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[A]head of Vermont’s August 14th primary elections, lesser-known candidates hoping to unseat Gov. Phil Scott have used recent debates to distance themselves from the incumbent.
James Ehlers: “Our governor is not representing our interests as Vermonters.”
Brenda Siegel: “We of course need to do things like pass and sign legislation that Phil Scott vetoed this year.”
Ethan Sonneborn: “He represents what people hate about politics.”
Christine Hallquist: “He’s been running [the state] on division. That’s not the Vermont I know and love.”
The four Democratic contenders have significantly lower name recognition than the governor. But they face the added challenge of differentiating themselves from each other.
All four hold similar progressive priorities: providing a higher minimum wage and paid family leave, enacting universal health care, cracking down on polluters. “We all substantively have the same principles,” James Ehlers said at the most recent forum on Thursday.
Sen. John Rodgers, a fellow Democrat who breaks from the pack on certain issues, faces the additional barrier of running as a write-in candidate. And candidate Keith Stern is widely viewed as a longshot in a Republican primary race with Scott himself.
On this week’s podcast, Xander Landen discusses what’s at stake for the governor’s challengers. Plus, hear highlights from both the Democrat and Republican candidate forums hosted by VTDigger and Channel 17.
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Vermont’s primary elections are on August 14. In addition to dozens of the House and Senate races, Governor Phil Scott is facing a slate of challengers for the state’s top office.
Over the past two weeks, those candidates have worked to distinguish themselves — not so much from each other, but mostly from Scott.
Xander Landen: This wasn’t a cutthroat forum last night. It’s not like these candidates were going after each other and pointing out flaws in each other’s career paths, in each other’s policy platforms.
Xander Landen moderated our forum with the Democratic candidates on Channel 17 this week.
Xander Landen: They all sort of saw it as more of an individualized experience. They basically all said that experience in public office isn’t a prerequisite to being qualified to serve as governor. What matters is your values, your leadership skills and the life experience that you bring to the table. That’s something that we heard from basically everyone to some extent.
James Ehlers talked about his advocacy over the years, how he’s always sought to bridge the “two Vermonts” — you know, the the working class Vermont and the more elite world of Vermonters.
James Ehlers: For me I’ve started my career, if you will, entrusted with the lives of our fellow Americans as a naval officer, preparing them, and if necessary to take people into combat. So I feel like at the age of 22, 21, that experience has transformed my entire life, actually. Dealing with people from all different backgrounds, from all over the country, all economic classes, gender, race.
Leadership is about values, and it’s about principles, and it’s about leading through example. People are tired of the status quo. They’re tired of entrenched special interests. And so running without corporate money, running an entire year of a grassroots campaign, rallying the two Vermonts, I have the ability to bridge the two Vermonts and deliver on the state that we all know we can be and want to be.
Xander Landen: Christine touted how she was able to turn around a bankrupt utility to one of the most successful utilities in the state and one of the most successful rural electric cooperatives in the country.
Christine Hallquist: When it came to the co-op, we were on the edge of bankruptcy. The state wanted to put us out of business. We had the highest number of outages in the state. And I pulled the employees together and I said, “Look, I have strong business background, worked with a variety of businesses, but I only give myself a 10% chance of success. If we all pull together, we can be successful.”
I also did something else, because I had experience working with unions and I have a strong respect for unions. I said, “we’re all, including myself, going to abide by the union contract. Whatever raise you get, I get.” And I know the power of pulling together, you can do miraculous things.
Five years later, I was invited down to the Department of Energy. I thought I was meeting with one or two people. I met with all the heads of the department. They told us we are the most innovative utility in the nation. We also went from a triple B-minus with a negative outlook to an A-plus rating, and financial folks would tell you that’s impossible for the size of the company we were. And we also cut our outages by more than one half. So I know the miracle of what can happen when people pull together.
Xander Landen: Brenda is the founder of the Southern Vermont Dance Festival. She’s worked as an anti-poverty activist for a long time.
Brenda Siegel: What I know from my career, which is developing a long term economic driver following Tropical Storm Irene, is that when you utilize the resources that already exist within our state, and we connect them to small businesses and to our government, that is when we begin to build a bottom up economy.
