The Burlington Free Press successfully buried the lead when its article about Chittenden County candidates casually noted (in the second paragraph) that Burlington City Councilor Tim Ashe would be a candidate for the Democratic nomination for state Senate. But perhaps the BFP missed the story because it didn’t even realize it had one. The article never mentions that Mr. Ashe was elected to the City Council as a Progressive!
Apparently Third Place Tony isn’t the only Prog jumping ship. But Mr. Ashe didn’t just leave the Progs, we joined the Dems, or so it seems.
Until David Zuckerman fills us in – we know he reads this blog, after all – I’ll go ahead and speculate about the inspiration for the move:
1. Tim Ashe wants to win. He knows the Democratic Party label is more powerful county-wide, and he is making a pragmatic maneuver. Sure, it’s entirely self-serving and transparently opportunistic, but it just might work.
2. Tim Ashe wants to help build the Progressive Party in the State Senate. He doubts he’ll be successful in a county-wide primary, but he knows it will give him some additional name recognition. He’ll also mount a write-in campaign on the Prog ballot, so he is assured of their nomination. If he loses the Dem primary, he will at least have had his name in front of the Chittenden County voters once before November. If he secures one of the six Democratic nominations, he can run as a Progressive/Democrat, which would boost his general election chances significantly (but of course, if he won, he would caucus and vote with the Progressives exclusively, and probably not seek the Democratic Party nomination two years later). This tactic would look decidedly less opportunistic to the casual observer, but would of course generate a lot of resentment among people who caught on.
3. Tim Ashe feels that he has more in common with the Democratic Party and the issues it promotes, and so has made a genuine conversion.
4. Typo by the Secretary of State’s office. But if this were the case, I’d have expected it to be fixed by now.
Given Mr. Ashe’s behavior on the City Council (such as voting for ultra-conservative Republican Kurt Wright for Council President over Democrat Russ Ellis, just like the other “Progs”), it seems unlikely he’s really interested in a mutually beneficial relationship with the Democratic Party. And since there hasn’t been a story about him leaving the Progressive Party at the city level, this smacks of a blatant attempt to abuse the primary system. If so, the only question left is whether Tim Ashe is working to promote Tim Ashe or the Progressive Party; but in either case, it would be one of the more cynically motivated political plays we’ve seen at this level.