Updated at 10:11 a.m.
He’s out.
After toying with the prospect of running for his old job, former Gov. Howard Dean said Monday morning that he would not challenge Republican Gov. Phil Scott this November.
Dean announced his intentions at a press conference at the Waterbury town offices. Even as he began speaking — thanking supporters for collecting signatures and raising money to “build a campaign from nothing” — it was unclear whether he would join the race or not.
Then he let the trial balloon pop.
“I am not a candidate for the office of governor,” Dean said.
The Burlington Democrat called it a “winnable race,” saying that polling showed him getting within 10 percentage points of Scott. But to prevail, he said, he would have to wage a “scorched earth” campaign with negative attack ads. He said that such a race would be bad for the state and not the Vermont way.
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“I am not interested in doing this for the debate,” he said. “I’m interested in winning.”
Dean, 75, said he would work hard to support the Democratic nominee for governor this year and suggested that it should be someone younger than he is.
Thus far, the only declared Democratic candidate is Esther Charlestin, a Middlebury educator and consultant.
Scott announced earlier this month that he would seek a fifth two-year term as governor.
After more than two decades out of office, Dean began publicly hinting late last month that he might seek a return to the Pavilion Building. In an email to reporters earlier this month, he previewed a potential message: that he was “deeply alarmed by the coming fiscal crisis in Vermont” and dismayed by what he called “the current poisonous atmosphere in Montpelier.”
As recently as Friday, when Dean announced he would be speaking Monday in Waterbury, Democratic officials and activists said they did not know whether he would run.
This story will be updated.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Howard Dean will not run for governor of Vermont.