At a debate Monday night with Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., Mark Coester disagreed with the incumbent Democrat on nearly every issue — challenging the basis of the questions and, at times, the moderators themselves.
Coester, a Westminster logger and small business owner who won the Republican and Libertarian nominations for Vermont’s sole seat in the U.S. House, even seemed to question his own presence at the debate and his status as the parties’ standard-bearer.
“It’s a great mystery how I ended up being in this situation,” he said in a closing statement. “I give it my best shot, and it’s fun, you know?”
Balint, a former teacher, writer and state senator from Brattleboro who is completing her first term in Congress, sounded familiar themes throughout the hour-long, online debate. She pledged to take on corporate greed, stand up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and work to pass federal abortion protections.
“I have tried to listen to Vermonters about the issues that are most important to them and then introduce bills to reflect that,” she said of her last two years in office, “from housing to mental health supports to issues related to gun violence prevention.”
The forum was the third event in the 2024 Digger Debate Series, which wraps up this Wednesday, Oct. 23, with a U.S. Senate debate co-hosted by Vermont Public.
Throughout Monday night’s engagement, the candidates approached the questions from radically different starting points.
Asked about inflation and the public’s dire feelings about the U.S. economy, Balint said she would target the profits of the rich.
“We have a very small number of companies and industries that are able to control the market,” she said, citing alleged price collusion among meat packers and other food suppliers. “You are in the midst of a second Gilded Age. You know, I’m somebody who studied history for a long time. We are seeing economic inequality now in the same way that we saw it in the 1920s.”
Coester, who in 2022 ran for both the Vermont Senate and U.S. Senate, said he disagreed with the framing of the issue as “inflation,” instead calling it “currency devaluation.”
“The more money you print and dump into the economy, the less the dollar is worth. That’s the bottom line,” he said, adding that the “current administration” would not improve the economy.
Asked about a letter he and other Vermont Republicans sent to Vice President Mike Pence after the 2020 election calling on Pence to overturn the result, Coester denied having signed it. When pressed on whether he believed President Joe Biden had won the election, Coester sidestepped.
“(Biden) was certified by the government. Was it fair? I don’t believe it was fair,” he said.
And asked whether those charged with crimes for their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol had been fairly prosecuted or should be pardoned, Coester took on debate co-moderator Paul Heintz, VTDigger’s editor-in-chief, who had asked the question.
“I don’t think this is at all fair. I don’t care for your format. If you need a cure for your Trump Derangement Syndrome, you can evict him from living rent-free in your head,” Coester said, eventually saying the cases were up to the discretion of the courts.
Further questions about Coester’s links to the far right, such as the flags and symbols on a truck he used while campaigning in 2022, the Westminster resident called “a bunch of BS.”
Balint, for her part, fielded questions regarding her 2022 primary campaign, during which she benefited from more than $1 million worth of support from disgraced cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Fried and his allies. She expressed regret for the episode and for her campaign’s messaging targeting her primary opponent, then-Lt. Gov. Molly Gray.
“(We) have never been accused of any wrongdoing,” Balint said, noting that her campaign had put tens of thousands of dollars in direct donations from Bankman-Fried’s allies into a separate account and that her campaign was cooperating with law enforcement. “If I could go back, absolutely, I am not happy that that is something that happened in my campaign.”
On Israel’s war in Gaza with Hamas, Balint reiterated her votes opposing military aid to Israel, which she said supported “offensive weapons” rather than “defensive weapons.” Asked whether the U.S. should support potential Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military, nuclear or energy-production facilities, she said it should instead work to bring “the temperature down” in the region, citing the risk of a full-blown war in the Middle East.
“We should be holding Israel, our ally, to the same standard that every single other country is held to,” she said. “And I believe that that has not always been the case, and we have to do better.”
As the night wore on, the debate devolved, with Coester occasionally laughing through Balint’s responses.
The two particularly disagreed on how Congress should handle abortion rights in a post-Roe v. Wade landscape.
“There’s no threat to any women and their abortions in Vermont. It shouldn’t even be an election topic,” Coester said.
“I find it shocking that you would say that it doesn’t impact Vermonters,” Balint responded to Coester’s apparent amusement. “It’s shocking to me that you think this is such a funny situation.”
Though agreement was rare, the two candidates found occasional common ground. Both supported exempting taxes on tips, and both voiced support for congressional and Supreme Court term limits.
“One-hundred percent,” Coester said. “All the way down to the town clerks.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: At VTDigger debate, Rep. Becca Balint’s challenger, Mark Coester, questions the questions .