At their first debate, Vermont gubernatorial candidates point to the state’s woes but disagree about who is responsible

Vermont’s leading candidates for governor agreed at a VTDigger debate Thursday night that Vermont is worse off today than it has been in the recent past. However, in many ways they disagreed about who exactly was to blame.

For incumbent Republican Gov. Phil Scott, seeking his fifth term in the state’s highest office, the answer was a familiar one: the Legislature’s Democratic supermajority, with which his relationship has been particularly strained in recent years.

“The Legislature has passed a record number of bad bills in the last six, seven years,” Scott said, at one point calling legislative leaders “insatiable.” He added: “They have no interest in working together. They just want to score political points.”

Meanwhile, Scott’s Democratic-Progressive challenger, former Middlebury Selectboard member Esther Charlestin, argued that the issue actually stopped with him.

“It’s hard for me when our head of state blames part-timers (legislators),” Charlestin said. “It’s hard for me to blame them for where we are when you’ve been in office for eight years.”

Thursday’s virtual debate was the first between Scott and Charlestin, the two leading gubernatorial candidates, in the 2024 election cycle. In fact, both candidates said it was the first time they had met in person, albeit via Zoom.

At some points, it was a terse introduction for the two, who enter the race just weeks before Election Day on Nov. 5 with very different experiences in government and a significant imbalance in Scott’s favor in campaign fundraising.

A heated exchange ensued when debate moderators pressed Scott on his highly controversial move in April to name the state’s current education secretary, Zoie Saunders, as interim secretary, despite the Senate’s refusal moments earlier to approve Saunders’ appointment confirm.

Instead, when asked to explain his decision, Scott quickly objected to the Senate’s vote. “I myself thought it was a political hit job. The solution was found,” he said, arguing that many senators did not justify Saunders’ qualifications.

The governor declined to say whether he would reappoint Saunders to the post when her term expires in February 2025, adding, “I don’t even know” whether Saunders herself would want to go through the process again.

When asked what she thought of the governor’s appointment — which two state senators recently challenged in court, but so far unsuccessfully — Charlestin said she disagreed with it. Those senators, she said, “did the right thing” by suing the government.
Charlestin also insisted that “as an educator myself,” she would not rename Saunders.

Then the governor spoke up quickly: “Have you ever met her, Esther?”

“No,” replied Charlestin. “I didn’t have the pleasure.”

Both Scott and the debate moderators focused on Charlestin’s lack of electoral experience beyond a seat on the Board of Elections, noting that most governors have previously served at the highest levels of state government. Charlestin currently serves as co-chair of the Vermont Commission on Women and runs an educational consulting firm.

“How can you assure Vermonters that you have the experience to run an $8.6 billion company with more than 8,000 employees?” asked Sarah Mearhoff, VTDigger Statehouse office manager.

Although she acknowledged that her experience “doesn’t seem like much,” Charlestin stressed that she would surround herself with the right people. “I’m an expert at finding these experts. The good news is the governor has a cabinet, right?”

“I’m just wondering – how many employees do you have, Esther?” Scott asked during an earlier conversation when he pressed her to explain her management experience.

“Well, it depends,” Charlestin replied. “At the moment I am working as a consultant all by myself. And I run another company with four employees.”

Likewise, the moderators pressed Scott on why they think he should run for governor a fifth time. Only former Democratic Gov. Howard Dean, the state’s longest-serving leader, won as many elections.

In response, Scott reiterated an earlier comment that Vermont isn’t on the right track — particularly, he said, in the last two years. He pointed to a new law that increased fees for state Department of Motor Vehicles services by 20% and, without providing details, to “regressive taxes that hurt low- and middle-income Vermonters.”

“I just feel like someone needs to step forward, and I didn’t have a lot of confidence in the next candidate at that point,” he said.

When asked by the moderators, Scott did not rule out running for a possible sixth term. In another response, he said that although he vetoed more bills during his four terms in office than any other governor in state history, “there probably would have been more vetoes.”

Both candidates also gave different answers when asked by VTDigger reader Chris Leslie what they would do to address rising education costs and their impact on property taxes.

Scott called for “further structural reforms” in funding education in the state, saying lawmakers have rejected “dozens of proposals” from his administration since he was first elected to office. Part of the answer, he said, is consolidating schools and school districts and using “natural turnover” to reduce schools’ staffing costs.

Charlestin, meanwhile, said the state should raise more money to support education by raising taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents, arguing: “That’s an avenue we haven’t fully explored yet.”

The moderators asked both candidates how they would go about building the at least 24,000 housing units the state is expected to need over the next five years. In response to a question from a moderator, Charlestin previously identified housing as one of the policy goals that she felt Scott’s administration had not done enough about during his time in office.

“There are regulatory hurdles there that don’t allow new people to come in and really build new buildings,” Charlestin said. “And so my administration would focus on that, not just in the urban areas but also in the rural areas.”

Scott said he agreed with the need for further regulatory reform, citing his opposition to a law passed this year over his veto that overhauled Vermont’s main land use law, Act 250. The law loosens the scope of Act 250 in existing development centers – intended to encourage compact housing construction – while laying the groundwork for expanding Act 250’s protections in areas considered ecologically sensitive.

But Scott reiterated his earlier criticism that the law was a housing-boosting law in name only — and instead called it “a conservation law.”