Learning the Wrong “Phil Scott” Lessons
And what are the right lessons?
Phil Scott is by some accounts the most popular governor in the United States with an approval rating of around eighty percent. Ergo, lots of political pundits and big dollar donors who want to change the direction of state policy advise aspiring politicians to “be like Phil” to get elected. Yes and no. But mostly no.
People seem to forget, though I don’t know how, that Phil Scott built his massive name recognition not as a politician, but as a celebrity race car driver in the county where he was first elected to the state senate. So, he had a personal, positive relationship with his constituency before they had to consider him as a politician. Correct Phil Scott lesson: the best candidates are already well known, respected, and liked by a majority of voters before ever putting themselves forward as a candidate.
This kind of celebrity status, however, does not apply to the overwhelming majority of people who end up running for office, and it isn’t enough in circumstances that Phil Scott has never faced in his long political career: dislodging an incumbent. Don’t believe me? Ask Stewart Ledbetter. Before voters will consider voting for a challenger, they have to first believe that the incumbent deserves to be fired. No Phil Scott campaign has ever had to make that case. Lesson: he provides no lessons here.
The conventional wisdom is that Phil Scott’s electoral success is because he is “a moderate,” whatever that means. But again, people seem to forget that when he ran and won his biggest and most competitive race, his first for Governor against Sue Minter, he put forward a very conservative agenda. His top issue was tying Minter’s support for a carbon tax on gasoline and diesel around her neck like an anvil before tossing her into Lake Champlain. His other big issue: turning Minter’s support for expanding the state’s six percent sales tax to apply to services into a baseball bat aggressively bludgeoning her with it around her political kneecaps.
Scott also promised no new gun laws, and had the endorsement of Vermont Right to Life, not as a full-throated pro-lifer, but as a compromise, acknowledged pro-choice candidate who supported some commonsense restrictions on abortion. As an established incumbent facing token opposition, he was able to get away with betraying those constituencies – but not as a candidate in a competitive race. That’s a lesson! And if Republicans or even independent challengers want to take seat from incumbent Democrats, they cannot run on strategies suited to established incumbents facing token opposition.
To recap, Scott became governor by running a center-right campaign that focused on a handful of top hot button issues (No Carbon Taxes and No new sales taxes) that provided a sharp contrast to his opponent, and upon which an overwhelming majority of voters across party lines agreed with his positions. He did this while shoring up and energizing his Republican base. Lesson: this is the formula that defeated Sue Minter, a genuinely competitive Democrat in a genuinely competitive election -- by nine friggin’ points.
Can this formula be repeated for down ticket Republicans 2024. Absolutely!
The Carbon Tax issue is even more potent today than it was in 2016 with the Clean Heat Standard – and its $17 billion price tag -- up for a go/no go vote in 2025. Scott vetoed the bill in 2023 and almost every Democrat incumbent is on the record having both voted for it and voted to override that veto. There’s the anvil around the neck. This should be THE QUESTION every candidate is forced to answer – will you vote for a tax/fee/surcharge/whatever on heating fuels in January 2025?
And the baseball bat? Property taxes. Far more potent that the theoretical increase of the sales tax is the very real average 14 percent property tax increase we all just experienced. Again, all those Democrat incumbents are on the record voting to support the yield bill and rejecting the Governor’s proposals for a path to reform.
Add to this a generous sprinkling of all the other taxes, fees, and regulatory costs the Democrat/Progressive supermajority passed during the 2023-24 biennium – on payroll, on electricity, on internet-based services, at the DMV – topped off with the fact that while doing all of this they voted to more than double their own pay – and you have what should be the ingredients for a Republican landslide.
But it won’t just happen.
And here is my pitch to the folks who just blew a chunk of change trying to convince Vermont Democrat/Progressive primary voters to put moderates on the ballot for the general election. This is the John Rodgers lesson: if you want to save the state from absurd tax and regulatory policies, you have to show disaffected independents and Democrats that is not just okay, but imperative to switch to the Republican Party – or at least vote Republican at the state level.
https://www.facebook.com/Right4Vermont/videos/1536722190583592
The Democrats on the ballot for November were chosen by the most radical elements of their party. This is why they govern, and will continue to govern, as radicals -- until they are replaced. Until you, the voter, are convinced the only solution is to fire them.
When in 2023 the Vermont Fuel dealers spent just $40,000 on a campaign to alert Vermonters that the Clean Heat Standard was coming up for a vote and that it might add 70¢ a gallon to the cost of heating oil it caused a seismic eruption of voter backlash. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an election year and that energy had nowhere to go. But this is an election year, and that issue is back on the table. Plus a couple more of potentially equal magnitude. So, go ahead and be Phil Scott if you must. But make sure it’s the Phil Scott from 2016.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.
Media Notes: Rob Roper will be on WVMT’s Morning Drive on Monday, August 19, 8 - 9 am. Tune in at 620AM, 96.3FM, or streaming HERE.
I often wonder that Phil Scott is governor. It must be that our crazy-left constituency secretly wants a "daddy" to keep them out of the deep end.