Hartford
State Rep. Gabrielle Lucke, D-Hartford, announced on Sunday that she would not seek a third term 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.
“Over the past several weeks, a number of things have come to light,” Lucke said in a statement she released on social media and on the Hartford town Listserve. “Considering all that is ahead, I have decided not to run for re-election in November.”
And in the Windsor 4-1 district, which represents the rest of Hartford along with Barnard and Pomfret, state Rep. Sue Buckholz, D-Quechee, confirmed on Wednesday that she does not plan to seek re-election.
“I am not running again due to family and professional obligations that are not compatible with the position,” Buckholz, an attorney, said in an email to the Valley News.
Buckholz was among a handful of Democrats who voted against a gun control bill that came to the House floor for the first time on Friday. She was absent for a Tuesday vote on the bill, but it passed the House, 89-54, with support from Lucke, who said the bill was consistent with upholding the constitutional right to bear arms and called it “democracy at its finest.”
With nearly a month to go before candidates can begin submitting signatures from supportive voters, it’s still unclear who exactly will be in the mix for a potential Democratic primary in August.
“There are folks talking about running but no one has confirmed their candidacy yet, and I am not at liberty to disclose their names at this point,” Buckholz said.
Longtime Rep. Kevin Christie, a Democrat, has indicated that he wants to retain the other seat in the Windsor 4-2 district, while Hartford Selectwoman Rebecca White has announced her plans to succeed Lucke, running as a Democrat.
If no one else enters that Democratic primary, Christie and White would advance to a showdown with as-yet unnamed Republican candidates in November.
Military retiree Kevin Stuart, who ran against Christie and Lucke in 2016, said he has no plans to run this year, and that he was unaware of any Republican challengers.
A successful bid by the 23-year-old White, a White River Junction homeowner and solar industry employee, would be the next step in a precocious career that began when the Wilder native entered the University of Vermont at age 16, and went public in 2015, when she won a contested Selectboard spot at the age of 20.
Now, in a bid to become one of the youngest-serving state representatives, White’s age and background have played a big role in her campaign positions, she said.
“The obvious one with my age is that we do have an exodus of young Vermonters either not being able to stay in the state because they can’t find opportunities to stay in the state or afford to live in the state, or they don’t find Vermont has the things they want in the state,” she said.
White said she would advocate for the creation of meaningful jobs, and pointed to White River Junction’s ongoing downtown development boom as an example of how the state can play a role in creating vibrant local communities. The downtown has benefited from a state-authorized tax increment financing district that channels tax dollars into infrastructure projects.
And White said she wanted to ensure that people continue to receive the type of affordable housing that allowed her to become a first-time homeowner through a state-supported program administered by the Twin Pines Housing Trust.
White, a member of the Upper Valley Young Liberals, has consistently progressive values, supports marijuana legalization and said she would advocate for a carbon tax that would redirect money from the gas pump to subsidize energy efficient home heating bills.
“I truly believe that a tax on carbon is going to happen. It is the right way to address the externalities that come with fossil fuel use,” she said.
Among other arguments, critics of a carbon tax have said that it will disproportionately impact businesses in communities that, like Hartford, lie along the New Hampshire border.
White said the argument does little to dampen her support for a carbon tax.
“Any time Vermont wants to do something progressive or be a leader or frankly do the right thing, they say that New Hampshire is not going to do it, and it’s going to be cheaper to go to New Hampshire,” she said. “Hartford in particular has shown that you can border a ‘no-sales-tax’ community and still have a flourishing community.”
White pointed to her work on the Selectboard as evidence that she can find a good balance between services and taxes.
“I have been very comfortable making extremely difficult decisions around funding opportunities,” she said. “We can have a flat budget and still have extremely exciting initiatives happen that improve our community.”
White has supported three municipal budgets during her tenure, with projected municipal tax rate increases of 3.6 percent in 2016, zero percent in 2017 and 3.4 percent in 2018. She will help craft one more budget before her second two-year Selectboard term expires in 2019.
For budget deliberations that happened during her tenure on the Selectboard, White was an early and vocal advocate of closing the Sherman Manning Pools, which she said does not serve enough people to justify the cost to taxpayers.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.