Gubernatorial candidate Amanda Janoo launched into her last week of campaigning wearing an ’80s-style, off-the-shoulder party dress she bought secondhand. The occasion? “Political Prom,” a sold-out Sunday night campaign fundraiser at Winooski’s Monkey House that called for attendees to “dress your best” and “get ready to dance.”
“No matter what, win or lose, I want to say that this campaign has brought an incredible amount of joy, movement and power to this state,” Janoo told supporters at the event.
The prom was the latest example of the unconventional, grassroots campaign Janoo, the Democratic/Progressive nominee for governor, has run since she announced her bid for the top office in March. Her style stands in stark contrast to the more conventional approach to campaigning favored by incumbent Republican Gov. Phil Scott, a 25-year veteran of Vermont politics.
With Election Day drawing near, polls show that Scott and Janoo are in a tight race. The most recent survey, published on October 27 by nonprofit State Navigate, shows Scott leading Janoo by three points, 49 percent to 46 percent, with 3 percent of voters undecided.
Scott’s been getting some outside help as he tries to stave off his challenger. In October, the Republican Governors Association donated nearly $1 million to a political action committee, A Stronger Vermont, to boost the incumbent’s campaign. The committee has used the money to pay for television and online ads characterizing Janoo as radical and inexperienced. Elon Musk, David Koch and Miriam Adelson are among the prominent, wealthy conservatives that have donated millions to the association.
Scott has said he doesn’t like the outside money but can’t do anything about it. May Hanlon, executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party, contests that framing.
“I think Phil Scott wants credit for standing up to Trump without condemning this huge cash influx that is directly tied to Trump’s allies in the national Republican party,” she told Seven Days.
In the months since she won the August primary, Janoo has crisscrossed the state holding large town halls and smaller community forums. In recent weeks, she’s fielded questions from high school students, held meetups at dog parks and breweries, and even made a surprise appearance at a racy dating show at South Burlington’s Higher Ground. Janoo’s campaign has enlisted a network of more than 1,500 volunteers to knock on doors and phone bank on her behalf.
On Wednesday afternoon, Janoo appeared at South Burlington High School with American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, who was on the tail end of a get-out-the-vote bus tour through more than a dozen states. The crowd, made up primarily of local union members, held signs that said “Labor for Janoo.”
“You have this amazing opportunity to not just settle” for a governor, Weingarten told the enthusiastic crowd, but to choose a candidate who supports “the working person’s agenda.”
At the event, Janoo called herself “a bit of a labor nerd” and highlighted her belief in bottom-up decision-making.
“The greatest economic transformations didn’t happen because somebody with enormous power suddenly decided to share it,” Janoo said. “They happened because ordinary people organized, workers organized, farmers organized, civil rights activists organized, women organized, communities organized … people who individually had very little power discovered that collectively, they had an extraordinary amount of it.”
Scott, who is vying for a sixth term as governor, has appeared at more traditional events, including a well-attended honk and wave in downtown Barre and a float-filled Halloween parade in Rutland.
On Thursday, he held his weekly press conference at the Vermont Construction Academy in Winooski, a trade school founded by local construction companies to increase the pipeline of skilled workers. The event, held in conjunction with Efficiency Vermont, promoted the importance of weatherizing homes for winter and the financial support available to help Vermonters do so — the kind of practical topic that is squarely within Gov. Scott’s comfort zone.
As young men painted wooden planks in the workshop behind him, Scott spoke of the high cost of heating fuel and the importance of “buttoning up homes for the winter.”
He invited several construction students to come to the podium to explain why they’d gotten into the trades.
“These kids … their future is bright because no matter what happens with AI, they will always have a job, always have a skill that’s going to be needed,” the governor said. He told the small gathering of people that he’d gone to the University of Vermont to become a career and technical education instructor but ultimately decided to go into business.
“After Tuesday, I may be back here,” Scott quipped, eliciting chuckles from the group.
The candidates shared a stage on Wednesday night, when they met for their third and final debate, hosted by WCAX-TV. In her closing statement, Janoo delivered a message about the power Vermonters have to address what often feels like overwhelming challenges. The governor, meanwhile, said Janoo’s proposals didn’t make financial sense.
“You’ve heard a lot of lofty promises tonight, a lot of things that sound good — free this, free that — and let’s make everyone else pay for it,” Scott said. “But here’s the reality: When you are the governor, the math actually has to add up.”
The one-hour debate covered well-trod topics including affordability, health care and education reform.
On the latter topic, Scott said inequity between school districts was a prime reason the education system needs to be revamped. Some rural school districts offer just one or two foreign languages, he said, “whereas in Winooski, and some of the Chittenden County areas, they have 17.”
That misrepresented the foreign language offerings in Winooski, according to superintendent Wilmer Chavarria. He said the district only teaches one foreign language — French — because it doesn’t have the money to offer more.
On Thursday, Chavarria emailed Education Secretary Zoie Saunders requesting that she and the governor publicly retract “the misinformation stated in last night’s debate by the end of the day.”
“By falsely inflating the resources given to Vermont’s most racially diverse school district, the rhetoric taps into the well-used zero-sum social grievance and it quietly signals to voters in other districts that their tax dollars are funding ‘special privileges’ for a changing demographic, stoking resentment without ever having to use explicit racially charged language,” Chavarria wrote to Saunders.
By Friday morning, the governor had written a letter to Chavarria, apologizing for misspeaking during the debate. Scott said his administration is committed to “establishing a fairer funding system and creating larger, more inclusive school districts … to ensure that student opportunity is no longer a zero-sum game in Vermont.”
Chavarria said he is still seeking a public correction from the Scott administration.
The candidates still have miles to go before Election Day. On Sunday and Monday, Janoo will barnstorm the state, with rallies in Bennington, Manchester, Rutland, White River Junction, Barre, Waterbury and Williston. Scott, meanwhile, will volunteer at a Wheels for Warmth event on Saturday, according to campaign spokesperson Emma Shouldice. On Monday, Scott will visit all of Vermont’s 14 counties, starting at 4:15 a.m. in Berlin and ending at 6:30 p.m. in Milton.
Early voting is already well under way: As of 9 a.m. on Friday, 139,566 voters had already turned in their ballots, according to the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office.
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