Only one person filed with the Burlington Democrats to run for a vacant Ward 3 City Council seat, effectively making him the party’s nominee. It’s Owen Milne, executive director of the Lake Champlain Community Sailing Center.
A special election Aug. 17 will fill the Ward 3 seat that opened up last month when Mayor Miro Weinberger appointed Councilor Brian Pine, P-Ward 3, to lead the city government’s Community Economic Development Office.
Milne is also one of five candidates to be the nominee for the Progressive Party, which has held the seat since 1981. The other candidates are Ryan Addario, Julie Macuga, Joe Magee and July Sanders.
Unlike the Progressive Party, which accepts nominations up until and during its nominating caucus, Burlington’s Democratic Party cannot accept nominations from the floor on the day of the caucus if at least one person has filed with the party to seek the nomination, party Chair Adam Roof said. The party’s filing deadline was Thursday, Roof said.
Addario, development and marketing coordinator for the Lyric Theatre Company, told VTDigger last week he was considering running for both the Democratic and Progressive nominations. But at a recent Progressive candidate forum, he said he would be caucusing with the Progressives and wasn’t committed to securing the Democratic nomination.
Addario did not immediately return a request for comment from VTDigger about why he did not seek the Democratic nomination.
The Burlington Democrats will still hold a candidate forum with Milne this Wednesday over Zoom, which will be more of a Q&A with voters than a debate, Roof said. The party still plans to hold a nominating caucus this Friday that will be largely procedural. But now that there’s only one candidate, Roof said, three days of voting — as the caucus was originally planned — will no longer be necessary.
Milne said “it feels good” to have support from the Democratic Party but that he’s also eager to gain the Progressive nomination. In accordance with his party-neutral vision of public service, he said he plans to run as an independent.
If he were elected, Milne said he would caucus with the party that nominated him as its candidate. If he won with both parties’ nominations, he said, he would caucus with neither.
Roof said he’s not disappointed by the sparse Democratic interest in the Ward 3 race.
“To have no candidate would have been a failure,” he said. “To have one or many is a success.”
He also pointed to the ward’s reputation as a Progressive district. He said he thinks Milne is an inspiring candidate who has a reputation as a community leader. Even in Ward 3, where the party doesn’t have deep roots, Roof said, Democrats will work to build relationships with voters.
The Progressive Caucus is scheduled to take place Thursday, June 17, at 6 p.m. at the Sustainability Academy parking lot. It is expected to be livestreamed on Facebook, and voting closes at 7 p.m. Saturday.
