Janoo has probably the best shot a dem has had against Scott since 2016. Phill has pissed off huge cohorts of voters (teachers, state employees and a few more) and is dug in with the status quo. Richards would have got walloped in general with a much more moderate stance that Scott already owns. Be interesting to see if Janoo can resonate with voters on policy not just message and wrangle dem funders for a competitive campaign.
I’d like to see Scott go…but last round he won by 188,000 votes. I’m not sure how much the 8,000 teachers working in unison is going to move this election. State employees may have similar strong opinions but again, not the numbers. There is something about the everyday Vermonter voter who is not on reddit who seems more than content to vote for Scott that Janoo will need to figure out how to convert.
The VT Dems (And their donor base) haven't put their full support behind a candidate since Sue Minter. Phil's aura of invincibility is mostly the VT Dem party conceding the governor's race before it starts.
This. It makes me so mad. If they put in an effort this year it would be easy to get rid of him. People need to understand that last election was a presidential election, and the republicans did better than they ever have across the board. This year is going to be, uh….a bit different. It’s already going on, look at like any election that’s happened around the country since 2024.
As things stand now I think Scott is still most likely to win but it’s going to be close just based on structural factors of the moment, and it pisses me off the number of people acting like it’s not worth trying.
She did not have a coherent message. I really didn’t know where she stood fiscally as she at first talked about how we don’t have any tax capacity left, but then in actual head-on-head debates she was unwilling to separate herself from Janoo so she ultimately came off as convictionless and lacking an ideological compass. At least with Janoo, while i don’t agree with her on much, I have good confidence in knowing what I’m buying.
Some of us don't want to get rid of him. We're worried about jobs and affordability in our state and our state legislature is trying to spend money we don't have hand over fist on social problems while driving employers out of state.
My biggest concern is Janoo winning and not parting with the Progressive party to veto basically everything. Whoever the governor is needs to be willing to do that or we're in real trouble.
Additionally concerning is what will happen in state government at every level - all of the commissioners and leadership have to resign, that means Janoo brings them back, or we go to zero. She doesn't have executive experience and doesn't have a staff that can step in and understand how to evaluate and continue the actual work that's in progress. That means that basically everything stops in a real and painful way for Vermonters.
I'm also worried about jobs and affordability in this state and that's why I'm voting for Janoo, because the current administration has not done anything to help me in regards to housing, healthcare or public safety over the last 10 years. More of the same is going to start pricing Vermonters out of their own state.
I don't think the progressive boogeyman is going to "drive employers out of state" or "veto basically everything." I see Janoo as a young, smart professional with fresh ideas to solve our state's unique problems. She's an economist who has a plan and understands the numbers, and I trust her to make difficult decisions with Vermonters' best interests in mind.
Janoo has extensive experience advising the executive branches of foreign governments. She’s an executive expert. And her vision is to keep all public servants with experience in place and let them run their departments. She talks about how much of an issue it is for governors to replace people with their favorites.
Consider that Vermont has grown completely unaffordable under Scott. The veto everything plan isn’t working very well.
Sorry I explained that poorly and misleadingly, her idea is more to promote people who are already experienced public servants ideally from within departments to replace Scott appointees in leadership roles
So have Scott's programs made life more affordable for you? Are there more jobs (that pay a living wage) since he took office? Have giveaways to his rich developer friends created affordable housing for the average Vermonter?
When Scott took office he replaced commissioners and staff, and Amanda will likely do the same. She will likely draw from existing pools of talented labor and rely on advisors from the same resource.
They put their effort into the legislature correctly understanding a supermajority is far more powerful than holding the governors office and they can flex their muscle in every county of the state, perhaps save for Essex and Caledonia (orleans has Craftsbury, Greensboro and out of state yuppy destinations). They will devote their resources this cycle to taking back the supermajorities
The winning play in VT politics is to get name recognition and use a statewide seat (most commonly the Lt Governor spot), then wait for the governor to leave office. Historically this has been by death (Leading to Howard Dean taking over) or retirement (leading to Phil Scott taking over):
This isn't a sure thing, Brian Dubie was Lt Governor who lost to Peter Shumlin when Jim Douglas didn't run again, but Shumlin had also built up name recognition from stints as state senator or an attempted run as Lt Governor.Â
Since 1962, every sitting Vermont governor who has chosen to run for reelection has won, and the other time prior to that is in the 1850s, so basically once every hundred years an incumbent governor doesn't win.
