This story has been updated.
Christopher-Aaron Felker kicked off his Burlington City Council Ward 3 campaign Tuesday evening in Battery Park, and said he aims to unify the district as a rare Republican candidate in a city that is largely dominated by Progressives and Democrats.
In his speech, Felker acknowledged Ward 3 has been governed by Progressive city councilors since 1981.
“For 40 years, the Progressive Party has held control of this ward,” Felker said. “And despite their good intentions, they failed to deliver real solutions on the issues of housing security, public safety, and they even failed to maintain key infrastructure responsibly.”
In his speech, which attracted a crowd of about 50 people, he said he wants to commit more energy to rebuilding the city’s sidewalks to make them more accessible and add more funding and staffing back to the Burlington Police Department. City Councilors voted to cut the department’s staffing by 30% last summer to reallocate funds to racial justice initiatives.
In the weeks ahead of Tuesday’s launch event, Felker deleted his Twitter account under the username @Urorwellianlife. A Google cache of the account reviewed by VTDigger showed Felker retweeting a handful of tweets widely considered transphobic, including a tweet connecting transgender people to sex offenders.
He also retweeted a message from an anti-transgender lawyer that suggested that affirming transgender children amounts to “conversion therapy,” and another from a conservative writer who described Arkansas’ decision to ban gender-affirming health care for trans youth as a ban on “experimental elective intervention on minors with healthy bodies that may leave them scarred, unable to function.”
Since this story was first published, Burlington paper Seven Days reported that it had uncovered further transphobic tweets by Felker himself through an internet archive tool.
Felker told VTDigger in an interview after the Tuesday campaign launch that his “political views on the subject are that transgender individuals have every right to engage and interact in society and have equal access,” Felker said.
“It’s not exactly what the transgender community would like to hear,” he added. “They’ve labeled me as transphobic for saying that. That’s their opinion. I’m not phobic of any transgender person. I support their right to do whatever they like and live and find happiness. But I will defend women’s rights, women’s sports.”
Felker, who is gay, said his beliefs are informed by his Christian religion, so he concludes “we are created in the likeness of God and that none of us are born in the wrong bodies.”
Felker said he also “proudly” defends women-only spaces and female-only sports leagues — a concept that has been criticized as transphobic, or a form of trans-exclusionary radical feminism.
He said he deleted his Twitter weeks before his campaign was launched because he doesn’t have time for social media, not in an attempt to hide any tweets.
When asked by VTDigger if Felker considered himself a Republican more in line with Gov. Phil Scott or former President Donald Trump, he declined to answer, saying he doesn’t align himself with any political figure. He described himself as a “compassionate conservative” who forms his political views around constitutional principles and his Christian faith.
If elected, he said he wants to pursue a “positive policing” policy that would add funding, officers and social workers to the BPD. He declined to specify whether he would support restoring last summer’s cuts or funding the BPD beyond its previous levels. He said more research needs to be conducted to determine an exact figure.
He said he also wants to encourage the development of more affordable housing in the city by relaxing zoning laws to encourage more building. He pointed to the long-stalled CityPlace development project, which promised 400 new luxury apartments and about 80 affordable units but has been tied up in lawsuits and funding woes.
“We can make jokes about the pit all day long,” Felker said. “But that’s 400 homes that could be on the market this year.”
