With primary results certified, Vermont’s 2024 candidates are set

State leaders certified a slate of primary race victors who, along with new candidates recently nominated by political parties, will appear on November’s general election ballots.

August 23, 2024  |  By Sarah Mearhoff  |  VTDigger.org

Kyle Hartsfield casts his ballot at the polling station in Richmond on Primary Day, Tuesday, August 13. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

After a post-primary rush this week, Vermont’s slate of general election candidates is now solidified, and mail-in ballots will be sent out by mid-September.

First, on Monday, the Republican Party added nearly two dozen down-ballot candidates for positions unfilled through the primary process. The Progressive Party added one new candidate in a hotly contested Burlington House seat, and switched out several placeholder candidates for fusion nominees. 

Then on Tuesday, an unexpected glitch in the state’s elections reporting software caused a one-day delay in the state’s certification of last week’s primary election results — a requirement for finalizing the general election ballot.

But with that problem resolved by Wednesday morning, Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas gathered with representatives from each of Vermont’s major political parties — Democratic, Republican and Progressive — to sign off on those vote totals. 

With the strokes of their pens that morning, the state leaders certified a slate of primary race victors who will appear on November’s general election ballots — that is, for those who accept their nominations.

That is not the case for any of the Progressive candidates who ran in statewide primaries, Josh Wronski, the chair of the Vermont Progressive Party, confirmed to VTDigger Wednesday morning.

Every year, the party puts forward placeholder candidates for statewide offices so that spoilers can’t take advantage of Vermont’s open primary system and hijack the Progressive label. All of those candidates plan to forgo their nominations, Wronski said. The Progressive Party will then throw its weight behind fusion candidates, who run under both the Democratic and Progressive labels, such as Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman and Auditor Doug Hoffer.

From the Vermont GOP’s slate of statewide candidates, only one candidate is forgoing one of his nominations: Perennial candidate H. Brooke Paige, who ran uncontested in the Republican primaries for secretary of state and attorney general, is declining his nomination for the latter to make way for a new candidate to take his place.

On Monday, the Vermont Republican Party announced that Ture Nelson, of Berlin, was accepting the GOP nomination to face incumbent Democratic Attorney General Charity Clark in November. According to a Monday news release from the party, Nelson worked for 32 years as an investigator for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. And since last summer, Nelson has worked as interim town administrator for Berlin, helping the central Vermont municipality navigate federal aid applications and infrastructure projects since it was walloped by the floods of July 2023.

Nelson is not the only Republican who stepped up to run after last week’s primaries. Down the ballot, 21 new candidates opted to seek the party’s support to run as Republicans in state legislative races — “the largest number I remember in the last couple years,” Vermont Republican Party Chair Paul Dame told VTDigger on Tuesday.

After last election cycle, in which many Democrats appeared uncontested on general election ballots, Dame said that Vermonters this year “are going to have more choices.” Other than Chittenden County — where Dame said it’s exceedingly difficult to recruit Republicans to run — he said most of the party’s high priority districts have Republicans challenging Democrats.

“What will happen is, somebody’s going to go vote on primary day and see the blank spot on the Republican ballot and be like, ‘Wait, we really don’t have anybody?’” Dame said. “Everyone’s always hoping that somebody else will step up. Somebody else can do it. And you know, it’s really a case of, you’ve got to be the change that you want to see.”

Dame also hypothesized that the groundswell of GOP challengers is a reaction to sticker-shocked Vermonters who received their higher property tax bills this summer. And after a contentious legislative session between Republican Gov. Phil Scott and leaders of the Legislature’s Democratic supermajority, Dame said he sees candidates running “100%” to support Scott’s agenda in Montpelier.

“I think every single Republican that I’ve talked to is going there to help Phil Scott put some guardrails on what’s been happening in the legislature,” Dame said. “I think a lot of people sort of woke up to the fact that if Phil Scott is going to get support, it’s got to come from Republicans.”

In at least one race, the Vermont Progressive Party, too, is pushing back against Democratic leadership. In Burlington’s Chittenden-17 House district, Missa Aloisi is now running in the general election as a Progressive after losing to Abbey Duke in the district’s Democratic primary.

Wronski conceded to VTDigger that he knows it’s a “very hot button issue” when Progressives take that approach. But he said he believes the move is in the name of giving Aloisi a “fair shot” at the House seat after the Democratic Party actively campaigned on Duke’s behalf leading up to last week’s election.

Contention around that district dates back to May, when Scott appointed Duke to fill the seat vacated by Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, who is now mayor of Burlington. At the time, Progressives cried foul that Mulvaney-Stanak — a Progressive-Democrat who led the House’s Progressive Caucus — was replaced with a Democrat.

The Vermont Secretary of State’s Office automatically mails out ballots to every registered voter 45 days before the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 5. With processing and mailing times, Copeland Hanzas told VTDigger on Tuesday that that means the Secretary of State’s Office needs to have its work done preparing ballots roughly 60 days in advance in order to have adequate time for printing and mailing.

“So we are working hard,” she concluded.