We know that wealth does not trickle down and poverty does trickle up. We need to do what it takes to build from the bottom. We also need to support and promote our strong education system, doing things like implementing the ethnic studies standard and centralizing services closer to schools.
I’m Ethan Sonneborn, and I’m running for governor of Vermont.
Xander Landen: You know, he’s a 14 year old incoming high schooler. He says age isn’t a factor. He has strong progressive values and ideas, and that’s what matters. He called himself the “change candidate.”
Ethan Sonneborn: I can tell you about my campaign in one simple phrase: it’s the job of government to make people’s lives easier. And let me tell you how I think we do it. I think we do it by making sure that we increase access to health care across socioeconomic boundaries. I think we do it by raising wages. I think we do it by standing up for those in our state who’ve been exploited by the system. I also think we do it by building a government that puts people first, a government that recognizes that we as a state are only as strong as our weakest link. And until we recognize this, and until we start to move towards a state that truly work for everybody, an economy that works for everybody, then we can’t recognize the Vermont dream.
Xander Landen: And so these are the things that we heard touted. You know, they don’t have much experience in government, or any, but they have experience in leadership and activism. And they strongly believe in their progressive platforms.
What did we hear from Senator John Rogers?
Xander Landen: Senator Rogers is running as a write-in candidate, and I asked him to explain, you know, why are you running as a write-in? Is this a serious run for you? I mean, he’s not putting any skin in the game here. He sort of gets to keep his seat as a senator and also run for governor because he’s doing it in this fashion where he’s a write-in candidate. So I asked him, you know, is this a serious run? He said yes, it is.
John Rodgers: Absolutely, Xander. And I want to thank both Digger and Channel 17 for inviting me. It’s the first forum I’ve been invited to.
The write-in campaign happened after petitions were past due, and I got asked by some folks who felt that there was no one in the race that they could support. They didn’t think anybody shared their values. And they asked me if I would run.
Xander Landen: So he agreed. And that’s how he sort of explains himself running in that fashion.
John Rodgers: I grew up on a dairy farm in Glover, Vermont, and my family’s been there for five generations. So we have deep roots, and a lot of the families around us have been there for as many generations. So it’s a real tight community. And that’s what I wish the entire state could be: as tight a community as we have in Glover.
What did we hear in terms of them trying to distinguish themselves from each other?
Xander Landen: I asked that question of them last night, because I think from an outside perspective, if you look at their policy priorities that they lay out on their websites, it’s all very similar. It’s what you’d see of most progressive Democrats. They’re all for these pro-labor policies. They’re all for universal health care in some fashion, and, you know, environmental policies that crack down on polluters. There are a few things that set them apart, though not all of them did a good job explaining it when I asked the question last night in this debate.
Brenda Siegel, she’s running on a platform that’s very focused on fighting the opioid crisis with more veracity.
Brenda Siegel: About three weeks ago, I released a four part plan to heal the opioid epidemic. It includes harm reduction first, and right now, for our harm reduction center Safe Recovery to fully operate, it would need about $600,000. We could have implemented that in every single county and spend only half of what I’ve allocated out of a tax and regulate system, which — tax and regulate brings a conservative estimate of $25 million. So $15 million, what I’ve allocated for the beginning of my opioid plan.
Xander Landen: Christine Hallquist has a policy that no one else does, where she wants to expand broadband to rural Vermont. And she has a proposal to do that by making electric companies hang fiber optic cables in the way that they hang electric cables.
Christine Hallquist: Getting connected to the internet at high speed is probably one of the most important things we can do. And it’s fundamental. And I say that boldly because I spent 10 years on an advisory committee that oversees the electric delivery for all of rural America, and Vermont is a microcosm of the problems we’re seeing in rural America. You know, we’re seeing increasing rates of poverty, flights to the city, and aging demographics. We saw the exact same thing that happened in 1930s, and then that point was when the cities had electricity and rural America did not. Today we’re facing the digital divide.
Xander Landen: James Ehlers set himself apart in his environmental platform.
James Ehlers: The foundation that our administration is going to govern from is one of investing in people and protecting the planet.
Xander Landen: He has a very robust plan to crack down on pollution and curtail water pollution, and that’s what he has a background fighting for. He served as executive director of Lake Champlain International, a water quality advocacy group, for more than a decade.
