There are currently five official candidates in the 2016 gubernatorial race. Two Republicans; Phil Scott and Bruce Lisman, and three Democrats; Shap Smith, Matt Dunne and Sue Minter. And there's a good chance that there will also be a Progressive candidate running for governor.
In the three elections that Democrat Peter Shumlin ran for governor, the Progressives chose not to field a candidate, but 2016 could set up a very different scenario.
Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, the chair of the Vermont Progressive Party, says many Party members have little interest in backing one of the three announced Democratic candidates.
"I can tell you from working with members of the Party over the last year, especially the last six months, there's a lot more interest and desire to run a Progressive than there is any interest, frankly, in supporting even a small 'p' progressive Democrat at this point,” Mulvaney-Stanak says. “So we're really looking toward finding our own candidate to run in 2016."
The Progressives are also eyeing the race for lieutenant governor, another open seat in 2016. Mulvaney-Stanak says the Party has at least two serious candidates looking at this contest: Chittenden senator David Zuckerman, and Dean Corren, the party's nominee in 2014.
"I think it really shows how much we've grown in recent years that we have now a bit of a bench where we have some candidates with name recognition and some serious potential to win,” she says.
It's likely that the Progressive candidate for lieutenant governor will also seek the Democratic nomination. Retired Middlebury College political science professor Eric Davis thinks Zuckerman, with a strong base in Chittenden County, could win the Democratic primary.
But unlike the race for lieutenant governor, Davis says the best known Progressives in the Legislature, Zuckerman, Anthony Pollina and Chris Pearson, have indicated very little interest in running for governor. He says this poses a major challenge for the party.
"In a competitive open-seat gubernatorial race what the Progressives do have to be concerned about is if they run candidate that gets a small percentage of the vote, that indirectly helps the Republican candidate finish first in a multi-candidate race,” Davis says.
However, Mulvaney-Stanak says considering a Progressive candidate to be a "spoiler" in a three-way race is an outdated way of looking at Vermont politics.
‘This would be a year not only to really challenge that way of thinking … ‘There can only be two people in the race,’ to really support the concept that people should be able to support a candidate who really stands up for working people in Vermont,” Mulvaney-Stanak says.
It could be next winter before a Progressive candidate actively campaigns for either governor or lieutenant governor.
Mulvaney-Stanak says that's because it's very likely that these candidates will seek public financing of their campaigns. And under Vermont's election law, candidates interested in qualifying for the public option must wait until February before launching their campaigns.
