Democrats Picked an Outsider for Governor and Kept Almost Every Incumbent Legislator
The survival rate hides something the vote order shows. In district after district with more than one seat, incumbents were renominated while a newcomer finished ahead of them.
Vermont Democrats nominated a first-time candidate for governor on Tuesday and then, in nearly every legislative race down the ballot, renominated the people already holding the seats.
Amanda Janoo, a 38-year-old economist whose only elected office has been justice of the peace in Burlington, won the Democratic nomination for governor with 49.1 percent to Aly Richards’ 46.5 percent. In the 24 contested legislative primaries on the same ballot, 27 sitting legislators faced a challenger. Twenty-five of them were renominated.
Two lost:
John Bartholomew, Windsor-1, finished third of three candidates for two seats with 512 votes, behind John Tansey and Dylan Morse.
Jim Masland, Windsor-Orange-2, finished third of three for two seats with 1,106 votes, behind Dee Gish and Lauren Morando Rhim.
Both are Upper Valley House seats. Both incumbents lost the same way: in a district that sends two members to Montpelier, they came in third.
In the Senate, no incumbent lost anywhere in the state. Thirteen sitting senators were challenged and 13 were renominated, including all three in Chittenden-Southeast and all three in Washington County.
Incumbents held their seats. Newcomers led the ticket.
The survival rate hides something the vote order shows. In district after district with more than one seat, incumbents were renominated while a newcomer finished ahead of them.
In Chittenden-Central, Nikhil Goyal led the field with 6,598 votes, ahead of incumbent senators Martine Larocque Gulick and Tanya Vyhovsky.
In Orange-Washington-Addison, Emery Mattheis led with 725 votes, ahead of incumbent Rep. Larry Satcowitz.
In Washington-4, Jared Duval led with 1,745 votes, ahead of incumbent Rep. Kate McCann.
In Chittenden-21, Matt Gile led with 845 votes, ahead of incumbent Rep. Daisy Berbeco.
In Windsor County’s Senate race, Elizabeth Burrows took the third seat outright with 3,846 votes.
Vermont’s multi-member districts make this possible. A candidate who places third in a three-seat district is nominated; a candidate who places third in a two-seat district is not. That rule is what saved most of the incumbents on Tuesday and what ended Bartholomew’s and Masland’s runs.
So voters largely kept the legislators they had while handing first place to someone else. Both things happened on the same ballots.
The rest of the ballot
Elsewhere on the ballot, familiar names won.
Lieutenant governor: Molly Gray, who held the office from 2021 to 2023, returned with 60.7 percent against two opponents.
Chittenden County state’s attorney: Sarah George, appointed to the office in 2017 over Bram Kranichfeld and elected since, as Compass has reported, held the seat 13,618 to 12,530 in a rematch against him.
U.S. House, Republican: Gerald Malloy won 76.3 percent and will face U.S. Rep. Becca Balint in November.
Auditor: Tim Ashe, a former Senate president pro tempore, won 74.8 percent.
Of the marquee statewide nominations decided Tuesday, one went to a candidate who has never held state-level office.
Most incumbents were never tested
The 93 percent survival rate describes a small slice of the Legislature. Vermont has 150 House seats and 30 Senate seats. Only 24 legislative primaries drew more than one candidate for the available seats.
The overwhelming majority of sitting legislators faced no primary opponent at all. They were not renominated because voters chose them over someone else. They were renominated because no one filed.
That is the more sober reading of Tuesday: not that incumbents proved durable under pressure, but that pressure was rare. Where a challenger did appear, two incumbents lost — a small number, but not zero, and both in the same corner of the state.
What it sets up
Janoo now faces Gov. Phil Scott, who was unopposed in the Republican primary and is serving his fifth two-year term. Scott has won more than 68 percent of the general election vote in each of his last three campaigns.
The Legislature that Janoo would work with, if she wins, will look much like the one already in Montpelier — with a handful of new names, most of them at the top of their district’s vote order.
Results in this story are drawn from WCAX’s election results reporting and are unofficial until certified by the Secretary of State’s canvass. Vote totals were still moving Wednesday morning; several Washington County Senate totals rose by several hundred votes over the course of Tuesday night and Wednesday. None of the shifts changed which candidates were nominated. Compass will check the final figures against the Secretary of State’s certified results and correct this story if they differ.