[V]ermont’s Republican Party has a week to field five new candidates for statewide offices after H. Brooke Paige submitted requests on Friday to remove himself from all but one of the seats he won in the primaries last week.
Paige, a perennial candidate for political office, withdrew his candidacy for U.S. House, U.S. Senate, attorney general, treasurer and auditor of accounts. He will run for secretary of state against Jim Condos, the Democratic incumbent.
Vermont GOP chair Deb Billado said on Thursday that the party would meet next week to discuss which candidates to put forward. It has seven days to submit new names to the secretary of state’s office. She declined to provide the names of those being considered.
Paige has said since the primary that he would recommend Dan Feliciano, a libertarian candidate in the 2014 gubernatorial election, for the race against Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Feliciano has not responded to multiple calls seeking comment.
“As you are aware,” Paige wrote in each of his five letters to Condos, “my participation in the 2018 Republican Primary election was intended to preserve the ballot positions for Republican candidates in the General Election and prevent the Democrats from ‘crossing-over’ on primary day and voting for the published Democrat as a ‘write-in’ on the Republican primary ballot, a practice they have committed for several years.”
His withdrawal letter said the decision was effective at 4:59 p.m. Friday, a minute before the deadline for his decision. Paige had attempted to submit a conditional withdrawal earlier in the week that would have allowed him to retain the ballot positions if the GOP failed to submit other candidates.
Condos rejected that proposal. “The law does not allow for conditional withdrawals of candidacy,” the secretary wrote. “A candidate either withdraws, or they do not.”
Paige said in an interview after his primary wins that he moved to Vermont in the 1980s but continued commuting to Philadelphia for years after that, operating a newsstand in the city. He has also been an industrial chemicals salesman and food service manager. He currently works a couple nights a week at Panera Bread.
Paige is a prolific conservative social media commentator, often taking aim at Gov. Phil Scott and Democratic leaders in the Legislature. Soon after Christine Hallquist secured the Democratic nomination for governor, he said she needed beauty tips and a new wig.
“If she has decided to be spokesperson for the transgendered at least Christine should try to make Christine look attractive woman rather than a scrubwoman ! (Christine they are laughing AT you not WITH you !)” he wrote.
Paige did not immediately return calls seeking comment on Friday.
He has said that he hopes his candidacies — and efforts to win a Democratic seat in previous elections — will show that Vermont’s primary system is broken, and that it should be a closed process that requires greater party involvement in selecting candidates.
Sen. Randy Brock, R-Franklin, said that he met with other party leaders on Thursday night to discuss the logistics of replacing Paige in the five slots.
“It’s disappointing we did not have more people to run for these offices,” he said, “that’s a lesson the party will take very, very seriously in the years going forward.”