Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
At noon on Monday, John Klar of Brookfield stood on the Statehouse steps and announced that he is a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor of Vermont.
An announcement, it is safe to say, that will be greeted by the vast majority of voters with a simple response: “Who?”
Klar, to his credit, understands that among his several political shortcomings is that he is not well-known. He is a 56-year-old lawyer/farmer/pastor/drug counselor who has never held public office.
He also understands that his newborn campaign has very little money right now, and that it might “cost more than I’m ever going to get.”
That combination of lack of fame and lack of money is enough to make Klar a decided underdog in the Republican primary against Gov. Phil Scott, assuming Scott seeks a third term next year. It’s even likely to make Klar the underdog against another –but better-known – Republican should Scott decide not to run.
For a few reasons, though, Klar’s candidacy is politically interesting, however unlikely to succeed. First of all, he is not the standard, anti-
Scott, pro-Donald Trump conservative challenger that might have been expected to emerge from one faction of the Vermont GOP, a faction which includes Republican State Committee Chair Deb Billado.
In fact, Klar said, it was in hopes of thwarting such a candidacy (which might yet arise) that he made his announcement early.
At any rate, he is no supporter of Trump, for whom he did not vote.
“I was actually a Bernie (Sanders) supporter” in 2016, Klar said. “I voted for Obama twice.”
Nor does Klar plan to concentrate on social issues as he outlines his differences with Scott. His position on guns, for instance, is to “call for a truce. No new laws. No repeals. I want to get away from these visceral issues.”
Instead, he will campaign on economic issues, education, the opioid epidemic, and the potential deficit in the state’s pension systems.
“I’m rebelling because I’m disenchanted with the bureaucratic disconnect with economic reality in our government and our Legislature,” he said, “particularly towards farmers and rural Vermonters.”
It’s hard to spend much time in rural Vermont without hearing similar sentiments. Klar may lack celebrity and a bulging campaign treasury, but he does have a potential constituency – voters mostly (though not entirely) in and around small towns who chafe at government regulations and worry about losing their local schools.
Klar calls himself a rural populist, and he and his (thus far) small band of supporters call themselves “agripublicans.” They even have their own website – in addition to Klar’s campaign website.
That constituency — traditional and vocal though it might be – does not seem to be anything close to a majority, even of Republican primary voters, and some of Klar’s proposals risk repelling as many people as they attract.
He says, for instance, that Act 250, the 1970 land use and development law, “must be repealed and replaced.” But Vermonters seem to support that law. Otherwise, they would have elected legislators to repeal or weaken it. They have not.
Klar said Scott’s pledge to “hold the line” on taxes is not enough. “We have to lower them,” he said. “We need to stimulate growth.”
Asked where he would cut the budget to offset the revenue loss, Klar insisted that would not be necessary.
“I would cut a lot of regulations,” he said. “That would allow more businesses to come here and I can increase revenue.”
That’s conjecture, and while it is impossible to say with certainty that lower taxes and weaker regulations would not stimulate enough growth to provide as much revenue as would the higher tax rates, it’s correct to point out that they never have. The most recent experiment took place in Kansas, where taxes were slashed early in this decade, leading to budget shortfalls and a stagnant economy.
As to the impact of environmental regulations, the prevailing outlook among economists is that they enhance economic growth.
There’s nothing unusual about some inconsistencies and contradictions in political proposals, especially when the candidate is a rookie. But Klar has some other problems. Though he painted himself as a rational centrist in a Friday interview, some of what he has written show signs of the kind of social issue zealotry he said he wanted to avoid.
In an April article for the conservative True North Reports he likened abortion to infanticide. A September article he wrote for True North Reports bore the headline “Transgender surgery is the lobotomy of the 21st century.” The article compared transgender people to drug addicts and to people suffering from “delusions of grandeur.”
A substantial chunk of Republican primary voters in Vermont are likely to recoil from that kind of talk.
Still, Klar’s candidacy could enliven the political discussion.
Klar may or may not be an ideologue. He is certainly idiosyncratic. He wants to cut taxes and regulations but says his favorite economist was the very liberal John Kenneth Galbraith. Unlike some advocates, he does not want to use the impending pension deficits to weaken unions.
“I want to meet with the teachers because I’m not a union buster,” he said.
And among his role models, he said, is Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer, poet, and novelist who champions small scale agriculture, localism, and what he once a called “uncommercial goods.”
Berry is also an environmentalist who in all likelihood would support Act 250 and similar regulations. But it’s not often these days that a political candidate says he’s influenced by a really good poet. Savor the moment.