Two independent candidates, Marie Audet and Paul Ralston.
Conspicuous by his absence from the invitation: Peter Briggs, a 28-year-old selectboard member from Addison and the Republican candidate in the Senate race.
Audet and Ralston’s joint campaign committee organized the event. The independents announced their candidacies together in late July.
Ralston, a former Democratic state representative, has said that he supports Scott. He explained in July that he and Audet teamed up because they would be “running against a party establishment and that party has a lot of resources.”
He was speaking of the Democratic Party, which currently holds both of the county’s Senate seats: Incumbent Sen. Chris Bray is seeking reelection; Sen. Claire Ayer is retiring. The other Democrat in the race is Ruth Hardy, executive director of Emerge Vermont, a nonprofit that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office.
Ralston, a New Haven resident, is the owner of Vermont Coffee Company. Audet is a dairy farmer from Bridport.
Ralston said the excavator challenge was actually the starting point for the event. “We wanted to show that an independent candidate can beat a major party candidate,” he explained, so he issued the challenge to Scott.
Clever.
Ralston said he isn’t expecting a gubernatorial endorsement. “The governor’s got his own race to run,” Ralston said. “We’re independents. We’re not accepting endorsements.”
At the same time, Ralston threw some shade at the Dems, accusing them of trying to depict the two independents as undercover Republicans. “When they want to insult someone, they call them a Republican,” Ralston said.
Are you endorsing Ralston and Audet? “Well, you’ll find out on October 2nd,” Scott responded.
Is Briggs going to be there? “I am not aware of who’s invited to that event.”
Should he be invited? After all, he’s a fellow Republican. “I am not aware of who’s invited to the event at this point.”
From a Machiavellian standpoint, Scott’s support for a pair of label-free centrists makes sense. The last time a Republican won a Senate seat in Addison County was in 2000. Ralston and Audet, running as a ticket, might fare better than a Republican. In this scenario, Briggs would be nothing but a spoiler. The more votes he receives, the less likely that both Democrats would be defeated.
Briggs did not immediately return calls for comment. According to Ralston, Audet is attending The Big E, an agricultural exposition in Springfield, Mass., and is unavailable for comment.
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I am a voter in Addison County and I will vote for Peter Briggs. With six candidates in the race, he has the best chance to win given the support he received two years ago. Briggs is not a spoiler in any manner and I am looking forward to voting for him.
Come on John Walters. The headline of this story is clearly click-bait in the worst possible sense. Phil Scott didn’t “snub” anybody. He gets invited to an event that he’s not putting on. He agrees to go. How in the world do you go from that to deciding he thus “snubbed” somebody else who wasn’t invited? If I invited you to my birthday party and didn’t invite my brother, have you “snubbed” my brother in agreeing to come? Quite the leap. Your partisan leanings are showing.
Characterizing Peter Briggs as the spoiler seems a bit unfair. He began his campaign, as required for major party candidates, in the spring. Audet and Ralston are late to the party as independents, having only announced in mid summer. Seems to me that perhaps Briggs is the one getting spoiled.
Joe,
The snub is that Scott, a Republican, is going to a party for Independent candidates for an office that a Republican is also running for (remember, Scott’s a Republican?), a party that doesn’t include the Republican candidate. The fact that Phil is going to a party for people running against his own party’s candidate means the governor is snubbing Briggs. It’s pretty simple, really.