The first campaign finance deadline of the Town Meeting Day cycle was February 1st. My congratulations to all the candidates for Burlington City Council (and sundry others around the state) who managed to get their reports in on time or the day after. Your legislative counterparts could learn a thing or two from you.
As previously reported, Burlington has only one contested city council race this year. Well, that’s not entirely true, Ward 7 Democrat Evan Litwin has drawn a late challenge from Bill Standen, the chair of the Chittenden County Progressives, but as neither Standen nor Litwin have raised much money and Ward 7 is solid Democratic turf I don’t foresee a particularly interesting race there.
So, let’s look at the cash hauls of our two Ward 8 candidates: Progressive incumbent Marek Broderick and Democratic challenger Ryan Nick. Broderick has raked in $8,892 and spent just $1,747, leaving him with about $7,500 cash on hand including a small surplus from his last campaign. Among his top contributors are the Green Mountain Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), socialist activists Adam Franz (who also manages Broderick’s campaign), Brett Yates, and Nana Brownell, his fellow Prog councilors Gene Bergman, Melo Grant, and Carter Neubieser, and former East District candidate Kathy Olwell. Most of Broderick’s expenditures have gone to online advertising.
Nick has outraised Broderick, taking in $11,801, and has also outspent him, spending $2,624. Nick has also spent a good deal on online ads and shelled out a hefty $1,300 to Woburn, MA-based Connolly Printing for yard signs. Since the closure of Burlington’s First Step Print Shop in 2024, Vermont has been without a union print shop (which is customarily a necessity for Dem and Prog campaigns). Connolly is one of the closest union printers that’s still in business. I tip my hat to the Nick campaign for schlepping down there to support union labor.
Among Nick’s top donors are Senator Thomas Chittenden, State Housing Commissioner (and former Republican State Senate candidate) Alex Farrell, real estate heiress Patricia Pomerleau, former BTV Dems chair Adam Roof, construction executive John Illick, accountant Jeffrey Small, and realtors Brian Boardman, Bradford Worthen, and Rick Harrison.
What do these numbers mean for the rest of the campaign? Well, for starters, since both candidates still have a ton of cash on hand, if I lived in Ward 8 I’d be bracing for an avalanche of mail in my letterbox. Speaking of mail, friends of the page in Wards 1 and 6 have written in to report that they’ve already received mail pieces from the Nick campaign. Eagle-eyed readers may observe that Wards 1 and 6 are not Ward 8, where this contest is taking (although they are next to each other).
If I were one of Nick’s donors, I wouldn’t be filled with confidence that the campaign is sending mail to people who won’t be able to vote for the candidate. I suppose it’s possible that the Nick camp is mailing based the previous ward maps and that these Ward 1 and 6 residents were in Ward 8 under the old lines, but this is the second cycle these maps have been in place.
Whatever the case, there’s still a month to go before election day so there’s plenty of campaign left to run. Nick has a slight financial edge, but Broderick is the incumbent in a Prog-friendly ward. If the election were held today, I think that Broderick would win, but it will all come down to who shows up to vote and whether the Nick campaign can expand beyond the Democratic base of homeowners and make inroads with the ward’s students and renters.
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