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The Vermont Progressive Party is recruiting volunteers to write in the names of its top officeholders on its primary election ballot to ensure that a pair of perennial candidates don't claim the party's nomination.

The elaborate exercise is an attempt to allow Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, who is running for governor, and state Auditor Doug Hoffer, who is seeking reelection, to win the nominations of both the Progressive and Democratic parties. State law prohibits candidates from running in more than one party primary, but they can be nominated by additional parties if enough voters write in their names or if no other candidates run in a given primary and party leaders choose to nominate them.

As they have in the past, Zuckerman and Hoffer both chose this year to run in the Democratic primary, and both face competition for that party's nomination. At the same time, perennial candidate Cris Ericson of Chester is seeking the Progressive nomination for governor, auditor and every other statewide office on the ballot. Boots Wardinski, an organic farmer and horse logger who has run for office several times, is also seeking the Progressive gubernatorial nomination.

To prevent Ericson and Wardinski from winning the Progressive nod in the August 11 primary, the party is seeking 250 to 300 Progressive stalwarts to write in Zuckerman's and Hoffer's names in that party's primary, according its executive director, Josh Wronski.

"It's definitely not an ideal system," Wronski said. "The whole primary system is not geared towards nontraditional parties." This is hardly the first time the Progs have sought to secure their nomination from perceived interlopers, but the challenge is greater this year because, in response to the coronavirus outbreak, lawmakers temporarily removed the requirement that candidates for statewide offices gather 500 signatures to appear on the ballot. That resulted in more candidates filing for statewide office and made it easier for Ericson to run in every race.

Wronski said the party is particularly concerned about the prospect of Ericson winning its nomination. "This candidate holds views that are opposed to our core values of social, economic, and climate justice," he wrote in an email to fellow Progs. In an interview, Wronski said that Ericson's platform included "some stuff that's pretty racist," though he declined to elaborate.

Ericson, a marijuana legalization advocate, drew notice in her 2018 gubernatorial campaign for promising to host a weekly "governor's pardon TV show" during which audience members could vote to pardon those convicted of nonviolent offenses. This year, according to her campaign website, she is proposing to "train prisoners to build log cabins with solar panels for homeless people" and to dig a canal from Florida to California in order to protect whales, the fishing industry and farmers. She also opposes the decriminalization of sex work.

"[M]anymen in foreign countries arepeople of color, and they will comehere for white prostitutes becauseVermont is 94 percent white caucuasian [sic]," she wrote in an April post on her website. "WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO MAKE VERMONTA TOURIST DESTINATION FOR WHITEPROSTITUTION by decriminalizingprostitution and luring wealthyforeign men of color here,some with diplomaticimmunity, to spread the legs ofcreamy white Vermont flesh?"

Neither Ericson nor Wardinski returned calls seeking comment.

Asking volunteers to vote in the Progressive primary is not without risk, given that doing so could deprive Zuckerman and Hoffer of votes in the Democratic primary, but the approach has worked before. In 2016, Zuckerman won a hotly contested Democratic primary for LG while still drawing 228 write-in votes in the Progressive primary. That was enough to beat Wardinski, the only candidate on the Progressive ballot that year, who picked up just 150 votes.

Though some Democrats view Progressives with suspicion and question their desire to seek both nominations, other members of the two parties have argued over the years that running as a "fusion" candidate reduces the likelihood of splitting the left-of-center vote in a general election and electing a Republican.

The reason the Progs are going to bat for Zuckerman and Hoffer but not other statewide candidates, according to Wronski, is that the party's state committee voted to endorse both incumbents in May. Such an endorsement provides candidates with organizing and fundraising support, though it does not necessarily result in a party's nomination.

Thus far, the Progs have refrained from endorsing any candidate in the race to replace Zuckerman as lieutenant governor even though one of its most prominent officials, Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden), is seeking the post. According to Wronski, all four candidates running for the Democratic nomination Ashe, Sen. Debbie Ingram (D-Chittenden), assistant attorney general Molly Gray and activist Brenda Siegel are scheduled to appear at a Progressive Party forum on July 14, after which the party's executive committee may vote to endorse in the race.

Each of the four candidates or their spokespeople said they are seeking the Progressive endorsement. Ashe, Ingram and Siegel all told Seven Days that ifthey won both parties' nominations, they would list their Democratic affiliation first on the November ballot. A spokesperson for Gray, Samantha Sheehan, would not say what order the candidate would choose.

"At this time, Molly is focused on the upcoming statewide Democratic Primary on August 11th," Sheehan said in a written statement.

Hoffer told Seven Days that if he won both parties' nominations, he would list his Democratic affiliation first in November, as he has done in the past. Zuckerman's campaign manager, Meg Polyte, said her boss would do the opposite and continue to identify primarily as a Prog.

