Early voting has begun, and with the onset of early voting comes the customary cascade of advertising and ballot chasing that will drive onward to November. If you live in a contested state legislative district, I hope you enjoyed your month of not being bombarded with mailers, because it seems that period of grace is ending now.
In the battleground Bennington-Rutland District (not to be confused with the adjoining Rutland-Bennington District), incumbent Mike Rice has sent out his first round of general election mailers to the tune of $682.64. He’s fending off a tough challenge from fellow Dorset resident (and former Dorset town clerk) Sandy Pinsonault, but I think he’s still a slight favorite to win, hence the Vibes-Based Forecast rating of Leans Democratic.
In the deep blue Lamoille-Washington District, former Rep. David Yacovone is taking no chances in his comeback bid after taking a term off from the legislature to serve as a Lamoille County Assistant Judge. He’s sent out a $1,292 volley of mailers.
Down in the Windsor-Windham-Bennington District (which used to be the Windham-Bennington-Windsor District, don’t you just love Vermont district naming conventions), which has been historically represented by Democratic-leaning independents, Democratic candidate Christopher Morrow has also made a $1,200 direct mail buy. Morrow, a resident of Weston, ran for a Windsor County Senate seat in 2022.
In Addison County, incumbent Senator Ruth Hardy has made another $3,000 mail buy after a spirited primary campaign. I plan to do the math after the election, but I’m pretty sure that between Hardy and her colleague Senator Chris Bray, Addison County has been one of, if not the, most lucrative counties for Vermont’s direct mail vendors this year.
However, all of this postcarding pales in comparison to the eye-popping $87,500 TV buy that Governor Phil Scott’s campaign has just made to Hen House Media, a South Burlington-based media production company. In 2022, the Scott campaign paid Hen House $45,000 for ad buys on Channel 3, Channel 5, and Local 22/44. However, that purchase didn’t come until a week before the election.
This is earlier than Scott has been up on TV in a while, and I’ll be curious to see what these ads contain and where they go up. Could this be a fulfilment of the governor’s long promised/threatened endeavor to drag Republican legislative candidates along on his coattails to weaken or break the Democratic supermajorities? TV ads might not be the most efficient way to go about that, but he’s certainly got money to burn (he’s outraised his opponent 10 to 1 thus far and has a $330k surplus from his previous campaigns). It seems very unlikely that he’ll be challenged on the airwaves by his Democratic opponent, Esther Charlestin, whose campaign is severely underfunded. As of the last campaign finance filing, Charlestin’s campaign was about $1,200 in the red and had raised only about $20,000 over the whole campaign.
Scott has a huge lead in name recognition and money over his opponent, so truthfully I’m not sure what he’s aiming to do by spending this much on TV so far ahead of the election. Maybe he’s seen some polling that spooked him. Maybe he’s just showing the flag. Perhaps the October 1 campaign finance reports will shed some light on what’s going on in the governor’s camp.
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