Even Primary Elections are Important

Vermont’s primary election is coming up on Tuesday, Aug. 13, and it’s easy to be complacent when so many primary races are uncontested. 

For the 11 towns where we try to cover news and events, there are four Vermont Senate races and six Vermont House races with a total of 27 candidates.

We had an ambitious project to cover all ten of those senate and house races by interviewing candidates while Hardwick Community Television (HCTV) filmed them. It’s a project that turns out to have been too ambitious for the small staff of both our organizations.

Of the 11 seats, only three are contested and last week’s Gazette covered them: David Kelley and Leanne Harple are running to represent the Democratic side for the Caledonia-4 House against Republican Anthony “Tony” Daniels. 

In the Orleans County Senate contest, Aime Conrad Bellavance and Samuel A. Douglas are vying on the Republican side to take on Democrat Katherine Sims.

The Caledonia Senate seat is the only one contested on both the Democratic and Republican sides with J.T. Dodge and Scott Beck vying as Republicans to meet one of the Democrats: Amanda Cochrane or Shawn T. Hallisey in the November election.

This week you’ll find the summarized interviews we had with Democrat Sabrina Morrison of Hardwick and Republican Michael “ Mike” Southworth from Walden. They are both uncontested in their bids to fill the Caledonia-2 House seat. HCTV will have the full interviews up to view on Wednesday. 

Our interviews and the videos of the six other uncontested races will appear after the primary election.

The Lamoille Senate race offers just one candidate, incumbent Richard A. Westman, a Cambridge Republican, who will breeze through to the November Election.

In Washington County, Republican contender Donald T. Koch of Barre Town will be up against three Democratic incumbents: Montpelier’s Ann Cummings, Andrew Perchlik from Marshfield and and Anne Watson of Barre City.

The remaining uncontested House seats are:

Lamoille-Washington covering Woodbury, Morristown, Elmore, Worcester and Stowe is a 2-seat district where Democrats Incumbent Saudia Lamont and David Yacovone of Morristown will be challenged in November by Jaiel Pulskamp, a Worcester Progressive.

In Lamoille-2, representing Wolcott, Hyde Park, Johnson and Belvidere, another two-seat district, incumbent Democrats Daniel Noyes and Jim Ryan of Wolcott are being challenged by Republicans Malcolm “Mac” Teale and Richard J. Bailey of Hyde Park.

In the Caledonia-Washington House seat representing Cabot, Danville and Peacham, two newcomers Greg Burtt, a Cabot Republican and Thomas “TomZ” Ziobrowski, a Danville Democrat, are vying to replace Henry Pearl.

Incumbent Democrat Marc Mihaly of Calais is running with no Republican challenger for the Washington-6 district representing Plainfield, Marshfield and Calais.

So, even primary elections are important and, while we dropped the ball in getting you the information we had hoped to, all of the candidates in your uncontested local races deserve a vote if you appreciate their work on your behalf.

Paul Fixx, editor

The PDF version of this story incorrectly indicated David Yacovone is an incumbent and failed to mention Saudia Lamont is an incumbent. Avram Patt is the other incumbent who is not running for reelection.