Final Reading: ‘Fusion’ candidates are in, ‘sore losers’ are out in bill advanced by House

Rep. Mike McCarthy, D-St. Albans City, who chairs the House Government Operations Committee, listens to testimony on proposed changes to state election laws last month. File photo by Riley Robinson/VTDigger

For all the talk of one-party rule in Vermont, the general election ballot has long been a bit of an alphabet soup. There are Ds, of course, alongside Rs, and Ps, and Is, as well as D/Ps, and P/Ds, and even R/Ds and D/Rs.

But a miscellaneous election bill sponsored by the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs initially sought to declutter the ballot, doing away with “fusion” candidates altogether.

Its sponsors, including Rep. Mike McCarthy, D-St. Albans City, the panel’s chair, argued it would offer voters a clearer and more transparent set of choices. Its detractors saw it as an attempt by Democrats, who now hold historic supermajorities, to kneecap their competition — and in particular Progressives, whose candidates almost always run as hybrid or “fusion” candidates.

The bill’s sponsors backtracked at first by simply restricting the order in which party hybrid affiliations are listed on the ballot. But Wednesday, McCarthy yanked the bill from the floor, and, on Thursday, re-introduced it alongside a new amendment which eliminated the fusion section altogether.

“We heard significant feedback from our colleagues that that particular piece that we had worked on was something that they wanted us to reconsider,” McCarthy told his committee on Thursday morning, by way of explanation. The panel accepted the change 11-0-1.

The only remaining major controversy in the bill? A so-called “sore loser” provision. Under current law, a candidate can file to run in a party primary, can file to run as an independent, or can do both. H.429 would prohibit someone from running in the general election as an independent if they’d lost a primary that election cycle.

The “sore loser” bit alarmed one of the Legislature’s best-known and most vocal independents: Dover’s Laura Sibilia. And so she offered an amendment that would have done exactly the opposite of what the underlying bill sought to do, allowing candidates to continue running in the general if they’d lost in the primary — and pushing the filing deadline for independent candidates to one week after the primary.

Her proposal stoked passionate support from a coalition spanning the ideological spectrum.

“My fundamental frame for election law is whether it increases voter participation and access. I found that this amendment does that,” said Robin Chestnut-Tangerman, a Democrat from Middletown Springs who once chaired the chamber’s Progressive caucus.

“Do you want to give the most polarized elements of our electorate a veto over who can face the voters and the general election and serve in this august body?” asked Rep. Joseph Andriano, D-Orwell.

A primary vote may represent “the will of the primary voters in that party,” added Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, “But it is not the will of the voters.”

But others pointed out that candidates uninterested in a partisan process could still run as independents — they just couldn’t run again, after having already lost once.

Maybe the “sore loser” moniker is a bit harsh, Rep. Martin LaLonde, D-South Burlington, told his colleagues, adding he might have called it the “you don’t get a mulligan bill.”

“This really is about fairness in my view. And if you run in the primary you’re seeking to affiliate with a party. And if you lose in that primary — you’ve had your fair shot,” he said.

Sibilia’s amendment to strike the “sore loser” provision failed 59 to 78. The underlying bill, as amended by McCarthy, received the chamber’s preliminary approval by voice vote. It’s up for third reading tomorrow.

— Lola Duffort

IN THE KNOW

As lawmakers consider whether to commit millions of dollars toward replacing Vermont’s long-troubled women’s prison, they face renewed calls to reconsider — particularly from the Vermont ACLU.

In his funding proposal for the state’s capital bill — the biannual spending bill that funds infrastructure construction and maintenance — Gov. Phil Scott has requested $15.5 million to go toward replacing Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility with a new prison and re-entry facility, at a to-be-determined location. Scott’s proposal would put $1.5 million in cash funds toward the next step in plans. It would also commit $14 million in state bonding capacity toward future construction.

Neither the administration nor lawmakers expect construction would actually begin within the two-year cycle of this capital bill.

Read more here.

— Riley Robinson

ON THE MOVE

Amid debates that have reached a fever pitch across the state, lawmakers in the Vermont Senate have voted 19-10 to advance a bill that aims to transform the way Vermonters heat their homes.

The bill, S.5, which would establish a clean heat standard in Vermont, is headed to the House, where it’s expected to pass. It will then go to the desk of Gov. Phil Scott, who expressed strong opposition at his weekly press briefing on Wednesday.

The Republican governor vetoed a similar bill last session, and lawmakers failed to override his veto by a single vote. Due to a supermajority of Democrats and Progressives in both chambers, the bill has better odds this time.

Read more here.

— Emma Cotton

Just after lunch on Thursday, the House passed H.53 — a bill that would eliminate the Department of Motor Vehicle’s ability to suspend your driver’s license just because you have not paid the fine for a moving violation, such as speeding, running a red or making an illegal turn. The vote was not unanimous, with a number of “nos” echoing throughout the chamber.

The bill would not impact other — and potentially more serious — reasons the DMV can suspend a person’s driving privileges, such as operating under the influence.

According to the Joint Fiscal Office, the DMV suspended some 4,000 licenses last year for the nonpayment of moving violations — about 45% of all license suspensions. The fiscal office estimated that H.53 would cost the state’s transportation fund about $200,000 in lost revenue, accounting for fewer people paying fees to get their licenses back.

— Shaun Robinson

The House in a preliminary vote Thursday advanced H.40, a bill that would establish civil penalties for “stealthing,” or nonconsensual condom removal before or during intercourse. H.40’s proponents say the act not only poses potential physical repercussions for victims, but violates their sexual consent, inflicting emotional and psychological harm.

The bill’s primary sponsor Rep. Barbara Rachelson, D/P-Burlington, told her colleagues in a floor speech Thursday that she first learned of the phenomenon in 2021, when her daughter sent her a news article about a similar bill that outlawed stealthing in California.

“I had never heard of stealthing before and wondered if it was relevant to Vermont,” Rachelson said. “The more I read and the more I talked to students and constituents, it became clear that this was not just a weird thing happening in California.”

She described online forums and “blogs galore” offering tips on how to most effectively stealth. The act “has become part of our culture. It’s a thing,” Rachelson said. Or, in the words of a 2019 Michigan Journal of Gender & Law article that Rachelson quoted on the floor, the fact that the practice even has a name signals “its grotesque ubiquity.”

The bill met with some pushback before its passage. Detractors criticized its narrow focus on condom removal, saying that it should also include penalties for partners who misrepresent whether they are actively taking contraception. Calling H.40 “fundamentally inequitable,” Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, agreed that nonconsensual condom removal “eradicates (sexual) consent,” but so does lying about being on the pill, she said.

“The question of someone agreeing to enter into a sexual act based on, ‘Yes, I am using birth control,’ when it is a lie, makes that consent invalid because it’s premised on a lie, exactly as in the situation that this bill proposes to address,” Donahue said. “Therefore, it, too, is sexual assault.”

— Sarah Mearhoff

Slow your roll: Following the Senate Health Committee’s approval on Tuesday, S.37, the Senate’s so-called omnibus abortion bill, needs to take a detour to the Appropriations Committee before it’s ready for prime time. Once it has the blessing of Senate appropriators, it can head to the floor for a full vote.

— Sarah Mearhoff