Following months of hints and whispers to the media, former state Sen. Peter Galbraith officially announced he was running for governor as a Democrat on Tuesday, laying out a progressive platform aimed at shaking up a race that has seen few major policy disagreements.
“This is a remarkable state, but that doesn’t mean we should continue to do thing as we have,” Galbraith said in a Statehouse news conference. “So I am running to change a system in Montpelier that too often favors the special interests over the broader public interest.”
Galbraith’s proposed platform boils down to three big promises: raising the minimum wage in increments to $15, banning big money from politics and protecting Green Mountain ridgelines from industrial wind projects.
Speaking to a crowd composed mostly of anti-wind advocates bringing their message to the Statehouse, Galbraith was cheered when he pledged to ban industrial wind.
“Global warming is the most serious long-term threat that our planet faces, but this doesn’t mean that all solutions make sense,” he said. “Giant turbines, and the roads built to construct and service them, are destroying Vermont’s most pristine ecosystems.”
Galbraith, 65, the son of famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith, repeatedly knocked Gov. Peter Shumlin’s tenure, taking issue with his modest work on health care and aggressive courting of energy interests.
He called Shumlin’s efforts to award companies with financial incentives “a sucker’s game that we cannot win.”
Galbraith, who lives in Townshend, Vt., served Windham County in the Vermont Senate from 2011 to 2015. Prior to that, he held several diplomatic positions, including ambassador to Croatia.
Galbraith also took issue with calls from Republican gubernatorial candidates Phil Scott and Bruce Lisman to cap any budget increases to the state’s level of economic growth.
“Holding budget increases to 2 percent will put next to nothing into the pockets of most Vermonters,” he said. “It might mean an extra five dollars to those making minimum wage.”
As for the two other Democrats in the race, Sue Minter and Matt Dunne, Galbraith portrayed them as candidates with few differences, and agendas that were lacking vision.
He said he decided to run because the slate of Democrats wasn’t progressive enough, saying “somebody has to step up to carry the issues.”