With less than a month until Burlington’s March 1 election, candidates for the eight available City Council seats are hauling in campaign contributions — with good reason, they say.
Persistently high Covid-19 case counts have candidates reimagining how they campaign. Instead of shaking hands and hosting events, they’ve resorted to sending out mailers and purchasing Zoom subscriptions. And while the modified strategies present less risk of transmission, they require more cash.
Eleven of the fifteen candidates running to represent the City Council’s ward seats have collectively raised more than $35,000 in donations so far, according to disclosures filed late last month. (District seats are elected in odd-numbered years.)
Candidates who rake in more than $500 are required to file financial disclosures 30 days, 10 days and four days before a local election. Only one candidate, Progressive Ali House of Ward 8, filed a disclosure without meeting the $500 threshold.
On the whole, candidates in contested races grabbed the most cash, and Democrats beat out Progressives, independents and the sole Republican.
At the top of the board is Ben Traverse, a Democrat running for Ward 5, who raised $15,321 in less than two months since launching his campaign. Neither of Traverse’s independent opponents, Progressive-backed FaReid Munarsyah or Lenora Travis, filed a disclosure.
More than half of Traverse’s funds come from contributions of more than $100, at which point candidates are required to list who provided them. Among Traverse’s top donors are friends and relatives from out of state, including U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, the Ward 5 contender’s former boss.
Traverse said he was grateful for the $500 contribution from Whitehouse, who was his mother’s first cousin. Whitehouse attended the funeral of Traverse’s mother in 2005, where he recruited Traverse to work on his first campaign. He would later serve as Whitehouse’s driver and aide in Washington, Traverse said.
Traverse is not the only candidate with a high-profile donor. Councilor Joe Magee, P-Ward 3, received $250 from actor and activist Susan Sarandon, whom Magee met while campaigning for the presidential runs of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, they said.
Magee has raised $1,276 on top of their $1,883 left over from an August 2021 special election. Magee faces Republican Christopher-Aaron Felker, whom they beat handily in last year’s election. Felker did not file a disclosure.
Aside from Traverse, Democrat Rob Gutman of Ward 1 collected the most of any candidate with $4,444. Gutman, who seeks to unseat Progressive Zoraya Hightower, chipped in $1,778 from his own coffers and received more than $1,600 in contributions that were less than $100.
While Hightower did not file a disclosure, Progressives are not worried about that affecting her chances of success, said Josh Wronski, the party’s executive director.
Because Hightower is an incumbent, raising money is not as critical for her, Wronski said. She already has the tangibles (such as yard signs) and the intangibles (such as relationships with constituents) from her 2020 campaign and two years of council service.
On top of that, money is only part of the equation for mounting a successful campaign, the candidates said.
“If you have the support, you don’t need to raise 10, 12 thousand (dollars), you only need a couple (thousand),” Wronski said.
Still, a candidate’s ability to win over donors can be an indicator that they will also win over voters, said Adam Roof, chair of the Burlington Democratic Party.
But the power of the purse can only extend so far, Roof said.
“Money is important until it’s not,” he told VTDigger. “At some point, it comes down to human connection.”
No other ward in the city better exemplifies that concept than Ward 8, Roof’s former spot on the City Council, he said. Designed to corral college students together as a constituency, the strangely shaped precinct sees a constant turnover in voters.
“The vast majority of people sleeping there tonight won’t be sleeping there, living there or voting there once that lease cycle ends,” Roof said.
With the departure of Roof’s successor, incumbent Progressive Councilor Jane Stromberg, the seat is poised for a Progressive-Democrat matchup as Democrat Hannah King takes on House, the Progressive.
Of the two University of Vermont seniors, only King filed a disclosure last month, reporting that she raised $3,165. Yet House plans to gear up her fundraising and campaigning efforts by the time the next disclosures come out 10 days before the election, Wronski said.
All three candidates filed disclosures in Ward 7, with Progressive-endorsed independent Olivia Taylor’s $3,150 edging out incumbent Ali Dieng by $30 for the biggest sum.
Yet the $3,150 Taylor disclosed in her report does not accurately reflect her cash on hand right now, she told VTDigger, since she returned nearly $2,000 to a donor who exceeded the $1,050 contribution limit.
That donor was one of two who gave to Taylor, according to the disclosure. Both were from Connecticut, where Taylor grew up.
Dieng said he felt confident with the amount he had raised so far, and set a goal to reach $4,000 in contributions by the end of his campaign.
Aleczander Stith, a Democrat who also won the Republican nomination, reported getting just under $2,000, with roughly $200 of that coming from himself.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Aleczander Stith’s party affiliation.