And if he lost the Progressive nomination to Ericson or Wardinski? "That would be sad," Polyte said.

Disclosure: Tim Ashe is the domestic partner of Seven Days publisher and coeditor Paula Routly. Find our conflict-of-interest policy at sevendaysvt.com/disclosure.

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Progressives Seek to Ward Off Perennials Vying for Party Nod - Seven Days

"He doesn't take any race for granted," said Lynch spokesman Scott Ferson. Lynch beat his 2018 primary challenger, video game developer Brianna Wu, with 71 percent of the vote.

Neal, on the other hand, went on the air with his first reelection ad two months earlier than he did in 2018, when he easily dispatched an energetic challenge from another progressive, Springfield attorney Tahirah Amatul-Wadud. The television spot featured a local business in Holyoke, Morse's hometown, thanking Neal for helping secure a Paycheck Protection Program loan.

In Massachusetts, national progressive groups are hoping to replicate their recent success in New York, where races involving Reps. Eliot Engel and Carolyn Maloney remain uncalled pending counting of absentee ballots and Engels opponent, Jamaal Bowman, has already claimed victory.

Like Bowman, Morse is backed by Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement. Morse and Goldstein are both endorsed by Our Revolution, the spin-off group from Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign; Andrew Yangs Humanity First, and Indivisible.

Seeking to tap into progressive energy surrounding Bowman, Morse even went to the Bronx to campaign alongside Bowman on primary day. Bowman in turn urged voters to support Morse in a video on Twitter.

Vote for this man! Bowman wrote in a tweet.

As a result, Morse, Holyoke's first openly gay mayor, raised $110,000 from 2,200 contributions in a single week after the primaries in New York and Kentucky, his campaign told POLITICO. For a candidate that had $140,000 in cash on hand at the end of the last fundraising quarter, that's a significant bump.

The establishment is officially on notice that our movement has momentum. Together, we can build a Democratic Party that prioritizes working people over corporate profits," Morse said when he announced Bowman's endorsement.

If the dynamic sounds a little familiar, thats because it is. In 2018, Ayanna Pressley made history by toppling Capuano in a Boston-area district, just weeks after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's stunning upset of former Rep. Joe Crowley. Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Pressley in a tweet similar to the one Bowman posted for Morse.

Your guide to the permanent campaign weekday mornings, in your inbox.

Like Pressley, who was a Boston city councilor with a strong political organization when she ran, Morse is not a political unknown he's been mayor for nearly a decade.

"He's come up in politics during the social media time, and he's been able to use that well to get his message out," said state Rep. Aaron Vega, a former Holyoke city councilor who is staying neutral in the race.

"Like him or not, people know who he is. It's much different than other people who have run against the congressman who didn't have that level of name recognition and experience. Whether you agree with him or not, or what, he's been mayor for 10 years so he understands how things work and he does his homework. It's definitely a different kind of challenge," Vega added. "Anything's possible, especially in this time."

Still, both Neal and Lynch have the advantage of representing districts that are older and less diverse than the ones that have seen progressive upsets.

"Some of the things in this campaign, or maybe in other campaigns that were very trendy in New York or with AOC two years ago, just don't fly here," said Glazer, who is a fixture in Western Massachusetts politics. She also pointed to the size of the district Neal represents 87 cities and towns that cover nearly a quarter of the states land area, unlike the smaller, and more densely populated districts where progressives won in Massachusetts and New York.

Amatul-Wadud, who lost to Neal 71 percent to 29 percent in the 2018 primary, said national progressive interest isnt necessarily enough to overcome those hurdles.

"After AOC won in 2018, we got a big financial boost, we got a lot more media attention and more volunteers because people felt like that was a sign change could happen where we are," she said. "[T]he challenge still remains the same. This district is very, very different than the urban district of New York 16."

Morses task will be to activate voters in Springfield and Pittsfield, the two cities with the largest number of voters in the 1st District, Amatul-Wadud said. Springfield has seen an historic number of protests against police brutality and racism in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, and not seizing on the moment has been a "lost opportunity," for Morse, she said.

"It's a lost opportunity if they're not taking the bull by the horns and talking about this and proposing solutions each and every day. And I'm not seeing it," Amatul-Wadud said. "This is the moment I wish I had in 2018."

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High on the lefts wish list: Knocking out another House chairman - POLITICO

Neal protected Blackstones profits by killing a bill that would have saved patients money, a narrator says in the 30-second spot. Now Blackstone is Richie Neals top contributor and one of Donald Trumps, too.

Fresh off a string of victories in New York last month, progressives are beginning to zero in on Neal, who faces Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse in his Sept. 1 primary.

