During this election season, it’s interesting to consider the Republican political bench of the future, which is already turning into the face of Vermont Republicans today. It wasn’t that long ago when it was hard to imagine where their candidates would come from. There were not many names in circulation from the depleted legislative corps (a corps largely depleted because the efforts of the state party during the last decade were largely slaved to the needs of Governor Douglas, to the ongoing depletion and detriment of the legislative caucus).
Just last cycle we were left to wonder who exactly the other team had? Randy Brock still wants to stay in the game, but is clearly on the decline. Skip Vallee took his first shot and failed. Wendy Wilton fired up the far right base, but then evaporated. Going back another cycle, there was a lot of speculation on the future of former Speaker Walt Freed, but he too seems like yesterday’s news. Tom Salmon? Puh-leez. There’s a guy who has peaked if there ever was one.
But there are a few new GOP-ers already in circulation who, though running for “lesser” offices now, are likely the stars-in-making who will be the Vermont Republicans candidates for Governor, US Senator, and US Rep – not necessarily in that order.
Washington County Senator Phil Scott is one, and blunting his ascension/graduation into the Lieutenant Governor’s spot this time around is no small task for Democratic candidate Steve Howard (go Steve!). Scott has a well-earned reputation as a nice guy, so it’s not easy to beat the guy up. He’s also got a record as a moderate, which the weeniecrats self-described conservative Dems just looooove (cause apparently nothing shows what a free thinker you are than to be the only one among your self-described Demmycrat buddies that voted for a Republican. Barf.).
Scott is the exception in this list, being the only one emerging from that skimpy legislative bench. For others, the GOP has had to work non-traditional paths of ascension. Jason Gibbs was Jim Douglas’s spokesman until he went on the administrative resume building boot camp into the office of Forest and Parks. No one has been more obviously groomed for ascension by the Douglas crowd than Mr. Gibbs, who may well be encouraged to go for the top spot next time out if (when) Dubie loses to Shumlin (assuming Gibbs defeats Democratic candidate Jim Condos for SoS – which, honestly, I’d have to bet against Gibbs on, assuming Condos starts getting out there more visibly, and soon)
Finally, there’s the other Dubie – and another in the long line of Frankenstein monsters created by the state Democrats (the Democratic majority really didn’t have to help him along by voting him into the position, did they?). Michael Dubie holds the same position Martha Rainville (for whom it was clearly a political stepping stone) did before her run for US Representative, and he too would seem at a glance to have US Representative candidate written all over him. Perhaps if his brother does win (not gonna happen), he’ll respond to growing murmurs about the appropriateness of having a sibling team in charge of the state Guard by saying “fine, I’ll step down and go for Peter Welch’s office….”
The emerging threesome – and no doubt there are more. What other GOP rising stars are there to watch out for…?
…but in doing so, I need to do a full disclosure thing:
Hilary Cooke is running for State Senate in Windham County as a Republican, for Peter Shumlin’s old seat. He also happens to be a friend of mine. He supports same-sex marriage and universal health care.
Hilary’s a very strong supporter of Vermont Yankee. We are diametrically opposed on this, and for that reason, I won’t vote for him. But he’s a great guy and he and I agree on a lot of issues. I think if there’s any Republican who’s got a shot in Windham County, it’s him. I doubt he’s a rising star of the party because he’ll probably piss a lot of them off with his positions, but he’s a serious challenge to conventional thinking about what the party is and what it’s for and if he were to win, it would turn a few things on their head in ways I’d think would be very interesting.
…a younger member like Adam Howard probably looks like a fairly attractive option.
Phil Scott is a big problem coming up fast. He’s about to win the Lt Gov job in a landslide… those lawn signs are EVERYWHERE. He’ll sit as Lt Gov until the Gov seat opens up; makes me as nauseous as the idea of “caring capitalism”: “environmental car racing”.
Some statewide news organization should ask if Phil Scott should recuse himself in the future from certain votes in the senate that deal with highway contraction issues and state contracts.
He owns heavy construction company and as far as I know no one has looked at the possible conflict of interest here.
I believe he was against the Project Labor Agreement for the Champlain Bridge rebuild.’s
Rich Westman is an up and comer with very conservative politics. He’s smart, sharp and knows his stuff which makes him a real challenge.
As long as Phil Scott runs his construction business, I would think he’d avoid higher aspirations because his business would suffer because of a conflict of interest. DuBois would lose those juicy State contracts.