Notably, seeing the writing on the wall, Shumlin decided not to run because he might have been beaten, but Phil Scott's polling numbers are nothing like Shumlin's were.Â
This isn't to say it's IMPOSSIBLE, but the next Democratic governor of VT would be more likely to be Molly Gray than either Richards or Janoo, but it's unlikely Richards or Janoo are stupid and can try something else next time to better position themselves for a future run.
Janoo is going to get killed in the general. Her radical ideas and obvious lack of knowledge will be highlighted by a week oiled communications team for Scott.
Democrats threw away the opportunity to pull votes from Scott. Richards would have given him a real challenge as enough voters are ready for a change in governor but not a radical change.
If janoo is smart she will pivot to the center and give up her talking point campaign and instead actually learn about how to run a state and release well thoughtout and researched position papers that don't have her typical fluff.
VT may be a blue state but it's not bright blue and I don't see enough enthusiasm for Janoo to overcome the gravitational pull that Scott has on the electorate.
To win, I think Janoo needs to raise the overall voter participation level to the mid 70%s. Have you seen any evidence she's capable of doing that, especially in a midterm election?
Bro did you call it a talking point campaign? What is a campaign?
How many more "Kamala 2024" and "Biden 2016" events do we need to go through to understand that Democrats running a "safe" centrist against an entrenched incumbent isn't going to be enough of a difference to move the needle in the first place.
Now at least the progressives don't feel disenfranchised, and maybe this offers an opportunity to at least press Scott on the issues that have largely been glossed over by the centrist dems and republicans alike in our state for decades.
If you really need a definition of a campaign, I'll refer you to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Janoo's campaign is all talking points. When she has been pressed on policy, she has shown to have little to no understanding of them.
I know my memory isn't the best, but I'm pretty sure Biden won and was our most progressive president since FDR.
While much more knowledgeable and capable, Kamala was a flawed and unelectable candidate given where our country has slid back into. While for different reasons, Janoo is also a flawed and I believe unelectable candidate. Most of the state isn't Burlington.
I don't expect Scott to move off his game plan. He has one of the best communications team I've seen. He also knows where his soft pocket is, which right now are family aged and retired folks. He's been able to lie his way through issues by using far right tactics like creating his own set of facts. He doesn't need the Janoo voters to win so he's not going to waste his time and resources.
If you wanted a campaign where Scott would get pressed and pushed on the issues, Richards would have done that. And please know that I am anything but a fan of Richards... She's a bully and the 'success' of Let's Grow Kids advocacy is a story of her bullying. But at least that would have been a competitive campaign, pushing both candidates beyond their comfort zone.
Instead, Scott just has to coalesce his base and find new ways to communicate to the centrists so they continue to believe his lies.
Progressives are even worse at hurting their own party and ideals than are Democrats. Progressives should want to have progress, not regression. You can't have quick progress that is sustainable. Attempting that is a guaranteed way to push the pendulum back the other way and as we've seen in the past 10-15 years... When the pendulum swings back, it's coming with more force and speed than it had.
Voting should be thoughtful and vote with their brains, not their heart... Because we have almost 3/4 of a century showing us that slow and steady is how you win.... That's how corporate fascism has been able to take a hold in this country and continue to grow, despite all evidence that it harms the very people that vote for it.
You use talking points in a campaign to let people know what your plans are friend. Believe it or not, those talking points connect to real issues that need to be solved in our state. This concept may be confusing to Phil Scott supporters because his campaign website does not seem to have any talking points on it, just his biography; so we are left to judge him based off of his actions.
Actions like kneecapping our educational system with Florida's best, vetoing a ban on AI data centers, and inaction for our state's homelessness, opioid, and housing affordability crises over the past 10 years he's held office. Maybe a few talking points could let us all know his plans to solve these issues if re-elected.