Operatives running the group chose Neal as part of the initial campaign because of his clear ties to Blackstone. Neal received $48,600 from Blackstone executives and others tied to the company this cycle, making him their top 2020 donor, the group noted in a release.

They kill these efforts to reform surprise medical billing because they assume that there wont be any accountability over them, said Faiz Shakir, a top liberal consultant working with Fight Corporate Monopolies. They think that they can just receive campaign funds, continue status-quo politics and that there will never be a moment that voters hold them accountable.

Fight Corporate Monopolies is an affiliate of the American Economic Liberties Project, an organization aimed at lobbying government to take on corporate greed. Sarah Miller, a former Treasury Department official and antitrust advocate, leads both groups.

Shakir, Sanders' 2020 campaign manager and Miller's husband, will consult for the group. And Morgan Harper, a former Ohio congressional candidate, has signed on as a senior adviser. Harper ran an unsuccessful primary challenge against Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) earlier this year, accusing her of being in the pocket of corporations.

The group, which will play in state and federal races, takes a sharp focus: exposing politicians, primarily incumbents, who give the appearance of colluding with big business interests.

At the end of the day, Miller said in an interview, it is policy makers, it is anti-trust enforcers, it is the public sector that is responsible for keeping the private sector from growing so powerful that they can extort and abuse everyone that they have economic relationships with.

Each campaign, Miller said, will tell a really clear story around how a specific powerful corporation or a specific monopoly is actually transacting with a certain politician to get an outcome that that politician wants and then basically rewarding them for that.

Architects behind the anti-Neal effort hope their early foray into race eight weeks before the primary will help chip away at Neals incumbency advantage and entice other outside groups into the race.

Morse, youngest and first openly gay mayor in the history of Holyoke, is endorsed by the Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement, both of which worked to help middle-school principal Jamaal Bowman oust Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in a primary last month. (Bowman leads in the preliminary vote count, though The Associated Press has not officially declared a winner.)

If we can get involved more than six-to-eight weeks out, potentially you can make what are very difficult races potentially more competitive and thats what were going to see here, Shakir said, predicting Morse could win the race with 45,000 votes. Thats not a large universe. This is going to be a significant ad buy.

Still, Neal will be hard to dislodge. He had over $4.5 million in the bank as of late March and has already begun airing TV ads to boost his image name ID. Morse had just $140,000 at the end of the first quarter.

But Morse has been able to tap into the some of the progressives' excitement around the New York primaries. Bowman endorsed him and urged his supporters to back Morse in a tweet that helped him raise $110,000 in a single week.

The district, which spans much of Western Massachusetts, leans heavily Democratic. Hillary Clinton carried it by 20 points in 2016.

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New progressive group will hit Neal in Massachusetts - POLITICO

The Star Tribune recently published commentaries on what has gone wrong in Minneapolis. Norm Coleman identifies a lack of leadership (Defund and disband City Hall leadership, June 17). Joseph Anthony attacks the ward-based system of representation (Yes, Minneapolis government is dysfunctional, June 26). I share both concerns. In fact, last year, I was part of a group that brought a proposal to elect more council members citywide. We didnt even get a hearing.

Yet both commentaries miss an important piece. Minneapolis has been touted as one of the most progressive cities in America. It also has some of the worst racial disparities in the county. These two facts are inextricably linked.

When I talk about progressive, I mean a very specific set of policies that define urban progressivism today. One touchstone is density. We must build more housing, goes the refrain, at almost any cost. Yet homeownership is the single most effective way American families build wealth.

In a city where Black homeownership is one-third that of white, over 90% of new housing approved by the city over the last six years has been rental. On top of that, the city stood by as corporations like Havebrook bought up single-family homes in north Minneapolis and converted them to rentals. All new housing subsidized by the city over the last six years has been rental.

It should be no surprise that Black families cannot build wealth through homeownership urban progressive policies havent produced any homes to own.

Families of color are twice as likely than white families to be multigenerational, to have four children or more and to have a nonfamily member living with them. Yet 70% of new housing units built in Minneapolis over the last six years has been one bedroom or smaller. No wonder the affordable housing crisis is so much worse for families of color. Urban progressivism has created it. In fact, it incentivized the destruction of homeownership opportunities and celebrated when Minneapolis became a majority-rental city.

Rental in Minneapolis is a $1.6 billion transfer of wealth from individuals to the pockets of corporations every year. Think how much wealth could be built with different policies.

Urban progressives ignored, then gutted, policies that shaped development, allowing developers to go where they would make the most money, not where we needed it. Uptown and Northeast have thousands of new housing units and jobs, yet Broadway never seems to change. This didnt just happen. It was chosen by urban progressives.

