Burlington, Vermont’s major parties have nominated their candidates for the Town Meeting Day city wide elections. Both the Progressives and Democrats are backing women for mayor.
Burlington Democrats met in person and virtually Sunday to choose their slate of candidates for city council and mayor, now that fourth-term Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger isn’t running for re-election in March. Chair Adam Roof noted there was a remarkable amount of interest in the city races, with more than 3,700 people registered for the caucus.
“Today is an historic day for Burlington. Not only is this the largest party nominating caucus in the city’s history but we will be nominating a candidate for mayor who I believe will become the next mayor of Burlington and who will become the first woman to serve in that office.”
Three women sought the mayoral nomination: current city council president Karen Paul, South District city councilor Joan Shannon and tech consultant C.D. Mattison.
Following two hours of voting Roof announced the results.
"For mayor the votes cast were 3,333. In order to earn a nomination you would need to earn 1,667. The results: Joan Shannon 1,689. Karen Paul 1,173. C.D. Matteson 471. Joan did earn the majority."
Shannon says she is proud she secured the nomination after the first round of voting. A key issue in the campaign will be public safety and she says her policies significantly differ from her Progressive challenger.
“The Progressives’ approach to public safety thus far involves defunding the police and I don’t think a lot of people are happy with that decision. I think that there are elements of the Progressive message that certainly do resonate with people and that is that we have to get at the root causes of the problems that we have. To get at those root causes we need to be working with state and federal partners. The bottom line is people are not getting the mental health care that they need. They don’t have the treatment options that are affective, that are available to people. And we have a national housing crisis which is worse in Burlington than almost any place else.”
The previous Monday, Burlington Progressives chose Emma Mulvaney-Stanak as their standard bearer in the mayoral race. She says she and Shannon have different leadership styles and approaches to key policy issues, particularly public safety.
“My approach on community safety is more expansive and holistic than Joan as I’ve seen her lay out her strategy. I think that we need policy that’s really holistic and looks at strategic use of the police but also a response system that is appropriate and timely for folks that sends the right professionals in the city to meet the person who’s in need of help. And we have more investments to do with our existing systems with social workers and street outreach workers. We can be responsive to the community care approach while also strategically using our police to make sure that our communities are safe from behaviors that are actually dangerous and potentially violent.”
Middlebury College Professor of Political Science Bert Johnson expects the mayoral campaign to be policy driven and hinged on public safety issues.
“Joan Shannon is going to try to box in Emma Mulvaney-Stanak on this public safety issue. The Progressives have this reputation, rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, as favoring defunding the police. So I think what Shannon is going to try to do is to say she was not in favor of that from the beginning. And she’s also going to try to outflank them a little bit by saying she understands the need for, as she says, community policing. So I think she’s going to try to solidify the base in terms of those who want to support the police but also to draw away some of that progressive support by saying she’s not against other kinds of measures like community policing and alternative conflict resolution.”
Johnson notes that Burlington Republicans are scheduled to caucus on December 19th, but no mayoral candidate has yet come forward.