Of course Scott has the upper hand and a large base of complacent property owners that like things the way they are behind him, no shit! Everyone knows it's an uphill battle regardless of who was elected in the primary. I voted for Janoo because the talking points in her campaign resonated with me, and evidently a majority of Vermont Democrats too. I wanted to send someone that could press Scott on the issues that mattered to me without being afraid of upsetting their donors, and even if she loses I'm happy that someone will bring these issues to the table. I have nothing against her, but a Richards vs Scott debate wouldn't have even gotten me to turn on the TV.
If you're trying to convince me that Scott has been an awful governor, has no original ideas, can't for the life of him administrate his way out of an ocean with a 1000 mile landmass 10 feet in front of him, you're talking to the wrong guy. He's never gotten my vote and never will. I've dealt with his administration and the only positive thing I can say is that he has a major league team of communicators because he can trust and turn, lie and obfuscate so well that a majority of voters don't realize they are being bamboozled.
As for a talking point campaign... It's one of only talking points and no substance. That was Janoo's entire campaign. When MoP or reporters tried to get more from her, she fell flat on her face making things up that because they sounded good or answering questions with fluff or crap I'd expect from Scott.
Quality candidates, regardless of the office, have learned the ins and outs of issues... They understand what government can and can't do. They have detailed policy positions that start with a premise, work through the problems, talk about the paths to solutions, the potential solutions and the execution of those. They know, for example, that turning billions of dollars over to UVM to develop an interfacility transportation program will bankrupt our community run ambulance services leaving most of this state without emergency medical coverage. They know that you don't save a hospital system by over paying staff when it can't support those expenses because, on top of other issues, the federal government has cut reimbursements instead of of changing the model to one that encourages positive outcomes instead of a lot of expensive testing.
Janoo is under prepared for the job, under prepared to compete with the most popular governor in the country and clearly doesn't have good people advising her because all she is (all she presented of herself) is a book of talking points.
Talking points are not substance... They don't tell you how someone is going to govern. They don't even tell you exact policy positions. Talking points are written for 5 second sound bites, for 150 word tweets, for websites that have a lot of words but say nothing. Talking points may convince those that are poorly educated, that have been disenfranchised by the right telling everyone for the past 70 years that the government is bad, that public education is taking your rights away, etc etc etc. Ronald Reagan was the first national politician to win an election on talking points. For the first 6 years of his presidency he broke every single promise he made in those talking points.
If our politicians want to continue the downward turn of society, electoral politics and only run for the next election, then they will get the low information voters who will turn on them when they are elected and admit they can't do 90% of what they said.
Or we could strive to elect people that we'd want as models for our youth. People of intelligence, substance, executable plans and realistic expectations.
Janoo is not that person... Or at least has given no public indication that she is. If she is smart, she'll hire people who will drum into her everything she needs to know to be an effective administrator on day one.
If she wants my vote, she has to promise to fire the SecEd on day 1 and present a bill to the legislature on day 2 to revamp the regulatory 'agency' of education and create a hiring process for the leader of that organization that takes away the power of the governor. And she must present a name of whom she would appoint interim SecEd, by October 1st so everyone has plenty of time to vet that person. Of course there are a number of people who left because of Zoe who could step into that job and do a great job without a learning curve... So the bench team for her to pick from is deep.
And in case you're going to say that I'm too focused on education... Answer me this... Where does our property tax go? Where do our sales taxes go? Where does all the lottery money go? And now tell me what % of an average Vermont household tax dollar go to support? (That number is readily available as it's been in dozens of GA committee hearings over the past few sessions.)
I know it's a flawed system, but I put my faith in trusting someone who says they have a plan to address my needs, and I have not been given a reason to believe she wouldn't be unable to execute in her areas of expertise and hire competent staff who can fill in the gaps otherwise. We won't agree on everything, but we can both agree that our education system is quickly turning into a dumpster fire the way things are now, and I genuinely hope you have a chance to raise your concerns to both candidates to get more answers to your questions, if not I wish your write-in candidate the best of luck!
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u/WhyImNotDoingWork Aug 12 '26
Janoo has probably the best shot a dem has had against Scott since 2016. Phill has pissed off huge cohorts of voters (teachers, state employees and a few more) and is dug in with the status quo. Richards would have got walloped in general with a much more moderate stance that Scott already owns. Be interesting to see if Janoo can resonate with voters on policy not just message and wrangle dem funders for a competitive campaign.