Updated Wednesday, Nov. 9, at 12:28 p.m.
Mike Pieciak, the state’s former top banking and insurance watchdog, has been elected as Vermont’s next state treasurer.
He will be the first openly LGBTQ+ person to lead the office, which oversees the state’s investments, manages its debt and cash flow, issues bonds and administers three public pension systems.
In a short speech at a Vermont Democratic Party gathering Tuesday night in Burlington, Pieciak thanked his supporters. He also gestured at the historic nature of his win — alongside that of Becca Balint, who will become the first woman and first LGBTQ+ person the state sends to Washington — and honored those who had come before.
From the stage, Pieciak addressed Rep. Bill Lippert, a Democrat from Hinesburg who was the General Assembly’s only out gay member in 2000 when he helped draft the state’s landmark civil unions bill in 2000. (Lippert is retiring from politics this year.)
“You made it so easy for someone like me to be able to run and be open, and it’s just amazing,” Pieciak said. “I owe that to you.”
Pieciak defeated Republican nominee H. Brooke Paige 62% to 33%, according to complete but uncertified results released Wednesday by the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office.
Pieciak, a 39-year-old Winooski Democrat, had no primary challengers and in the general election faced only token opposition from Paige, a perennial candidate whom the Vermont Republican Party nominated after nobody else stepped forward. (Paige was also the GOP’s nominee for secretary of state.)
Pieciak was endorsed from the start by Vermont Treasurer Beth Pearce, who, citing health challenges, announced in May that she would not seek reelection after more than a decade in the office. He declared his candidacy just two days after her surprise announcement, and arrived at his campaign launch with the outgoing treasurer by his side.
Like Pearce, Pieciak has promised to protect Vermont’s pension system, but unlike her, he appears much warmer to the idea of fossil fuel divestment, although he has not made firm commitments on the subject. He has also pledged to leverage the treasurer’s office to help tackle the state’s housing and workforce woes.
This is Pieciak’s first electoral race, but he is already seen as a likely contender for higher office. Despite having basically no competition, Pieciak campaigned and fundraised vigorously, visiting every town in the state and raising more cash than several other statewide candidates in competitive races.
Pieciak had spent nearly a decade in state government before announcing his candidacy. A former corporate attorney, he first came to the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation in 2014, during Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin’s administration.
As deputy commissioner of the securities division, he played a key role in the state’s investigation of fraudulent economic development projects funded through the federal EB-5 program. He was promoted to commissioner in 2016, overseeing a staff of about 100 people responsible for regulating and monitoring Vermont’s financial services and insurance industries, and was kept on in that cabinet post when Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, took office.
He took on a more public role in the Scott administration during the Covid-19 pandemic, when he appeared weekly during the governor’s livestreamed press conferences to update Vermonters on the state’s latest pandemic circumstances.