(This story was updated Dec. 7, 2017, at 7:30 p.m.)
[B]urlington mayoral candidate Infinite Culcleasure was jailed on felony cocaine charges in the early 1990s, news clippings and court documents show.
Culcleasure is running as an independent for the mayor’s office against Carina Driscoll, an independent former state representative and stepdaughter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Driscoll and Culcleasure face incumbent Democrat Miro Weinberger.
Culcleasure, 44, changed his name to Infinite when he was 21, he said during a Progressive Party Caucus meeting Wednesday night. His birth name was Percy Culcleasure.
Court documents show Cucleasure pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and received a 2½ year prison sentence in September 1993, when he was 20, according to an article from The Burlington Free Press.
Prosecutors alleged that Culcleasure and several others trafficked cocaine from New York City starting in 1991. Police used informants and wiretaps to build a case against Culcleasure and others.
VTDigger and reporters from The Burlington Free Press and Seven Days were sent a tip about Culcleasure’s prior conviction through an unsolicited email late Wednesday.
In response to a VTDigger request for comment, Culcleasure sent a commentary addressing his criminal record. When he moved to Burlington at age 18, he said he learned “that like New York and other cities, Burlington has limited opportunities for people without privilege – Black, white or otherwise.”
“As a young man of color, to be approached for drugs in Burlington is a common experience,” Culcleasure wrote. “It’s often the case that some of us do wind up internalizing this identity that’s imposed on us. That’s what happened to me.”
On his campaign page, Culcleasure said he experienced setbacks, including “the loss of half his nuclear family to institutional and domestic violence; incarceration; and all of the collateral damages that comes with having a criminal record.”
Culcleasure says that he is running for mayor because he believes “Burlington is a community that not only believes in accountability, but also in the possibility of transformation and the power of redemption, of hope and of giving people a second chance.”
Longtime news reporter Mike Donoghue followed the cocaine trafficking case and wrote many of the Burlington Free Press stories on the subject. He is now a freelance writer, and some of his stories have appeared in VTDigger.
“He was one of the more minor players of the nine or so people arrested in this case,” Donoghue said of Culcleasure.
The cocaine trafficking was on a different scale than what Vermont had seen before then, Donoghue said. “In that case, there was a sense of a major change had come to Vermont,” he said.
The case also garnered national attention when the brother of another defendant shot three people — killing one — in an act of revenge against someone the shooter suspected of tipping off police.
