The Vermont Republican Party held its first Twitter Spaces meeting last week bringing together GOP supporters across the state to discuss how to recruit more candidates to run in Statehouse races this year.
The virtual event was hosted by the conservative virtual news outlet the Vermont Daily Chronicle.
Vermont GOP Chair Paul Dame told those attending the event that the Democratic supermajority in the state legislature has provided leverage to do what they want.
“The Vermont House has 150 total seats in it. The Vermont Senate has 30 total seats. And in the House Republicans are now 37 of those 150 and in the Senate we have 7 of the 30 Senate seats,” Dame noted. “Unfortunately, we had a number of seats last time that just went uncontested. Part of that was the map was drawn and it was drawn a little bit late because the census was late so it didn’t really line up with our filing petition deadlines. But we don’t have that excuse this year and so we’ve already started working in a couple different counties where we think we’ve got pickup opportunities to win in November.”
Dame pointed to fellow Republican Governor Phil Scott’s State of the State priorities as the key issues GOP candidates can focus on during the upcoming legislative campaign.
“It is affordability especially you know related to property taxes and education taxes,” listed Dame. “In addition to affordability, it’s public safety. I mean it’s scary what’s happened to Vermont. It used to be known as the safest place in the country. And now two of the top ten most dangerous cities in the country are in Vermont: Burlington and Rutland. And then the third thing is housing. So I think the things that the Governor outlined are things that are all in line for Republican solutions because Democrats have been at the wheel in the Legislature for over 20 years and all of those things have gotten worse.”
Dame took a more moderate tone when challenged by Richard Ley over the party’s lack of support for Gerald Malloy’s 2022 Senatorial campaign against Democrat Peter Welch and for backing a Republican governor who does not support Donald Trump.
“When Malloy ran last time I didn’t see a lot of help from the Republican Party in the state of Vermont for Gerald,” Ley recalled. “That’s kind of disappointing. And I have to add we’ve got a governor that didn’t vote for the Republican president. That’s disgraceful. Why is our governor supporting Nikki Haley who’s losing her shirt in every primary?”
“I think it’s perfectly fair for any Republican to support any Republican who’s running during the primary,” Dame said. “And Nikki hasn’t dropped out. That’s what a primary is for.”
“Well, you know then, he shouldn’t denounce the best president in recent history either,” argued Ley. “I personally feel Phil Scott’s a disgrace to my state.”
“If we want any chance of changing the direction of this state, we can’t make Phil Scott the number one enemy,” countered Dame. “It’s got to be the Democratic supermajority.”
Dame was asked what areas of the state the GOP would target to find candidates and could be vulnerable to the Democrats that hold seats. He did not want to provide details due to the openness of the meeting, but added that in general they are targeting a number of legislative seats.
“Caledonia County is a place where we had a number of seats that we just didn’t contest that are very Republican,” Dame noted. “I think the Democrats who are serving in there now might be the only Democrats that have ever served those towns since the Civil War! So that’s a place that we are definitely focused on. But I think there’s a couple other places where we have very, very good candidates and we could still have a Republican win a state rep race given some of the local dynamics. So, except for Essex County because we have everything up there, there’s one maybe two seats in most counties that we can be very competitive on.”
All seats in the Vermont legislature are up for election this fall.
