This election season, 7 first-time House candidates face no opposition

This January, a handful of new legislators are expected to enter the Vermont House of Representatives without facing any challengers in either their primary or general elections.

They’re poised to join roughly 50 incumbents who are up for reelection, also with no competitors on the November ballot.

In a state where political operatives have lamented the challenges of recruiting a full slate of candidates — and lawmakers themselves are open about the struggles of serving in a part-time capacity with low pay and no benefits — it’s not uncommon for incumbents to coast to reelection. But this fall, seven state House races have just one candidate with no legislative experience running without opposition. That is, unless last-minute challengers stand up write-in campaigns.

In one additional race, former state Rep. John Kascenska, a Republican from Burke, is back on the ballot after a two-year hiatus from the House, and faces no opposition.

Most of the seven candidates expected to walk into the Statehouse come January with no legislative experience do have some background in public service, having served on their local school or select boards. In total, six of these uncontested candidates are Republicans, and one is a Democrat.

For first-time candidates running entirely unopposed, the dynamic presents “its own challenges,” according to Chris Brown, who is running as a Republican to represent Castleton in Rutland County’s third House district. Brown, a former auto parts store owner and retired plow truck driver for the Vermont Agency of Transportation, was the only candidate who stepped up to run when incumbent Rep. Jarrod Sammis, a libertarian, opted not to seek reelection.

“If you do too much, people kind of look at you like you’re stupid,”  Brown told VTDigger this week. “When I was at the polls all primary day — 11 hours, I was there — a couple people said to me, ‘What are you doing? You don’t have an opponent.’ And I said, ‘Well, I want to show people that I want the job, and I want to try to help all of us.’”

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On the flip side, Brown said, “If you don’t do enough, people think that you’re lazy or presumptuous, or a combination of the two.”

For Bridget Marie Burkhardt, a Democrat running to represent South Burlington in Chittenden County’s eighth House district, this isn’t her first uncontested race. Two of Burkhardt’s three elections to the South Burlington school board, on which she served from 2016 to 2022, were also unopposed.

Burkhardt’s race for her second term on the school board in 2018, though, featured two other candidates. “It was a very different feeling,” she recounted to VTDigger.

“In some ways, it’s nice to run an unopposed election, because you can spend time focusing on listening more than sort of presenting yourself to voters,” Burkhardt said. “So you can sort of get out there and just hear what people are concerned about, without having to try to sell yourself quite as much. But then again, sometimes it’s nice to have someone to react to, as well.”

For some first-time candidates, they’re on the campaign trail reacting not to a political opponent in their own race, but to leadership in Montpelier.

Richard Nelson, a Republican dairy farmer from Derby who chairs the North Country Union Junior High School Board, said that, “A lot of times up here” — in Orleans County’s solidly red first House district — ”we just don’t get anyone from the Democratic Party to run.” That didn’t change when eight-year incumbent Rep. Brian Smith, a Republican, opted to retire this year and Nelson threw his hat in the ring.

Nelson already had some experience in the Statehouse, as one of numerous farmers who testified against this year’s bill mostly banning the use of seeds treated with neonicotinoid pesticides . Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of the bill, H.706 , was ultimately overridden by the Democratic supermajority.

“I see our Legislature being controlled by people with good intentions that — a lot of them — have come from away. And they moved here for a reason, and they are, frankly, raising hell,” Nelson said. “That’s a big part of why I’m running, to support the Vermont that I know.”

In addition to Nelson and Brown, four more Republicans are running unopposed for their first terms in the state House: Jim Casey in the Addison-Rutland district; Joshua Dobrovich in Orange County’s third district; Ken Wells, in Orleans County’s third district; and Alice Malay in Rutland County’s eighth district.

Political party operatives and lawmakers alike have said for years that serving in Vermont’s part-time, citizen Legislature is logistically and financially difficult. Legislators earn roughly $15,000 for the four months they work full-time in Montpelier, and they receive no health insurance or child care benefits. Bills seeking to raise legislator compensation have withered on the vine.

And for lawmakers who hold full-time jobs, it’s difficult to convince an employer to allow them to spend four-plus months away from work.

Burkhardt herself declined to seek another term on the South Burlington school board two years ago so she could refocus her energy on her career in finance. When she first ran for the school board in 2016, she had stepped back from her career to raise her young children. Now, she said, she will have to strike the balance with her legislative duties.

“It’s definitely a barrier, because it’s hard to marry the rhythm of the Legislature with the rhythm of working a full year, full-time job,” Burkhardt said.

For Brown, that logistical hurdle was insurmountable until work was no longer a consideration. He “never really had the time to be politically active,” he said, until he retired this year. His last day of work was on a Friday, and by Saturday, he said he was out collecting ballot signatures.

Leading up to filing deadlines for candidates to register with the Secretary of State’s Office, Gov. Scott had pledged to recruit a slate of politically moderate down-ballot candidates to challenge Democrats’ theoretically veto-proof supermajority in both the House and Senate. By late May, he told reporters at a press conference that his campaign had recruited “not as many as we’d hoped” to run.

“It’s difficult to move away from your job, your life, and give up all the things you have going on,” Scott said at the time. “A lot of folks want to do it. They just don’t think the timing is right.”

But, the governor added, “Sometimes the timing is never right, and I use myself as an example of that. I mean, I did it 20-something years ago, when I didn’t have the time, either. And so I just jumped in because I thought it was that important to have my perspective heard, and I hope that others will do the same.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: This election season, 7 first-time House candidates face no opposition .