BURLINGTON—When Molly Gray walked into Queen City Brewery Thursday evening to officially launch her bid for lieutenant governor, she was wrapping up an already busy day of campaigning across Vermont.
Gray, an assistant attorney general who is running on the Democratic ticket for lieutenant governor, started the day where she grew up at Four Corners Farm in Newbury.
She met with community leaders and business owners in Bradford, stopped at the Cochran’s Ski Area in Richmond before traveling to the King Street Center, a community center for children and families in Burlington.
Gray is a newcomer in the crowded race for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor. But she’s entering the campaign with a network of political connections and a focus on retaining and attracting young people to the state.
The crowd she walked into at the brewery, the site of her campaign kick-off, was young-ish: filled with campaign volunteers, friends of Gray’s and Burlington politicos, drinking beer and wine and eating pizza. It was also dotted with state officials like Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George and Vermont State Treasurer Beth Pearce.
Former Democratic Gov. Madeleine Kunin, who has already endorsed Gray, and has called the 36-year-old “the face of the next generation of Vermont leaders,” addressed the room.
“It’s nice to be at a Democratic event where the average age must be 30, 35?” Kunin said. “I think it’s a reflection of Molly’s campaign.”
Kunin, who was Gray’s professor at the University of Vermont, first met her on the family farm during one of her own political campaigns in the 1980s.
“It will not be an easy race, there are others running — but she is certainly our best candidate, our most impassioned candidate to be our next lieutenant governor,” she said.
Gray, a prosecutor in the attorney general’s criminal division and a former staffer for U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., announced her candidacy in January, but has never held elected office.
On the stump, Gray says she is focused on bringing the younger generation of Vermonters back to the state. Vermont’s declining population, particularly the drain on its labor force, has been flagged as a threat to the state’s economy by many state officials, including Gov. Phil Scott.
“We can be innovative, we can think about a future that’s really bright, a future that includes broadband in every community. A future that includes a real pipeline from our schools to our technical centers, to our workforce,” Gray told the crowd.
“That is the Vermont that I know, that is the Vermont that’s possible.”
Gray is running in a crowded field of Democrats vying for the lieutenant governorship, which opened up after Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman launched his bid for governor in January.
Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, Sen. Debbie Ingram, D-Chittenden, and progressive activist and former gubernatorial candidate Brenda Siegel of Newfane are also vying for the lieutenant governor’s office.
Although Gray is a political novice, her campaign has already made a splash, attracting the support of Kunin, and major endorsements from others, including Jane Stetson, a former finance chair of the Democratic National Committee and large Democratic donor, and George, the top prosecutor for Vermont’s most populous county.
The chair of the Vermont Democratic Party, Terje Anderson, said he suspects Gray has been cultivating political relationships over the years.
“My sense is, behind the scenes, she’s known a lot of these people. She’s built these relationships during her time in Vermont,” Anderson said. “I think she knows because she’s going in with lower name ID, that she needs people like that.”
Anderson said that all of the Democratic candidates in the race have strengths. Ashe and Ingram can tout their records in the Senate, and Siegel was able to capture 21% of the vote in the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary — after getting into the race only three months before the election.
But unlike Ingram and Ashe, Gray hasn’t been “tied down in the Legislature,” Anderson said, and that means she has the ability to start campaigning around the state.
“Molly’s been able to go out and get some attention.”
Daniel Morgan, a bearded 23-year-old in the crowd at the brewery and a lifelong resident of Burlington, said that Gray is the first candidate for office in Vermont he’s been excited about in years.
Morgan says he sees many members of his generation leaving Vermont for better jobs, and that he wants the state to be able to attract better jobs, and find solutions to keeping them here.
“Everyone in my generation with the means to flees,” Morgan said. “This is the first I’ve heard a candidate address that fact and really mean it.”