Ethan Sonneborn, he’s clearly way ahead of his years, let’s put it that way. I mean, he’s clearly done his homework on a lot of these issues. He knows so much about progressive policy and he’s so good at talking about it. You can cut to him talking about anything on like, single payer healthcare or education funding, and he’s like, got it.
Ethan Sonneborn: You know, we have to run a different kind of candidate against Phil Scott. And we can beat him. But we need to make sure that we are running the right candidate and the one with the understanding of policy, and the willingness to go to communities that typically vote Republican and to them about issues that matter.
Xander Landen: Senator Rogers, he has a very different platform. I mean, he is very clearly against any additional restrictions for for firearm use in the state.
John Rodgers: Oh, I’m a, I’m a strong Second Amendment proponent, and I think all we did is turn law abiding citizens into criminals.
Xander Landen: Other than that, I mean, he has a different idea about economic development. I asked all the candidates yesterday to talk about how they plan on bringing and attracting more young people and laborers and young families to the state. And John Rogers said, I don’t think we need to do that.
John Rodgers: My idea is to try to grow from within. I don’t think we’re going to encourage a lot of big businesses to come here. We have high energy costs, we have high tax costs, Act 250 is hard for businesses to get through.
Xander Landen: So he clearly has some different ideas about how to run the state government if he was elected. But he also does share a lot of the values of the other candidates as well.
But overall I don’t think the candidates have really focused on distinguishing themselves in terms of their policy. They haven’t gone out of their way to say: this is how I would run things differently than the other people that I’m competing against.
They don’t see themselves as competing with each other so much as they see themselves as competing with Scott.
Xander Landen: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. They all have very similar platforms: they all are for an increase in the minimum wage, they’re all proponents of a paid family leave program, they all want single payer health care in the future. And they see what Phil Scott did — shooting down progressive proposals like the minimum wage and paid family leave bill — they see an unwillingness to work across party lines, and provide policies that they see as the most essential for for Vermonters.
James Ehlers: Our governor, currently, Governor Scott is not representing our interests as Vermonters. We’re all working harder for less money. Access to health care is a struggle. We’re in a childcare crisis, our waterways are being destroyed, people are not being compensated fairly for their full time work.
Brenda Siegel: We of course need to do things like pass and sign legislation that Phil Scott vetoed this year that would attract families to our state. Because if they can’t live here, they can’t be here.
Ethan Sonneborn: I think I can beat the governor because he represents what people hate about politics. He represents people who have become so embedded in the system that they become allergic to work.
Christine Hallquist: Look at the way the governor’s been running the state. It’s been running on division. That’s not the Vermont I know and love.
How does what we’re hearing from Scott play into that? How has he been campaigning so far?
Xander Landen: He’s touting what he sees as his achievements over the last two years. He has fought tooth and nail — somewhat successfully, somewhat unsuccessfully — to prevent tax increases for Vermonters.
Phil Scott: Well, again, we proved we could do it. We did it last year, even with not raising taxes and fees. And that first year that I was in office, the organic revenue growth was about $82 million. So we were spending even though we weren’t proposing raising taxes and fees. We are spending $82 million more with organic growth in the in revenues. So it proved that if you invest more in the economy, you focus more on the economy, you focus on demographics, you try and bring more people in, keep more people here, that you can actually survive and prosper.
Xander Landen: He has successfully leveled most of the property tax rates that Vermont has seen in the last two years. You also hear him talking about how he’s taking credit for bringing more workers into the state.
Phil Scott: We’ve added 4,400 workers to the workforce over the last six months, which is important, because right now, there are fewer people working today in our workforce than there were in 2009. And that’s part of our problem, the demographics that we’re facing.
Xander Landen: So he’s taking to the campaign trail. But at the same time, you can see just from the amount of money that he’s raised in comparison to previous years — at the last campaign filing, he had raised a third or less than a third of the money that he was raising in 2016. I think that that’s somewhat revelatory of the way the campaign has operated. He views this as a safe bet. I think he thinks that his odds are very good, as analysts would say that they are.
