BRATTLEBORO — The recent forum promised a rare in-person chance to unplug from online offerings and shake hands with southeastern Vermont’s 2022 state Senate candidates.
“This year is the first in 20,” the event program exclaimed, “that both of Windham County’s two seats are open!”
So why did only 50 people — many of them family, friends or journalists — show up to the 425-seat venue?
You couldn’t say the setting was uninspired: A historic church sanctuary with a Tiffany stained-glass window honoring the late 1890s Gov. Levi Fuller. Instead, the race itself isn’t generating the public interest anticipated earlier this year, when incumbent Becca Balint stepped down to run for Congress and colleague Jeanette White decided to retire after two decades.
The race initially sparked headlines when the Aug. 9 primary saw three Democrats and three Republicans compete for their party’s two Nov. 8 general election nominations.
(The Senate district includes all Windham County towns except Londonderry, Stratton and Wilmington, which are part of the neighboring Bennington County district.)
On the Democratic side, Wendy Harrison, a Brattleboro-based traveling municipal manager, and Nader Hashim, a former Dummerston state representative and current law clerk, won over Wichie Artu, an Athens farmer and social justice advocate. The three collectively spent more than $45,000 on the contest, according to the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office.
On the Republican side, Westminster logger Mark Coester made news when he marched in a parade with a flag associated with fascism and a “Pepe the Frog” drawing linked to white nationalists. In response, Vermont GOP chair Paul Dame encouraged people to vote for his party’s other two candidates, Brattleboro tax preparer Richard Kenyon and retired Brattleboro banker Richard Morton.
In the end, Coester won, only to drop his party affiliation and run as an independent. His reason: He is campaigning as an independent in a separate bid for the U.S. Senate, and state law prohibits a candidate from running as the nominee of a political party in one race if they’re on the ballot as an independent in another.
That caused the Windham contest to swell to six candidates: Two Democrats, two Republicans and two independents — the second of the latter group being Brattleboro Selectboard member Tim Wessel. But based on the turnout at the Brattleboro forum and an event in Dover with even lower attendance, public interest hasn’t risen at the same rate.
The two Democrats, knowing their party has won every Windham Senate election in the past 30 years, are running as a team. Harrison’s and Hashim’s campaign websites feature cross-referencing links, and the candidates are set to hold a public event with Balint on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at Brattleboro’s Stone Church.
“We have a substantial amount of common ground and shared priorities,” the two wrote in a recent newspaper commentary that listed those priorities as affordable housing, workforce development, climate resilience, child care and the opioid crisis.
The Republicans and independents are running as individuals, although neither Coester nor Kenyon appeared at the Brattleboro forum. The two also haven’t campaigned publicly or offered statements to the press.
Morton, who chairs the local and regional GOP committees in Brattleboro and Windham County, is hoping lawn signs and a website will help him become the first winner from his party since the late Sen. Robert Gannett, who served from 1973 to 1992.
Morton spoke at the Brattleboro forum in support of less government bureaucracy and in opposition to Proposal 5 — also known as Article 22 — the amendment that would enshrine “personal reproductive liberty” in the Vermont Constitution.
“If you’re thoroughly satisfied with the direction the state of Vermont is going in with the party that’s in the supermajority in Montpelier, then perhaps you just stay the course,” Morton said at the forum. “But if you have any doubts at all, I think you need a couple of Rs (Republicans) up there, and I would offer myself for that.”
Wessel’s website lists child care, housing and the need for local control as his priorities. It also explains why he’s running as an independent.
“I get that question a lot, especially from my friends who know that I pretty much align quite a bit with Democratic Party values,” Wessel said at the forum. “My answer is I truly believe that sometimes here the party becomes the problem. I think the tradition of selectboards dropping party politics and rolling up their sleeves and getting to work for their constituents can be extended up into the Montpelier zone.”
Then again, Wessel’s selectboard work is drawing criticism from some voters. One went onto his campaign’s Facebook page to complain that the Brattleboro board voted with little public notice or debate last spring to drop the town’s nearly 60-year contract with Windham County’s largest and longest-serving emergency medical service provider before conducting a feasibility study or releasing the background material behind its decision.
“Do you plan to work in the Legislature with the same level of ‘transparency’?” Brattleboro resident Rebecca Bartlett wrote. “You say there was a comparison made of other towns; but no data is provided. The taxpayers deserved an inside track on the analysis of such an important service.”
In response, Wessel told VTDigger he could share a YouTube video of an April municipal meeting on the topic. But the town government has said it won’t release any specific documents on the decision because the paperwork involves contract negotiations that are exempt under the state’s public records law.