The citys 2040 Plan, the bible of urban progressives, says we must cut automobile travel by 40% in the next 20 years. Yet they never talk about how people will get to jobs. Minneapolis has 15% of the jobs in the region. There is no bigger indicator of a family leaving poverty than availability of a car. Yet Minneapolis didnt even plan for automobiles. At the same time, Black commuters use bikes at one-third the rate of white commuters. How are people of color supposed to get to jobs?

Children under the age of 18 make up 20% of the population of Minneapolis. Two-thirds of children in Minneapolis Public Schools are children of color. Some 26% of children grow up in deep poverty. Yet there is no planning for where they will live, how they will get to school or how their lives will get better.

This isnt just a moment for recognition of the killing of a Black man. It is a moment of reckoning for urban progressive policies that keep people of color poor. We need a complete reorientation, not just of our police department, but of the whole urban progressive agenda. People of color deserve no less.

But it isnt going to happen. In Minneapolis, urban progressivism is driven by a tiny number of activists, mostly online and mostly paid. Anyone who strays from their orthodoxy is immediately harassed and humiliated, until they are driven out of the policy discussion. That is what instantly shut down the discussion of a different structure for the City Council.

And it isnt going to change until we elect leaders who listen to all voices in Minneapolis, not just paid, online activists.

We have an election next year. We are looking for candidates.

Carol Becker lives in Minneapolis.

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OPINION EXCHANGE | Counterpoint: Minneapolis is 'progressive' and has terrible racial disparities - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Democrats unveiled a sweeping climate proposal this week. While the progressive plan will not pass this year, it does provide a road map for next year. Democrats should take the time to reconsider because it is an insensible climate policy under normal economic conditions and even worse as the country faces massive constraints. Conservatives should respond constructively with critical reforms that fuel economic growth, improve the fiscal outlook, and reduce global emissions.

The plan aims for prosperity that is prepared to meet the challenges of climate change. But the tools selected, such as mandates and subsidy programs, reduce economic productivity. This would fuel an expensive subsidy war when federal coffers can least support it. Mounting costs, public debt, and private investment in political favorites have minimal effects and will also not leave future generations better off.

There is scant evidence that domestic net zero emissions by 2050 is even feasible, let alone a pathway toward increased prosperity with meaningful environmental benefit. Researchers think we are a half century away from zero emissions in the industrial sector, without considering this economic downturn. Electric utilities with zero carbon goals admit they are not sure they will meet the 2050 target, but they know it will cost a bundle. Yet the plan calls for decarbonization of the sector 10 years earlier.

There is another critical zero to consider, which is the number of cost analyses in the plan. Quality analyses take time, however, comparable references set the price tag in the trillions. American businesses and consumers will suffer by paying more money for less options. Such a burden is completely tone deaf in this economic downturn.

The hard truth is that zero emissions in the country alone accomplishes relatively modest climate benefit, a far cry from the claim of solving the climate crisis. Carbon dioxide is mixed in the air, accumulates over time, and the United States is responsible for a small fraction of all emissions. Instead of reducing emissions at high costs, lawmakers should pursue a policy that benefits domestic interests as well as the climate.

The key is making it cheap to reduce emissions at home in a way that can be done around the world. This requires a no regrets innovation agenda that includes a more effective national laboratory system and institutional reforms to let private capital flow to productive uses. Indeed, businesses have shown an expanding appetite for clean investment. Companies with ambitious carbon targets want more free market reforms for procurement choice and electricity industry access. This would mean liberating supply chains, fostering competition, enabling increased consumer choice, and using trade as catalysts for growth and global emissions cuts.

Regulatory reforms should remove barriers to capital stock turnover. The irony is that some environmental mandates penalize the funding for clean manufacturing. Clean investors want speed to market and yet regulatory obstacles like approvals under the National Environmental Policy Act take more than half a decade to finish. Permits under the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act also deter these clean investors.

Regulatory reforms have to enhance competition by updating the rules over the electricity industry and stimulate competition where mandates prohibit this by replacing monopoly utilities with competitive platforms. Electric transmission investment, an integral part of renewable energy expansion, requires a regulatory overhaul to increase competition and prudent capital management decisions to flourish in the sector.

Progressives cannot be faulted for a lack of ambition. But core elements of their plan are not practical and not in the best interests of individuals, businesses, or environmental outcomes. It is easy to set lofty goals that reward stylish models now and raise costs in future election cycles. It is harder to challenge entrenched interests now with regulatory reforms to unleash lasting economic productivity and emissions reductions. Now is the time to become braver than the symbol of zero emissions.

Devin Hartman is the director of energy and environmental policy with R Street Institute in Washington. Nicolas Loris is the deputy director of the Thomas Roe Institute for Economic Policy with the Heritage Foundation.

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The progressive climate plan is heavy on symbols and burdens | TheHill - The Hill