Vermont easily reelects Gov. Phil Scott for his fifth two-year term

Updated at 8:14 p.m.

Vermonters want two more years of Gov. Phil Scott.

The Associated Press called the four-term Republican’s victory just after 7:30 p.m. Tuesday night, less than an hour after polls closed in Vermont. Scott faced a challenge from Democratic political newcomer Esther Charlestin, an education consultant from South Burlington.

Scott and dozens of his closest supporters and staffers gathered Tuesday night at the Associated General Contractors of Vermont’s warehouse in Montpelier, which was adorned with various Scott campaign and motorcycle paraphernalia for the occasion. A live guitarist serenaded the room with country and classic rock songs.

Roughly 20 minutes after the AP called the race for Scott, his campaign manager Jason Maulucci broke the “good news” of the governor’s victory to the room, which erupted into applause.

Scott’s easy win arrived despite the fact that former President Donald Trump — who remains deeply unpopular in Vermont — led the Republican ticket.

In 2020, Vermont delivered Democratic President Joe Biden his largest margin of victory in the country — and elected Scott with a 40-point lead over his then-Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman.

If Tuesday was any indication, Vermonters are still eager to split their tickets. Shortly before the AP called Scott’s victory, they also declared Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s victory in the Green Mountain state — the first of the vice president’s declared victories of the night.

At 8:05 p.m., with 20% of towns reporting, 74% of voters cast their ballots for the Berlin Republican. Charlestin had almost 19% of the vote, according to unofficial results provided by the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office.

At the same time, Harris led Trump by almost 25 percentage points in Vermont, according to the Secretary of State’s Office’s unofficial results.

Concern about the cost of living motivated many voters to choose Scott, they told VTDigger earlier Tuesday.

“The taxes are getting outrageous,” said Rachel McCuin, 82, a lifelong resident of Warren and retired employee of the federal Department of Agriculture. “I’ve lived here all my life, but gosh, you know, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to stay.”

McCuin said she was voting “because I want to keep the governor we got in, in,” and hoped he would help rein in education spending and property taxes. 

For Joe Danis, 30,  of South Hero, property taxes were also a driving concern. “I don’t even live by the water and my property taxes went up 24% this year,” he said. Of Scott, he said, “I think he’s done a very good job of listening to people and doing what he said he would to keep taxes down.”

Even those who voted for Charlestin described it more as a vote against Scott. 

“I don’t think we’re going to get Scott out of office, and he’s basically good, sort of middle of the road, said Karen Chickering, a 69-year-old retired administrative assistant, voting this morning in Burlington. “But he needs to be taught that he is not the final authority. He has overridden a lot of things that I don’t think he should’ve and so I am voting against him this time,” she said.

Scott was widely expected to easily cruise to reelection. Two days before Election Day, the University of New Hampshire’s Green Mountain State Poll reported that out of 1,191 voters surveyed between Oct. 29 and Nov. 2, 65% said they supported Scott’s bid for a fifth two-year term.

The poll also showed that Scott enjoys support from voters across the political spectrum. Vermont does not conduct party registration, but the state’s self-described liberals were evenly split in their support for Scott versus Charlestin, according to the survey center. The vast majority of those who described themselves as politically libertarian, conservative or moderate supported Scott (98%, 88% and 88%, respectively), while 67% of those who described themselves as progressives and 62% of self-described socialists said they supported Charlestin.

Of respondents who said they supported Harris for president, 55% said that they also supported Scott for governor.

Frequently polling as the nation’s most popular governor, Democratic operatives in recent years have largely written Scott off as unbeatable. Former Democratic Gov. Howard Dean — now Vermont’s only governor in recent history to have secured more terms at the ballot box than Scott — publicly mulled a political comeback to challenge Scott this year.

But even Dean backed off, telling reporters in May that he would have to resort to a “scorched earth, negative attack campaign” in order to unseat Scott. The entire (hypothetical) affair, he predicted, “​​would have been a $2 million race on each side, easily.” 

“In any race against an incumbent — popular or not — your first job is to convince people that the incumbent doesn’t deserve to be reelected, and that story has not been told,” Jim Dandeneau, the Vermont Democratic Party’s executive director, said at the time.

Ultimately, only two Democratic candidates stepped up to the challenge: Charlestin, and her primary opponent, Peter Duval, a former Underhill selectboard member who previously ran statewide as a Republican. Scott also faced two independent challengers — Kevin Hoyt of Bennington and Eli “Poa” Mutino of Barre — and one opponent from the Peace and Justice Party, June Goodband of Springfield, this election. Just after 8 p.m.,each have so far garnered 2.5, 1 and .6% of Tuesday’s vote, respectively, in unofficial results. 

When Charlestin won August’s Democratic primary, she became Vermont’s first woman of color to represent a major party on the gubernatorial ballot.

At the time, she told VTDigger that she planned to “go hard” campaigning for Vermonters’ votes: “That means raising a lot more money. That means knocking on doors. That means seeking endorsements.”

Charlestin’s gubernatorial campaign did not go exactly as she anticipated on that August night. According to her final campaign finance report filed to the Secretary of State’s Office on Nov. 1, Charlestin raised $56,692 in the entire course of her campaign cycle.

Scott’s campaign fundraising total for the cycle, as of Nov. 1 was $343,632. That’s more than six times what Charlestin raised.

On the campaign trail, Scott rarely threw punches at Charlestin. Instead, he zeroed in on legislative Democrats as his political foes.

Last election, in 2022, Democrats in both Vermont’s House and Senate secured two-thirds majorities — enough seats to, in theory, easily override Scott’s frequent gubernatorial vetoes. In the ensuing two years, Democrats forged ahead with their legislative priorities, ones they knew Scott opposed, such as a bill to move towards establishing a clean heat standard. As Scott eagerly exercised his veto authority, legislators frequently retorted with decisive override votes.

On the debate stage and in interviews with VTDigger, Scott conceded that he does not believe that Vermont is better off now than it was two years ago, when he last won the race to serve in the state’s most powerful position. But the blame for that, he argued, rests not with him, but with Democrats in Montpelier.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont easily reelects Gov. Phil Scott for his fifth two-year term.