Karen Paul, a longtime Burlington city councilor and the body’s current president, is running for mayor as a Democrat.
Paul will formally launch her campaign at an event on Thursday on the Church Street Marketplace. Joined by family and supporters, she will also announce “endorsements from prominent Burlington and Vermont leaders,” a campaign press release said.
In an interview on Tuesday, Paul said she’s running for mayor because she wants to make Burlington a better place.
“I love the city,” she said. “I know we’re facing many challenges, but I’m more hopeful about the future of Burlington than ever, and I think we need a leader who can bring people together — not just in words but in actions.”
Paul is the first Democrat to line up to replace Mayor Miro Weinberger, a fellow Dem who isn’t running for reelection in the spring after nearly 12 years in office. Paul already faces competition from state Rep. Emma Mulvaney-Stanak (P/D-Burlington), who launched a mayoral campaign last week.
Both candidates will seek their parties’ nominations at caucuses later this year, ahead of Town Meeting Day elections in March.
If elected, either candidate would be the first-ever woman mayor in Burlington. Other potential candidates are also women: City Councilor Joan Shannon (D-South District), tech consultant C D Mattison and former mayoral hopeful Carina Driscoll.
Paul grew up in the city’s South End and graduated from Burlington High School. She works as a certified public accountant for a Montpelier-based firm and lives in the Hill Section with her husband, Mark Saba. They have three grown children.
Paul served on the city’s electric and police commissions before being elected to the council in 2008. She initially ran as an independent but later adopted the Democratic label. Paul was named council president in April 2022 by a unanimous vote of her peers.
Paul has sponsored a number of consequential resolutions over her 15-year tenure, including a measure to make Burlington a net-zero city by 2030. She also wrote two resolutions that promote using harm-reduction methods to address the drug crisis, including opening an overdose prevention site. And she helped create the city’s rating system for rental properties, which requires units with code violations to be inspected more frequently.
Most recently, on Monday, Paul voted to keep the Vermont Air National Guard based at the city’s airport until 2073. Opponents of the Guard’s F-35 fighter jets protested the vote, but a majority of the council — Democrats and independents — agreed to extend the lease.
In June 2020, Paul was one of three Democrats who voted in favor of reducing the size of the police force through attrition. But she also voted against a proposal to prevent the police department from filling vacancies until its head count dropped below 74. That motion passed, though the council has since agreed to hire more police officers and to offer them hiring and retention bonuses. Paul supported both rebuilding initiatives.
Paul declined to share her campaign platform until her formal announcement on Thursday. Her campaign is being managed by Nick Charyk, a Sharon resident who ran campaigns for former Vermont House speaker Shap Smith and former gubernatorial candidate Matt Dunne.
Paul said her ability to create consensus on the politically divided council makes her well suited to be mayor. She said she helps prepare councilors for meetings, including by making sure they have information from Weinberger’s office ahead of time.
“In turn, I think people have been very respectful and that we have, by and large, worked very well together,” Paul said. “I think people notice that.”
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