Five Democrats are running in Vermont’s gubernatorial primary on Tuesday. The only one with legislative experience is state Senator John Rodgers. He is also the only one of the five who does not fully support all of the gun restrictions passed by the Democratically-controlled legislature and signed by Republican Governor Phil Scott last session. Rodgers says he had initially decided to run for re-election to the state Senate but agreed to a write-in campaign after a number of people asked him to run in the gubernatorial primary.“After I had filed for my Senate race a group of guys reached out to me and said ‘John we feel like there is no one in the governor’s race that supports our values.’ And I looked at the candidates and sort of felt the same. And I said well there’s no way for me to get into the race now other than sign up as an Independent, which I didn’t want to do I’ve always served as a Democrat, or a write-in campaign. And they said well we’ll do the write-in campaign then. And I told them a write-in campaign is an extremely heavy lift and a long shot. It’s much harder. And they were totally undeterred and here we are.”
The other Democrats running in the August 14th primary are James Ehlers, Christine Hallquist, Ethan Sonneborn and Brenda Siegel. In the Republican race, Keith Stern is challenging first-term incumbent Governor Phil Scott.
You can hear interviews with the candidates at wamc.org.
