When veteran Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, died last month, Vermont Democrats lost “a titan,” according to party executive director Jim Dandeneau.
Despite Sears’ death, he remains on the ballot for the August 13 Democratic primary election.
Given the state’s May 30 deadline for candidates to file petitions to get on the ballot, Dandeneau said, “We did not have an option.” Sears died just two days after the deadline passed.
“Vermont law does not have provisions for changes after the Primary Election filing deadline,” Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas said in a written statement. The party does have a weeklong window to select a replacement candidate after the primary, she added.
A situation like this is incredibly rare, according to Democratic leadership.
“I can’t remember a circumstance where we had a candidate pass away after the deadline to file petitions, but before the election,” Dandeneau said.
The only way for candidates to enter a race after the May 30 deadline and before the primary is through a write-in campaign. But Dandeneau said he wasn’t sure it would be possible for such a campaign to succeed in this case.
“I think it’s very tough to run a write-in campaign of the scale that would be necessary to beat somebody whose name is on the ballot,” he said. “And,” he added, “who folks have been consistently voting for for decades.”
Other party members think it’s worth a try.
Rep. Seth Bongartz, D-Bennington, who had planned to run alongside Sears for a seat in the two-member Senate district, said he thought a win by a write-in candidate was entirely possible, albeit a “herculean task.”
Bongartz, who hails from Manchester, said that although he understood that Sears’ health was not at its best, “nobody knew” this would happen.
When Bongartz heard the news, he soon turned to the electoral implications. He reached out to Sen. Brian Campion, D-Bennington, a close friend and colleague of Sears’ who announced in May that he would not seek reelection to the district’s other Senate seat.
“Brian and I had no choice but to start looking for somebody to run in Dick’s place,” Bongartz said.
According to Bongartz, a vote for Sears as a form of homage to his legacy would actually be a slight against both the democratic process and the man himself.
“Dick believed in democracy,” he said, adding, “It makes no sense to vote for someone who can’t possibly serve.”
Campion agrees. “Vermonters are practical,” he said. “Elections are not about…celebrating somebody who’s dead.”
Bongartz and Campion also raised concerns about the political repercussions of a Sears win.
If one of the two candidates with the highest vote count in the primary cannot serve in the position they’re running for, the decision returns to the Senate district, Dandeneau explained. So if Sears were to win, a committee made up of Democrats in the towns he represented would convene to vote on who should replace him in the general election.
This district committee system, Bongartz said, “is really for emergencies,” and has the potential to be “highly undemocratic.”
Rob Plunkett, a deputy state’s attorney from Bennington, appears to be the only Democrat hoping to bypass this process through a write-in campaign. Cynthia Browning, a former House Democrat from Arlington, plans to run as an independent in the general election.
“I think there’s a very good chance that (Plunkett) wins outright,” said Bongartz of the primary.
Plunkett wasn’t even considering a run, the candidate said, until Campion approached him. He’s a newcomer to politics.
“The goal is to win a write-in campaign,” Plunkett said. Though he’s uncertain of his chances in the primary, he said “the response has been wonderful” from community members with whom he’s spoken.
Campaigning in this way, rather than waiting until after the primaries to emerge as a candidate, is “the much more democratic approach,” said Campion.
Joe Gervais of East Arlington, the only registered Republican candidate in the race, said he’s unfazed by what he called “chaos on the Democrat ticket.”
He said he thinks a high number of Bennington voters will choose the late Sen. Sears on their ballot, but said he couldn’t speculate on the likely outcome.
Democratic leadership has a similar position: Dandeneau said the party had no official preference for the outcome of the primary.
“We’re letting the chips fall where they may,” he said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: In Bennington County’s Senate primary, the late Dick Sears remains on the ballot.