MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) – With election day just two weeks away, Vermont Governor Phil Scott has been focusing much of his attention not on his own reelection bid, but on the outcome of legislative races.
Candidates like Rep. Katherine Sims are making their final pitches to voters in towns across the Green Mountains. Going door to door in Greensboro Tuesday, the Democrat hopes voters send her from the House to the Senate in Orleans County.
She’s facing Republican Samuel Douglass of North Troy, one of the candidates endorsed by Governor Scott.
Democrat Bobby Starr held the seat for decades before stepping back this year, and it’s just one of several hotly contested races. “From president all the way down to justice of the peace, this election is about the future of Vermont and the future of this country,” said Jim Dandeneau, director of the Vermont Democratic Party.
Democrats gained a record number of seats in the House and Senate following the 2022’s election and used that clout to pass legislation on climate change mitigation, housing, and child care, among other issues. But political and spending disagreements between the governor and Democrats led to a record number of vetoes that the supermajority — in most cases — was able to override.
Scott, who is seeking a fifth term, says he’s running a new kind of race against the democratic caucus as a whole. “I couldn’t disagree more in terms of their philosophy versus mine,” he said.
In a departure from his recent campaigns, Scott is now using his political capital — and thousands in campaign cash — to actively campaign for fellow Republicans. That included a recent fundraiser in Saint Albans for Republican Joe Luneau, who is challenging incumbent Representative Mike McCarthy.
Other contested races are happening in four key districts — Grand Isle-Colchester, Orleans, Chittenden North, and Caledonia.
“Having that supermajority be reduced so they will still have power and will come to the governor and ask their opinion would be helpful to taxpayers and Vermont in general,” Gov. Scott said.
But Dandeneau and other Democrats say the governor has misrepresented their track record on issues like the Clean Heat Standard and last year’s property tax bill. “It’s the kind of shameful right-wing distortions we see at the national level coming home to Vermont, and it’s disappointing to see out of Phil Scott,” Dandeneau said.
And unlike previous years, there’s a lot of money funneled into these races.
Influential business owners, developers, landlords, and others from Chittenden County are pouring tens of thousands of dollars into Republican candidates.
With two weeks to go, competing visions for how to serve Vermonters under the Golden Dome.