[T]he first and last debate in which all seven gubernatorial candidates participated took place on Channel 17/Town Meeting on Thursday evening.
In addition to Republican incumbent Gov. Phil Scott and his Democratic challenger Christine Hallquist, there were four independents and one Liberty Union Party candidate running for governor. But none of the alternative candidates have garnered a groundswell of support to make them a viable option.
Rich Clark, a political science professor at Castleton University, said a major obstacle for third-party or unaffiliated candidates is a widespread belief that a vote for any candidate other than the Democrat or Republican is a squandered vote.
“It’s still the case where the presumption is votes for anybody outside the two major parties is a wasted vote or in some people’s minds a vote for the opposite party and with that in mind people go to the polls and do strategic voting,” Clark said.
Rep. Paul Poirier, I-Barre, has run several successful campaigns as an independent candidate, but his ability to do so was built on almost four decades of politics in Vermont in which he was a full-blooded member of the Democratic Party. He ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress in 1988.
Poirier said he decided to switch from running as a Democrat to an independent in 2011 when he didn’t want to be tied to a single party’s view on issues affecting Vermonters, but he said the decision brought definite challenges to running an effective campaign.
“The hardest thing is that you have to work harder than the major party because it’s just you and your loyal followers. You have to outwork them. You have to develop a plan and go door to door,” Poirier said.
Poirier said he knows he has been successful as an independent candidate because he had a strong base of support in Barre garnered over years serving as a Democrat. Without that base, he said he would have had little chance at winning a General Assembly seat as an independent candidate.
“Would I have won as a first-time independent, I doubt it. Just to come out of the gate and say ‘I’m an independent’ is tough,” Poirier said, “Bernie Sanders, he ran as a Liberty Union candidate and couldn’t do anything, but then he won the mayoral election and had a strong base.”
Vermont’s willingness to elect Sen. Bernie Sanders to U.S. Congress as an independent is a seeming anomaly while other candidates who choose to be unaffiliated to a major party continue to struggle.
But before Sanders became the most popular politician in the country as an independent, he faced years of political obscurity with little support from voters in Vermont.
This lack of support was highlighted by Sanders six years as a Liberty Union Party candidate in the 1970s. During that time, he ran for public office four times—twice for governor and twice for U.S. Senate—never winning more than 6 percent of the vote.
In 1977, Sanders left the Liberty Union Party to become an independent and won the Burlington mayoral race in 1981 by 10 votes.
In an interview at the time of his party affiliation switch, Sanders said there was little chance of winning elections, which gave the Liberty Union candidates a chance “to get up and say exactly what they meant with no compromise.”
Looking back at his failed campaigns for public office, Sanders also said that “it is not enough to point out insanity” when running a campaign and that candidates have to do more to distinguish themselves from their competition.
Proving how difficult it can be to run as an independent, Sanders decided to run for president in 2016 as a Democrat, a party whose policies he had criticized roundly throughout his political career.
The Liberty Union Party hasn’t changed its anti-establishment platform much since Sanders left 40 years ago.
Emily Peyton, this year’s Liberty Union candidate for governor, has run other campaigns under myriad party affiliations since 2010 with little success.
Peyton is running this year on a platform that includes addressing climate change and utilizing the cannabis economy to create jobs, said she doesn’t take campaign donations because if “you are really representing the people, they don’t have money to donate.”
Peyton said her biggest complaint about running for public office is the dependence on fundraising and monetary support to become a viable candidate.
“I don’t take donations because they influence a candidate. I’ve got a limit on the money I can throw at an election but that has no bearing on my capacity to lead or my intellectual prowess that I offer, or my integrity,” Peyton said.
Whether independent and third-party candidates are refusing donations as a protest of the campaign finance system or are simply struggling to raise enough funds because of a lack of support, they rarely enter races with the means to amplify their message.
Finding a way to reach prospective voters has been a contentious issue for independent gubernatorial candidates in this election, and some have blamed Vermont news media for denying them the right to debate the issues alongside Scott and Hallquist.
Charles Laramie, one of four independent candidates running for governor, said the lack of media exposure and a missing endorsement from Sanders have left his campaign handicapped with three weeks until the election.
Laramie, who is running on a platform built around not allowing iPhones in classrooms and raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour and opposing a carbon tax, was not invited to a debate between Scott and Hallquist, sponsored by VTDigger in Rutland earlier this month, nor has he been invited to the VPR-Vermont PBS debate scheduled for Wednesday.
“I understand Vermonters, this is my home, and then to be told my opinions don’t count. If you dressed it up anyway you wanted, if I had $400,000 I would have been in that debate,” Laramie said.
Stephen Marx, who is an independent but is listed on the November ballot as a member of Earth Rights, has faced the same issue of not getting media coverage.
Marx, who is running for governor on a platform based on amending Vermont’s Constitution to give the Earth the same rights as citizens and the belief that the non-polluting public should not have to pay for companies that do pollute, said he had called every public radio program and newspaper in the state but had gotten few inquiries into his candidacy.
“If corporations are considered people then the Earth should be to. So I’ve decided to run for governor and do it my way by not taking money from anyone,” Marx said. “ But it’s very difficult because for television and radio, if you aren’t a Republican or a Democrat you don’t get very much coverage.”
Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, who has long voiced support for campaign reform and third-party inclusivity, said it takes an incredible amount of effort and money to build viable candidates outside of the two major parties and that the voting system in the U.S. is partly to blame.
“It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, where you have to build your voice or supporters to do the grunt work to build up your credibility to get enough support so that the media and others take you seriously. And ultimately some aspects of politics come back to money,” Zuckerman said. “We need to evaluate as a state, and a country, our voting systems and see if they are inclusive of the range of perspectives that are out there.”
Zuckerman runs as a Progressive but also as a Democrat, in part to avoid splitting the vote three ways and helping to elect a Republican.
Poirier said that in his experience finding financial backing is the major issue for independent and third-party candidates and that it has become too expensive to run for a citizen legislature.
“Money is a big issue. As an independent you don’t have that kind of support and elections cost a lot of money. Some of these people are spending $15,000 to $20,000 dollars on state House races,” Poirier said. “I used to be able to do it for $200 bucks.”
This is one of the reasons that Marie Audet, a dairy farmer, and Paul Ralston, Vermont Coffee Company owner and former Democratic member of the Vermont House of Representatives, decided to run as a ticket and pool their resources in order to run as independents for state Senate in Addison County.
After Sen. Claire Ayer, D-Addison, announced in May she wouldn’t run for re-election, the race for that vacant state Senate seat has become competitive with Ralston and Audet challenging two Democrats — incumbent Chris Bray and Ruth Hardy, the former executive director of Emerge Vermont— and Republican Peter Briggs, vice-chair of the Addison Selectboard.
Ralston has raised more than $16,000 while Audet has raised a little over $21,000, and because they are running together they are able to use their combined resources for the campaign.
Ralston said this was one of the deciding factors in their decision to run together as independents because he said they knew the major parties have more money at their disposal.
“I would caution people against running as an independent. It’s very challenging and if you are going to try to do it, do it the way Marie and I did. Find someone to run with, because it’s stacked in favor of the parties,” Ralston said.
Ralston, who says he is still a “Democrat,” said despite the quixotic nature of running as an independent, he and Audet decided to undertake the challenge to bring a fresh perspective to Montpelier.
“Running as an independent is a little foolish, but that’s what you have to do when you believe the Party is drifting in the wrong direction,” Ralston said.
Including Laramie, Marx, and Audet/Ralston, there are 55 independent candidates on the ballot for the November election. In addition to the independents, there are six Progressives, 11 Liberty Union candidates, and four Libertarians running for different positions.
Of the 293 candidates for general assembly seats, 38 are third-party and independents — making up 13 percent of the total candidates.
The percentage of third-party and independent candidates is basically unchanged from the 2016 election, when third-party and independent candidates made up 12 percent of the total 301 general assembly candidates.
In 2016, seven independents won seats, or 4.7 percent of the 150-member House.
And though the Progressive Party is considered a major party in Vermont, not a single candidate who was strictly running as a Progressive won a General Assembly seat—while 13 who identified as hybrid Democrat/Progressives won seats.
The limited number of independent and third-party candidates in Vermont is in spite of a national trend where a majority of Americans are demanding a viable alternative option should be established to give voters a choice other than a Republican or a Democrat.
Sixty-one percent of Americans think a third major party is needed in the U.S. and barely a third, 34 percent, think the Republican and Democratic parties suffice as the only viable political choices, according to a September 2017 Gallup poll.
That is the highest number of Americans to report their desire for a third major party that Gallup has recorded.
Nationally, the number of Americans reporting that they identify as independents is also up from the same time period in 2016.
Forty-four percent of Americans polled by Gallup in the first two weeks of September considered themselves independents. Americans who identify as Republicans made up 26 percent and 27 percent of those polled considered themselves Democrats.
This is up from the same time period in 2016 when 38 percent identified as independents, while 29 percent identified as Republicans and 31 percent aligned with Democrats.
But Vermonter’s political party affiliation is markedly different than the national trends.
In a VPR-Vermont PBS poll published on Monday, 55 percent of the Vermont responders identified as Democrats and 13 percent said they were independents -— 32 percent of Vermonters aligned themselves with the Republicans.
Clark said that though people may be saying they identify as independents, they still vote along party lines.
“Yes, people are identifying as independents, but they aren’t behaving like independents,” Clark said, “the fact of the matter is that those who are identifying as independents behave like partisans. The trend for answering like independents has a lot to do with a cultural angst that we’ve become too partisan so they are hesitant to say they are part of a party.”
Clark also said that it is no surprise that third-party or independent candidates have trouble establishing themselves in statewide races and that it is very important that candidates working outside the major parties to establish one main issue to focus on.
Clark pointed to Ross Perot’s two presidential campaigns in the 1990s in which he highlighted eliminating the federal deficit in five years and to Sanders’ staple issue of income inequality as examples of successful independents.
“Perot was viable as long as he had an issue that took the public’s imagination and wasn’t being dealt with by the major parties,” Clark said, “if there is an issue that a third-party can take hold, that has captivated the public’s mind, then they can get some viability.”
Marx, with his first foray into running for statewide public office, said he has his one issue firmly down with his commitment to creating Earth rights, but he said that after this November, he may campaign differently.
“I’m not going to stop. If you believe in taking care of the Earth you have to do that. Next time maybe I will take money,” Marx said. “Maybe I’ll run as a Progressive or as a Democrat, that’s a possibility.”
