BURLINGTON — The rays of a setting February sun slanted over Mansfield Avenue as Rob Gutman stepped on to the porch of a trim, yellow house. Behind him, the sunlight bathed the brick walls of Mater Christi School, where in less than two weeks Ward 1 voters would cast their ballots in the city’s annual election.
Gutman rang the doorbell. The door opened, and a face appeared. “Hi there, I’m Rob Gutman. I’m running for City Council,” said the Democratic candidate for the Ward 1 seat.
It’s a process that both Gutman and incumbent Zoraya Hightower, a Progressive, have repeated over and over in the past few weeks. And as each candidate darkens doorways and logs on to virtual forums, both parties agree that the City Council’s makeup, and Burlington’s political future, could be on the line.
With the city’s March 1 election already underway, all eyes are on the city’s easternmost precinct to determine whether Progressives will maintain their six-seat plurality over Democrats, independents and Republicans. Aside from Ward 1, an open seat in the neighboring Ward 8 represents the most competitive race for Progressives, though the party’s incumbent faces a challenger in Ward 3 as well.
But the race in Ward 1, perhaps more than any other precinct, serves as a referendum in the city’s debate about police reform. Hightower sponsored the council’s 2020 move to reduce the number of officers the city’s police department could hire by 30%. While Hightower later joined other councilors in raising that cap, Gutman and other Democrats say the initial decision caused dozens of officers to leave the force, making Burlington less safe.
Gutman also has criticized Hightower’s vote not to confirm acting Chief Jon Murad as permanent head of the police department, saying in a statement at the time that confirming a leader for the agency would help it become “stable, properly resourced, and positioned to support the full range of public safety needs facing our diverse community.”
Hightower took issue with the acting chief’s attitude toward racial bias in policing and the process that led to his nomination. Appointing Murad to wrap up the city’s more than two-year search for a police chief was not a good idea, she said.
“If you push forward a police chief that doesn’t have community support, that didn’t go through a good search process, that has not the support of the Police Commission, sure, then you’ve got a police chief. But you’ve got a police chief that’s mired in controversy,” she said in an interview.
Despite her stance on some policing issues, Hightower says she is not a hardline Progressive, pointing to her past efforts to compromise with Mayor Miro Weinberger and his fellow Democrats on the council.
Still, that message might not resonate with some voters in Ward 1, who are fed up with Progressives for what they see as a mismanagement of city affairs.
“Most people have very strong opinions on public safety, and the ones who think that the first resolution (to lower the officer cap) … wasn’t well thought out or that it came too quickly — chances are I’m not going to be able to change those people’s minds,” Hightower told VTDigger.
Gutman, meanwhile, says his candidacy has been welcomed by people such as the ones Hightower described. Even among those who aren’t so disposed, the response has been positive.
“I’m surprised at how interactive people have been, given Covid,” Gutman told VTDigger while campaigning along Mansfield Avenue last week. “People are really interested in having an option.”
While conversing with potential voters, Gutman rarely spoke at length about his policies. Instead, he stood quietly most of the time, listening to residents offer their evaluation of how the city has fared since two years ago, when Hightower was elected.
“Hopefully you can see from my demeanor that I’m not a loud, in-your-face person,” he commented to a VTDigger reporter after hearing from one undecided voter.
Hightower said she does not talk about Gutman while campaigning, and Gutman did not mention his opponent’s name during the hour VTDigger accompanied him Friday afternoon.
Yet Progressives have seized on words from some of Gutman’s supporters to paint a different picture of the race. In a fundraising email earlier this month, Josh Wronski, the party’s executive director, said that Hightower is “under attack” from Democrats, who are “joining in” with “national right-wing and anti-reform groups” to win the seat.
In response to an inquiry about the types of attacks Democrats were using, Wronski did not provide VTDigger with any evidence that Democratic leaders were attacking Hightower. He sent VTDigger screenshots of an email written by a local financial adviser currying support for Gutman, as well as a Facebook post by former City Council President Kurt Wright, a Republican.
Commenting on the fundraising email, Burlington Democratic Party Chair Adam Roof told VTDigger: “If having competitive races counts as an attack, I don’t know how to respond to that. … You can’t spend time with Rob Gutman and think he’s some sort of political hack job.”
The tight race has stirred the hearts of donors, with Gutman’s campaign raking in more than $11,000 to Hightower’s nearly $7,000, according to campaign finance filings. In the period between Jan. 30 and Feb. 19, however, the two candidates were neck and neck, with Gutman collecting $6,850 to Hightower’s $6,748.
The Democrat has spent about $6,300 so far — mostly on mailing campaign literature — more than three times as much as his Progressive opponent.
For whatever policy positions they may differ on, both candidates said they want to hold the University of Vermont — whose campus accounts for swaths of Ward 1 — accountable for providing its students more housing on campus.
With about a week and a half until Town Meeting Day, city officials said they had received about 230 mail-in and drop-off ballots from Ward 1. When Hightower won her race, the ward saw 1,700 residents cast a vote.
