At a recent League of Women Voters forum for the six candidates running for the three Windsor County seats in the Vermont Senate, Jonathan Gleason was quick to tout his endorsement by Gov. Phil Scott. Gleason bills himself as a moderate Republican, which is another way of saying he doesn’t support Donald Trump for president and agrees that Joe Biden won in 2020. Those are points in any Republican’s favor who seeks Scott’s seal of approval.
Scott, who is expected to cruise to a fifth term in November, is traveling the state to drum up support for “commonsense” GOP candidates to lessen the Democrats’ stranglehold on the Statehouse. Democrats control 22 of the 30 Senate seats, giving them a veto-proof supermajority.
Not surprisingly, Windsor County hasn’t made Scott’s campaign itinerary to date. The county hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate since 1994. And with a pro-Trump faction taking over the county GOP this year, Scott, the rare Republican governor to oppose the former president, isn’t inclined to pay a visit.
Gleason, who has stayed clear of the MAGA gang, needed to find a way to let Scott know that he wasn’t aligned with the county’s other GOP Senate candidates — Andrea Murray and Jack Williams — who have hopped aboard the Trump train.
John MacGovern, an anti-Trump Republican who was pushed out as Windsor County GOP chairman by Murray and Co., showed him the way. If the governor wasn’t coming to Windsor County, Gleason should go to him. Last month, the pair drove to Middlebury for a GOP event that Scott was attending.
They showed up early, hoping to catch Scott before the event got underway. The strategy worked. MacGovern, a Windsor resident who has been involved in Vermont GOP politics for more than 20 years, finagled a brief meeting between Gleason and the governor.
“I had my elevator pitch ready,” Gleason told me. He has an engineering background and a master’s degree in business administration. He owned a painting business with 15 employees in the Boston area before selling it and moving to Ludlow, where he already owned property, in 2020. Having been part of the union that represents Boston painters, Gleason is pro-labor.
Apparently, Scott was sold. Shortly after their chat in Middlebury, the governor issued his endorsement, arguing Gleason’s “experience as a small business owner and a former union contractor would bring an important perspective to Montpelier.”
As for the two other Republicans on the ballot? “The governor is planning no further endorsements in the race,” Jason Maulucci, his campaign manager, told me.
Even with the endorsement, Gleason has more than electoral history going against him. He’s raised only $900, according to the most recent state campaign reports. He’s also running against two incumbents while the third Democrat, Joe Major, of Hartford, would seem to have the inside track on replacing Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Bethel, who is retiring.
After the candidates’ forum in Windsor, I talked with a Democrat in audience who pointed out that Gleason has at least one thing going for him: “He’s normal.” Not always a given these days in a party controlled by Trump.
The 90-minute forum touched on some front-burner issues — school spending, property taxes and responses to climate change — that could sway voters.
But I heard no mention of the need for more government transparency and accountability in Vermont. After what happened in Hartford this summer, I had hoped Democrats and Republicans could agree the state’s public records and open meeting laws aren’t always serving the best interests of everyday Vermonters.
Exhibit A: The Hartford School Board handed longtime Superintendent Tom DeBalsi nearly a quarter of a million dollars in taxpayer money to leave town with a year remaining on his contract.
The public still hasn’t been told the reasons behind the sweetheart deal. To avoid public scrutiny, the two sides signed a nondisclosure agreement that they allege prohibits either party from talking about the terms of the agreement, with some narrow exceptions.
“It was shocking to read the Hartford School Board apparently cut a secretive backroom deal to send the school superintendent packing and then tried to hide it from taxpayers, who will be expected to pay the bill,” Vermont Press Association President Lisa Loomis wrote in an email, after I asked the organization for a comment. (The VPA represents the interests of four dozen newspapers, including the Valley News, that cover Vermont.)
The House and Senate committees on government operations, which has jurisdiction over public records and open meeting laws, are “some of the (Legislature’s) hardest working panels, but it appears Hartford’s misconduct is telling them they have not done enough for transparency,” said Loomis, editor and co-owner of the Valley Reporter in Waitsfield.
After the Windsor forum, I asked several of the candidates for their take on the Hartford board’s behind-closed-door tactics.
“It’s just a difficult situation,” Major said. “I can understand how people are disappointed.”
Nondisclosure agreements are “for the private sector,” Gleason said. “When public money is involved there has to be transparency.”
Incumbents Alison Clarkson, of Woodstock, and Becca White, of Hartford, both sit on the Senate government operations committee.
When asked about Hartford going the nondisclosure route, White said, “I was surprised. I don’t fully understand what went on.”
Clarkson didn’t buy my argument that nondisclosure agreements unfairly keep taxpayers in the dark. “It’s a personnel issue,” she said, adding that she’s giving the Hartford School Board the “benefit of the doubt. This isn’t my field of expertise.”
If people are unhappy with how Hartford board members handled it, they can vote them out of office at Town Meeting, Clarkson said.
The same holds true for next month’s state election, I might add.
Jim Kenyon can be reached at jkenyon@vnews.com.
