. Jane Kitchel turned out to be phenomenally uninteresting. On the Democratic side, Kitchel-endorsed non-profit executive Amanda Cochrane of St. Johnsbury trounced Shawn Hallisey of Waterford, taking 84% of the primary vote. According to a friend of mine who’s been working on this race, Hallisey was going door-to-door asking people if they weren’t tired of the Beattie-Toll-Kitchel political machine, and on more than one occasion received the answer “Well, they’re my cousins, so…no?” That’s small-town politics for you.

On the Republican side, Rep. Scott Beck, also of St. J., handily defeated 2022 nominee J.T. Dodge, taking 79% of the vote to Dodge’s 16%. While I was initially bearish on the Democrats’ chances of holding this seat, Cochrane’s commanding primary showing and the higher participation in the Democratic primary despite NEK darling John Rodgers being on the Republican ballot suggest that the Democrats may have a glimmer of hope here after all.

Chittenden-Central

How much does a Vermont Senate seat cost? If you said $60,000, it seems you’re mistaken. Despite raising nearly 60 grand from a who’s who of Burlington-area moderate Democrats and Republican businesspeople, retired Channel 5 broadcaster Stewart Ledbetter came up short in his bid to defeat one of the three incumbents in this Burlington/Winooski/Essex based senate seat. Leading the pack here (in defiance of my predictions, mea culpa), was freshman Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick, who took in more than 4,000 votes. Following her were Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth with 3,818 votes and Sen. Tanya Vhyovsky of Essex Junction with 3,462 votes. Ledbetter brought up the rear with 3,159.

On election day, Gov. Phil Scott sent out a text blast in support of Ledbetter’s bid, but I honestly think that might have hurt Ledbetter more than it helped him in this extremely Prog-friendly district.

This may not be of interest to anyone except me, but this district appears to have fully reported its write-ins, and among those receiving write-in votes were former Vermont Democratic Party Communications Director Emily Bowers, Emerge Vermont Executive Director Elaine Haney, and one of my former Vermont-NEA Scholars Bowl opponents. Small world, huh?

Grand Isle (Julow Archipelago?)

The race to succeed the late Sen. Dick Mazza took an unexpected turn (I wasn’t expecting it, at least) when appointed incumbent Andy Julow of North Hero defeated Julie Hulburd of Colchester. There are two apparent reasons for this. First, Hulburd’s base in Colchester made up only about 60% of the primary electorate, it’s usually at 70 or 75%. Second, Julow got incredibly high margins in the island towns, even getting 96% of votes in his hometown of North Hero.

Julow squeezed enough votes out of the Islands and was able to a) keep Hulburd’s margin down in Colchester and b) capitalize on Colchester’s low turnout to eke out a win by just 76 votes. He’ll face a tough general election campaign against Rep. Pat Brennan of Colchester. Brennan is awash in cash thanks to the GOP donor class and is probably the most formidable candidate the Republicans could have found for this seat. He’s represented Colchester in the House for decades. However, Democrats’ saving grace here could be that Colchester has gotten much more reliably blue in the last decade. Brennan would likely need an outright majority in all of Colchester, including the eastern half of town that he’s never represented, to pull off a win.

Julow may also benefit from the fact that all of the House districts overlapping his Senate seat have a full slate of Democratic House candidates, whereas the GOP only has a full slate in the Grand Isle House district and just one candidate in each of the Colchester seats. This will be a race to watch.

Orleans

In Orleans County, 2022 GOP nominee Sam Douglass has defeated his more moderate opponent, Aime Conrad Bellavance. Bellavance did well in the historically French-Canadian farm towns of the northwestern part of the county, but it wasn’t enough to propel him to victory. Douglass faces a very tough general election campaign against the dogged and redoubtable Rep. Katherine Sims of Craftsbury, who has the backing of outgoing Sen. Bobby Starr. This seat has gotten redder in recent years, especially at the federal level, but Sims has a track record of overperforming and aggressive campaigning and Douglass, to be blunt, does not, so this race remains in the Democratic column for the time being.

And that’s a wrap on part two of the primary rundown! Stay tuned for the final part covering the House races soon.