Hartford
In the two-seat Windsor 4-2 district, which includes White River Junction, Wilder, Hartford Village and the area south and east of Route 4 in Quechee, state Reps. Gabrielle Lucke and Kevin “Coach” Christie are facing challenges in the Democratic primary from former Hartford School Board member Jeff Arnold and Ashley Andreas, a member of a recently formed political group, the Upper Valley Young Liberals.
The winners of that match-up will go on to face two Republican challengers, military retiree Kevin Stuart and telecommunications executive Charlie Davenport.
Lucke said one issue on her radar is marijuana legalization, a topic that drew a lot of attention this year, and which she thinks will return to the Statehouse next year. Her views have evolved, she said, from when she first entered the debate with a strong stance against legalization.
“I think for me, I am at a point now where I recognize we are in a process as a state and I really want to do it right,” she said.
Christie and Lucke were among just a handful of lawmakers from the Upper Valley earlier this month who voted against a House measure that would have allowed Vermonters to cultivate two marijuana plants at home.
Lucke said she’d be mindful of Hartford’s needs at the state level, which she said are sometimes driven by its proximity to the state border with New Hampshire, and by the fact that it has more roads than any other town in the country.
“Transportation issues are really important,” she said. In addition, she said, “not only do we need to address low-income housing, we need to develop some activities for our workforce to find quality affordable homes to be able to anchor ourselves economically in our community.”
Christie is the ranking member on the House Committee on Education, which was instrumental in crafting Act 46, a major education reform bill that seeks to address declining student populations and the increasing costs of education by encouraging consolidation among school district administrative structures.
Christie, who was not available for comment on Thursday, moved to Quechee in 1973, and taught at the Hartford Technical Career Center. He has also been a member of the Hartford School Board since 2007, including a stint as chairman.
Jeff Arnold, who has run a day care in Hartford with his wife since 2002, also served on the Hartford School Board; since leaving, he has often sparred with Christie while publicly criticizing the current board’s actions and policies.
He is also a member of the Vermont Early Childhood Alliance, which he said would help inform his legislative positions on issues like poverty, hunger, housing and education.
“I’m interested in ways to curb opiate addiction. If you can reach kids and get them in day care and save their brains from bad environments,” he said, “you can build their self esteem in a way that they won’t turn to opiates.”
Arnold offered a prepared statement in which he said he would offer “great transparency.”
“I … will find ways to survey those I represent to get their feedback on critical issues that concern us such as universal childcare, opiate addiction, school consolidation, affordable housing and health care, sustainable energy initiatives, suicide prevention at Quechee Gorge and the legalization of marijuana among others,” he wrote.
Arnold said he would consider voting for some form of marijuana legalization, but that he would want to see what other states, like Colorado and Washington, have done.
Andreas, 23, moved to Hartford from Pennsylvania five years ago, and is scheduled to be the class speaker at the upcoming graduation ceremony of the Community College of Vermont, where she is about to receive a two-year business degree.
She also works at the college, which she says she will continue to attend throughout the upcoming legislative session, while pursuing a second degree in environmental science.
She said she identifies with the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt.
“I feel like a top priority for our area is the opiate problem,” she said. “This is not a place where young people can thrive. They stay here and they struggle and they slip into things like addiction.”
She said she would focus on matters of importance to young people, including affordable housing and universal health care coverage.
Andreas said she fully supports legalizing marijuana.
Statewide primaries are scheduled for August 9; the top two Democratic vote-getters in the Windsor 4-2 district will compete against the Republican challengers on the November ballot.
Stuart, 62, has lived in Hartford for 25 years; his career includes 35 years of military service, much of which was in the National Guard, and a variety of other jobs including as a computer operator at Green Mountain Power and working with veterans at the VA’s White River Junction Medical Center.
Currently retired, his only previous political experience, he said, is that he was appointed last year to fill a term as justice of the peace.
Stuart said the first thing he wanted to examine was how to curb state spending.
“I’m looking at the budget, and how we’ve increased spending by 5 percent but revenues are only up 2 percent,” he said. “That’s a big deal.”
Stuart said that, after participating in drug reduction operations in the military, he worried that Vermont’s steps toward legalization of marijuana would negatively impact the battle against opiates.
“That’s a stepping stone. That could create lots of problems especially for our young people,” he said.
“We’re making progress here (in Hartford against opiates), but that could throw everything back to the beginning.”
Stuart acknowledged that a Republican faces a tough road in a traditionally Democratic district, but said he planned to make the argument that the state can benefit by having a diversity of thought.
“If you have just one party, then whatever they want is going to get pushed through,” he said. “If you get more people on both sides, you get more cases where you sit down and talk.”
Davenport, a White River Junction resident who previously served as general manager of Topsham Telephone Company, could not be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, in the single-seat Windsor 4-1 district, which includes Barnard, Pomfret, West Hartford and much of Quechee, Democrat incumbent Teo Zagar, of Barnard, will not seek re-election. Democrat Sue Buckholz, of Quechee, is running unopposed to fill Zagar’s seat.
Buckholz, an attorney with a background in the juvenile court system, said she would bring that experience to the position.
“I’ve seen devastated families for a long time. I’ve battled (the Department for Children and Families) for a long time, and I’ve also realized that we don’t put enough resources into DCF to do what they need to do to keep families intact,” she said.
Zagar, who was frustrated by the defeat of marijuana legalization efforts, said he had not yet decided whether to endorse Buckholz.
In a May 23 announcement of his decision not to seek re-election, he wrote that he was “stepping aside because my small business needs tending to and because new opportunities are emerging, opportunities that I would regret passing up.”
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.