Brenda Siegel, an activist hoping to unseat one of the country’s most popular governors, used her first head-to-head match up with Gov. Phil Scott on Friday to try to put the incumbent on the defensive about his record on pensions, housing and the opioid crisis, among other topics.
During the debate between the Republican and Democratic nominees for governor, held at the Tunbridge World’s Fair and moderated by WDEV radio, Scott mostly appeared unbothered by Siegel’s jabs. He sometimes deflected his opponent’s parries by not engaging, and his closing remarks ended with a plea for civility.
“I’ll continue to do what I can to show that you can, you can be elected without being negative, without being vicious, without getting down in the mud,” he said at the end of the hourlong event.
A moderate Republican vying for his fourth term, Scott argued that Vermonters should trust him to continue to chip away at the state’s challenges. His administration had made headway on Vermont’s opioid crisis, cost-of-living challenges and demographic woes before Covid-19 arrived, he said. And with Vermont’s state of emergency behind it, Scott said it was time to return to those efforts.
“We rebounded, and we’re ready to go back to work, to finally figure out what we need to do to attract more people into this state that make it more affordable, to grow the economy and protect the most vulnerable,” he said in his introductory remarks.
Siegel, a longtime activist hoping to pull off a David-and-Goliath political upset, argued in her opening remarks that much bolder visions of governance will be needed to tackle Vermont’s crises. And Siegel, who talks openly and often about losing loved ones to the state’s opioid epidemic and struggling herself to make ends meet, argued the state was not making steady progress but in fact “moving in the wrong direction.”
“This is going to be a tough fight. But it’s not even close to the toughest fight I’ve had to face in my life. And I’m still standing,” Siegel said. “I know that people get up all across our state and have to fight anyways, even though it’s hard. And I’m inviting Vermonters to do that along with me.”
Both Scott and Siegel support a measure to enshrine reproductive rights in Vermont’s constitution that will appear on the November ballot as Article 22. But while questions about abortion highlighted commonalities between the candidates, they also showcased their many differences.
Siegel argued being “pro-choice is not enough for this moment.” Vermont needs updated extradition laws to protect women who come to the state to seek abortion care, she said, as well as their providers.
The state also needs a mandatory paid family and medical leave law, she said — an indirect shot at Scott, who has repeatedly vetoed mandatory paid family leave bills sent to him by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. She also bemoaned his administration’s “wait-and-see” approach.
His retort was short: “I believe in a woman’s right to choose. I believe it’s between her and her health care provider. And I believe in freedom and liberty and we’ll just leave it at that,” he said.
After WDEV moderator Lee Kittell asked if the more than 60 million abortions performed in the last 50 years “is at least part of the reason why so many businesses and organizations can’t find the people that they need to operate,” Scott replied, “I’m not sure you can draw that conclusion,” before quickly pivoting. Vermont’s demographic problems are real, Scott said, but should be tackled via reforms that draw people to the state and make it affordable to live here.
Siegel was more forceful.
“I am sure that you cannot draw that conclusion by that statistic,” she replied, adding that the question was offensive.
“I was not born to develop a workforce. That is not my responsibility as a woman, nor is it the responsibility of any woman or person with reproductive — with a uterus, across our country or across our state,” she said.
Asked by Kittell if Vermont should consider increasing sentences for those who import fentanyl into the state, and what else the state might do to reduce the drug’s deadly impact, Scott suggested that the state may need to renew its attention on enforcement.
The state’s opioid response requires the “four-legged stool” of prevention, treatment, recovery and enforcement, he said.
“A lot of the gun violence we’re seeing, especially in the Burlington area, has been due to this drug activity, illicit drug activity, and so we need to pay attention,” Scott said. “Again, we can’t just focus in one area. We need to focus on all the areas that make this work holistically.”
Siegel replied that arrests are usually concentrated on low-level traffickers who suffer from substance use disorder themselves, not “kingpins,” and instead nodded to criminal justice reform. She said Vermont should emphasize “harm reduction first,” referring to policies focused on mitigating the most severe outcomes of substance use. And she said the state should ensure treatment and recovery on demand, including medically assisted treatment, and better fund mental health services.
“I didn’t hear ‘harm reduction’ mentioned in that answer,” she said of Scott’s reply. “And I know very well from working on this across the state and country and from watching my own family member — who I helped raise — lowered into the ground that we have to do the work to make sure that we can keep people alive in this disease and that we cut at its root.”
Scott shot back that “harm reduction is a big part of our strategy.”
“I’m just surprised to hear that my opponent doesn’t think that we’re doing any of that. Because we are,” he said, pointing to the state’s support of needle exchange programs and Narcan distribution. Scott did, however, gesture to an area of staunch disagreement on the subject between him and Siegel.
“It is part of our strategy and something that we need to pay attention to, but it isn’t about the so-called safe injection sites,” he said.
Indeed, Siegel immediately brought up Scott’s veto of a bill last session that would have commissioned a feasibility study on opening an overdose prevention site — a place where people can use illicit drugs without fear of arrest, and with medical supervision in case of an overdose.
“He didn’t even want to learn about the issue, nonetheless fix it,” she said.
It wasn’t the only time Scott’s record-breaking vetoes came up. Asked about Act 250 and other reforms that might be needed to tackle the state’s housing crisis, the governor brought one up himself. Scott said he wasn’t inclined to regulate short-term rentals, and argued he had tried unsuccessfully for years to convince lawmakers to overhaul and streamline Act 250, the state’s major land use and development bill, to make it easier to build housing.
“Unfortunately, all of them have been rebuffed by the Legislature, and they passed one last year that was just a shadow of itself — and it was going to do more harm than good,” he said. “So I vetoed it as well. So we’re back at the table.”
Siegel replied that short-term rentals needed more government oversight, arguing that out-of-state investors were taking housing off the market as they bought up entire buildings across the state to convert them into short-term rentals. She sought to cast Scott’s veto as an example of a my-way-or-the-highway style of governance.
“The bill that was passed was a really strong bill, it started to make some of those changes, and they got thrown out entirely because the governor wanted to just overhaul the whole thing,” Siegel said.
“The mayor of Burlington, Mayor Miro Weinberger, agreed this bill was a non-starter, would make the problem worse — the Act 250 bill that was passed — and there were many people who celebrated the fact that I vetoed that bill,” Scott replied.