No Room for Moderates in Today's Vermont Democratic Party
By Rob Roper 

On September 8, Vermont's Democratic Auditor, Tom Salmon, and son of a former Democratic governor left his life-long political party to join the Vermont Republican Party. Explaining why, Salmon said, "I'm changing my political affiliation to align myself with a party more committed to the realities of our fiscal condition, and who I think have the abilities to manage the very real and troubling economic and social conditions which confront us not only today but over the next decade.... In many ways I'm not leaving the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me and tens of thousands of other people in a reunion with the Progressive Party and their values...."

While Salmon's dissatisfaction with just how far out of the mainstream Vermont Democrats have moved in recent years is the most dramatic and high profile story, it is by no means the only one.

Last year, in a July 5th letter to his local paper the St. Albans Messenger, explaining his decision not to run for re-election, centrist Democrat Jim Fitzgerald wrote, "Today I hang my head in shame as a member of the Vermont legislature.... If we would stop wasting time pounding Yankee power, spending time discussing the war in Iraq, campaign finance and other issues like these we might be able to study legislation that might provide some protection to the children of Vermont. Mr. Editor it is for reasons such as this issue that I have chosen not to seek another term in the Vermont house. A moderate such as myself would soon lose their mind working in that environment."

Moderate Democrats who do not leave of their own accord have been actively purged by their party. Ron Allard was guilty of supporting Governor Douglas' veto of an energy bill. In a July 15, 2007, Burlington Free Press article, Allard was quoted, "On the energy bill, he said the efficiency program included in the measure won't help the people who need it the most and he opposes the $25 million tax on the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant that would pay for it. 'My biggest argument with a lot of bills that come out is we [middle class Vermonters] can't afford to live in this state anymore.'" For taking common sense positions like this, Lloyd Touchette, chairman of the Franklin County Democratic Committee declared, "There's going to be a concerted effort to find someone to run against him." Allard lost his seat in 2008.

The Progressive/Democrat blog, Green Mountain Daily described how another moderate Democrat, John Anderson was treated by the party for supporting funding for Governor Douglas' Promise Scholarship program and voting to sustain the related veto, "...earning the wrath of the Speaker's office, and a quick boot off the committee he had first been assigned to, where the former Developer lawyer would have been in a position to push the Governor's "New Neighborhoods" agenda." http://www.greenmountaindaily.com/diary/2787/ Like Allard, the moderate Anderson, willing to work across party lines, was targeted and eliminated in a 2008 primary.

The result from this narrow minded, ruthless brand of politics is a Vermont Democratic Party that is now dominated by the highly partisan agendas of a few ideological special interest groups who have no room or even tolerance for moderate voices.

The Vermont Democratic move out of the mainstream is not confined to the state legislature. Just this week, both of our Federal Senators, Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders (who won the Democratic nomination in 2006, but calls himself an independent) were two of only seven senators to vote against cutting off federal funds to ACORN, an highly partisan organization riddled with fraud and abuse. ACORN was most recently captured video tape in four separate occasions advising under-cover journalists how to set up and launder money for a prostitution ring involving thirteen year old girls smuggled into the United States illegally. At a time when taxpayers are in serious pain and our budgets are bleeding red ink, to have both of our senators support continued funding for this kind of activity out of our wallets is an embarrassment and an insult.

The Vermont Republican Party has demonstrated under Governor Douglas' and Lieutenant Governor Dubie's leadership that it is the party that places the economic well being of Vermont and all of our citizens as its number one priority. Republicans offer practical solutions to difficult problems, and are not sidetracked by fringe, ideological issues. Common-sense Vermonters who are tuned in to what's really happening in Montpelier, such as Tom Salmon, recognize that if Vermont is to have a prosperous and secure future, Vermont Democrats are leading us down the wrong path. It is Republican leaders and Republican ideas that can and will revitalize Vermont.

Rob Roper is the Chairman of the Vermont Republican Party