As he prepares to leave his role next month, Vermont Progressive Party Executive Director John Wronski is reflecting on nearly a decade spent growing the state’s third-largest party — the work, the wins and the challenges that defined his tenure.
Wronski announced last month he would leave his position on July 4 and join the staff of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, “one of the most impactful unions in our state,” he said.
“I have a 2-year-old at home and am hoping to have another kid fairly soon, and it felt like a good time to make that switch,” Wronski told VTDigger this week. “It’s been a really good ride, but it was time to change things up a little bit. I’ve accomplished most of what I set out to do, I believe.”
Wronski said he got his start in the Progressive Party while studying at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, where he received a grant to do research on the party.
“I was really fascinated by the work that the party was doing in Vermont,” he said.
Wronski did several stints at larger unions across the country before returning to Vermont to take a position with the party, which would later turn into the executive director role.
“I was, like, living out of a suitcase, traveling all over the state and the country … and I really wanted to kind of settle down permanently in Vermont. I was looking for work, and the elections director position opened up with the Vermont Progressive Party.”
That role soon turned into an executive director position, making Wronski the only staff member for the Vermont Progressive Party until two years ago, when fundraising allowed for the hiring of a second.
Wronski said his successes during his tenure included the election of Progressives into notable roles like former Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman and Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, building a Progressive presence in Barre and making notable fundraising gains.
But he noted that every win was part of a larger, shared effort.
“Our movement is very much a collective effort, and anything that I’ve done has been with a huge team of people supporting that work,” he said.
Reaching across the aisle is key for the party’s success, according to Wronski. He cited the death of a bill pushed by Vermont Democrats to end “fusion” candidates — candidates nominated by two parties — as an example, as Progressives worked with Republicans to stop it.
Wronski also spoke about the party’s failures during his time as director, the largest one being fundraising. The Progressives pride themselves on their grassroots fundraising, he said, but that can make larger monetary windfalls difficult.
“It’s perpetually a struggle, never figuring out how to grow our finances to the level where we could even compete on a two-to-one level with Democrats in most races,” Wronski said. “Our annual budget that was approved for this year is $120,000, which is like a pittance for a statewide organization.”
Long term, the party needs an annual budget of $200,000 or $300,000 to be sustainable, he said.
Wronski declined to say who would take over his position once he’s gone, but he did comment on who had the potential to be larger political players.
“We have a few people on the city council level who are in their first terms in Burlington. Carter Neubieser, Marek Broderick … there’s a lot of potential for them to run for higher office in the near future,” he said. “Tanya Vyhovsky, who’s in the State Senate, is obviously a known entity at this point. But I could definitely see her making a jump for statewide office. We have people like Jane Stromberg, who was a city councilor at one point and had to step back. I could see her either running again or taking on a leadership position within the party.”
Wronski also had advice for the party’s next director.
“You have to surrender your ego,” he said. “That’s the best way I can say it. … You have to be willing and even excited to talk to folks both internally within the party and externally, like in the broader political sphere, who have different views on the way things should be.”
Correction: An editing error in a previous version of this story misspelled the last name of Carter Neubieser and misstated the location of Saint Michael’s College.
