Sugaring Off: Vermont Politics and History, Plain and Simple

My, my, how times change. In 2024, Governor Phil Scott endorsed now-Senator Samuel Douglass for the open Orleans County State Senate seat, saying “Sam Douglass will work with me in Montpelier to grow the economy and make Vermont more affordable. In the Senate, he’ll advocate for lower taxes, addressing crime, and finding real solutions to the housing crisis. Sam is a common sense candidate who will always vote in the best interest of the Northeast Kingdom, regardless of party. We need him in Montpelier, and I encourage the people of Orleans County to vote for Sam Douglass for state Senate!”

Which is why it came as such a shock an hour ago when the Governor called for the good senator’s resignation.

How did this come to be? Well, earlier today, Politico published a bombshell article documenting leaked messages from a national group chat of young Republican activists. Among those implicated in this leak were Sen. Douglass, who remarked of an Indian woman one of his chat mates used to go out with that “She just didn’t bathe often,” and the Senator’s wife, who said of a Jewish colleague that Douglass was describing, “I was about to say you’re giving nationals to [sic] much credit and expecting the Jew to be honest.” 

Yeesh. Not exactly senatorial conduct. Among the even less savory contents of this group chat were many jokes about Hitler, slavery, and the Holocaust, many variations of the n-word, and references to Black people as “monkeys” and “watermelon people.” Senator Douglass may not have said this himself, but to my mind, if you’re in a group chat with people lauding Hitler and talking about gassing political opponents and you’re not speaking up or leaving, you are part of the problem, especially when you are an elected official.

To his credit, the Governor immediately called for Sen. Douglass’s resignation from his office and the Republican party. But I can’t help but wonder – why did the governor endorse Mr. Douglass in the first place? The senator has now deleted his Twitter account @samdouglassvt, but as someone who covered his race last year and was paying attention to his race in 2022 it seemed to me like he was always pretty far to the right for Phil Scott’s tastes and was running with this kind of crew.

I think this revelation calls the governor’s judgment into question – is he willing to stack our legislature with more Sam Douglasses just to score political power? How much did the governor know about Mr. Douglass’s beliefs and activities when he endorsed him? How many more members of the Class of 2024 are in similar chats or share Mr. Douglass’s beliefs? This is the governor’s party – unless he wants to leave it he needs to be held responsible for his activists’ and underlings’ actions. His statement was a respectable start, but there’s more for him and his fellow Vermont Republican leaders to do to clean up their party’s image.

This also seems like an opportune time for me to renew my calls for Mike Pieciak, Charity Clark, Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Doug Racine, Shap Smith, Tim Ashe, TJ Donovan, Becca White, Tom Chittenden, Miro Weinberger, or any other player in the Vermont Democratic Party to run against Phil Scott. This incident is yet another entry in the case to be made against Scott – he’s more vulnerable than he seems and there are many, many attacks that could be landed on him. Someone just has to step up and run.