What we have seen is a huge drop in his approval rating. And that has given them some cause for concern. Morning Consult came out with a poll a few weeks ago that shows that since the beginning of the year, his approval among Republicans and Independents has plummeted. And the analysts who conducted that poll attribute that drop to his decision to sign the sweeping gun regulations that we saw in April.
Phil Scott: I know that I disappointed a lot of people. I regret disappointing people. But at the same time, I had to look myself in the mirror and and know that — watching with the governor of Florida going to 17 funerals, looking into the eyes of parents and friends. And if that ever happened in Vermont, I’m not sure at that point in time, I could say that we’ve done all we could. So I decided to take action.
Xander Landen: A lot of his base voted for him because he had pledged to keep Vermont’s gun laws as they were, which was extremely open and unrestricted.
But this drop in approval numbers doesn’t seem to be affecting the way that he’s going about this campaign.
Xander Landen: No, he fully defends and — at least in public — fully defends and supports the decision he made in April to sign those laws.
Phil Scott: Well, again, leadership and being governor isn’t about watching the polls and taking action based on what the polls would be or what the political ramifications would be. I went into that with my eyes wide open.
Xander Landen: And I think that’s curried favor with a lot of Democrats. His approval among Democrats is extremely high, according to that poll. 61%. So while he’s lost the support of Republicans, he’s gained the support of more Democratic followers.
Overall, his ranking is a lot worse than it was. He was one of the most popular governors in the country. I think he was number four at the beginning of the year. Now he’s in the bottom 15 in terms of popularity.
But he is facing a challenger in this primary.
Xander Landen: Yeah, Keith Stern is a grocer from Springfield. And he’s sort of running against Scott on the premise that Scott hasn’t been conservative enough on issues like gun control, on issues like taxes. He wants to go further, to slash property tax and income tax rates.
Keith Stern: When they came up with a budget that didn’t raise taxes and celebrated, I said this is the final straw. We got such high taxes, and the state’s unaffordable for so many, and to say, “we’re going to just not raise taxes, that’s the solution, we’re fine.” That’s not a solution at all.
Xander Landen: He wants to make big cuts to government spending. He wants to cut government employees and what he refers to as waste in government.
Keith Stern: I had a retired state employee come up to me and said, there’s agencies and departments where there’s more management than actual workers. He said, you walk in the office, the phone’s ringing, and nobody there to answer the phone. But there’s managers sitting there. 66 more state employees in Vermont than New Hampshire that make over $90,000 a year, even though we have about half the population. How is that justified?
Xander Landen: He is the only competitor that Scott faces. And if you go back to the debate tape, you can see that he clearly doesn’t have a very good understanding about the basic functions of state government and how it works. In the last debate that VTDigger hosted with the Republican candidates, Governor Scott gave Stern a little bit of a lecture on the three branches of government and how they work.
Keith Stern: Some of these things I can do on my own as as governor, in my own administration: making cuts, having money to pave roads.
Phil Scott: Actually, you can’t Keith, because they appropriate money. That’s a separate form of government. The Legislature has the authority to appropriate money. As I found out, you don’t have any say in terms of spending money with without the legislature’s approval. So you’re going to have to work within the system. It’s three separate, you know, legs of government: you have the executive branch, you have the legislative branch and the judicial branch.
Keith Stern: Oh, I understand that. I don’t need the lesson. I’m just saying, you know, if I say here, I’ve got $2 million, can we use it for paving roads? Are they gonna say no, we’re not gonna pave roads?
Phil Scott: Yeah, they will. They say that all the time.
Xander Landen: So it’s very unlikely that Keith Stern will beat Scott in his primary.
I don’t think we’re gonna see high turnout in this primary. That’s something that Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos said earlier this week, I heard him on the radio. He’s attributing that to the fact that, you know, this is the end of the first two year term that Phil Scott has.
And it’s not a presidential election year.
Xander Landen: Right. It’s not a big year for the ballot.
What he also said is that he thinks part of the reason we’re going to see low turnout is because we have a field of candidates who are relatively unknown in the state, and who aren’t really rallying the voters. He said something to the effect of, you know, we don’t have any Bernie Sanders candidates running this year. And I think that’s too bad. I think it’s probably always going to be a challenge to get a high turnout. And I don’t really know how you change that.
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