BURLINGTON — Vermont’s state chapter of the Republican Party narrowly reelected its current chair, Paul Dame, to another two-year term on Saturday over a challenge from a sitting state senator. Dame won the election by just three votes, 50-47, over Essex County Republican Sen. Russ Ingalls.
The vote was held during the state GOP’s biennial convention at a hotel on the Lake Champlain waterfront in Burlington. Also on Saturday, the party voted in a new vice chair — Rep. Zachary Harvey, R-Castleton — as well as a slate of other statewide officers who oversee the party’s electoral strategy and manage its finances.
Harvey beat out two other candidates for the No. 2 job: Gregory Thayer of Rutland and William Kolb of Northfield. Dame had endorsed Kolb, over Harvey and Thayer, for the vice chair role.
The roughly 100 people who voted in Saturday’s election, which was held by secret ballot, were mostly members of county Republican committees from across the state.
Dame, who is from St. George, campaigned for what will be his third term as chair largely on the sweeping successes Vermont Republicans saw in last year’s election. The party dismantled Democratic supermajorities in both state House and Senate; national data, meanwhile, shows about half of all state legislative seats the GOP won in 2024 were in Vermont.
To be sure, the state party owed much of its success at the ballot box last fall to Republican Gov. Phil Scott, who was notably absent from Saturday’s proceedings. Republican Lt. Gov. John Rodgers was the highest-ranking state official in attendance Saturday and oversaw the chair and vice chair election.
Ingalls, meanwhile, contended in recent weeks that Dame had not done enough to raise money for the party or recruit down-ballot candidates. He wasted little time criticizing Dame during a speech pitching his candidacy to the room ahead of Saturday’s vote, charging that the state GOP was “broke” and had “no plan” to win more legislative seats.
Dame said in an interview that the party has about $18,000 on hand, while federal filings show the party had $27,000 in its accounts as of last month.
“Once Paul is paid and this event is paid for, (it’s) more than likely that there will be no money left in the till,” Ingalls said ahead of Saturday’s vote, while Dame, sitting nearby among the audience, shook his head.
In his speech, the Essex County senator also criticized a campaign missive that Dame sent out Thursday in which Dame referred to “cowards who support my opponent” who “tear us apart and trash our party to the press.”
Ingalls was formally nominated for the post on Saturday by former state GOP chair Rob Roper as well as Joe Gervais, who chairs the Bennington County GOP committee. Gervais had briefly thrown his own hat into the ring for chair last month before dropping out and endorsing Ingalls.
Dame was nominated by Terry Burke, vice chair of the Rutland County GOP, as well as Roy Spaulding, the party chair in Windsor County.
In his pitch to the room on Saturday, Dame said he had modernized some of the party’s back-end technology in recent years and described himself as an effective communicator for the party’s message in the press.
He took credit, during his speech, for leveraging a relationship with a Fox News journalist to, in his telling, help make controversial remarks that Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., made about immigrant labor over the summer “go viral.”
“We are on a better path — in a better position — than we’ve been, in 20 years, and if you join me and we work together, you’ll be amazed by the change we can make with just two more years,” Dame said Saturday.
Senate Minority Leader Scott Beck, R-Caledonia, said in an interview after the vote that he agreed with Ingalls that fundraising was “a notable area of improvement” needed for the state GOP. But he indicated that he did not think either Dame, or Ingalls, would have done a substantially better job at tackling that issue than the other.
“I think either one of them would have made a great chair,” Beck said. “I think it’s always good that you have contests, instead of just appointments — or anointments.”
