Crossposted at The Vermont Political Observer.

Oh dear. The Republicrat candidate for State Senate in Windham County, Roger Allbee, put his foot in it at a candidates’ forum last week.

For those just joining us, The Artful Roger is a longtime Republican and Ag Secretary under Jim Douglas, but he’s now running in the Democratic primary because, well, a Republican can’t possibly win in Windham. Or because of principle, your choice.

Anyway, there he was on August 21 at the American Legion Post 5 in lovely Brattleboro, along with the three actual Democrats in the race: incumbent Jeanette White, plus Becca Balint and Joan Bowman. Fortunately for all of us, the local community access cable folks recorded the event and posted it online. So we can all witness Allbee’s closing statement, which included the following example of acute political tone-deafness:

Whoever is elected represents all the people, whether they’re Democrat, Republican, they’re colored, they have alternative preferences, we represent everyone in the county. Everyone. We represent every citizen.

If you want to hear it for yourself, it’s right at the 108-minute mark.

Wow. How many people did Allbee offend in that one sentence? Well, obviously, “colored” is a longtime no-no. There’s also “alternative preferences,” by which he apparently means LGBT. But as we all know, “preference” is the right-wing code word for “you’ve got a choice, and you chose EVIL.” I guess he just can’t bring himself to utter the dreadful word “GAY.”

Plus there’s the Republican formulation of “Democratic.”

Ugh.

I haven’t had time to go back and listen to the whole forum, but based on this one statement, I have to say I really, really hope that the voters don’t choose this guy as a standard-bearer for the Democratic Party.

Sorry, Rog. I mean “Democrat Party.”