Burlington mayoral candidate Infinite Culcleasure vowed to stay in the race “until March 6 and beyond” despite what he called “efforts to marginalize our campaign.”
The political newcomer posted a campaign update on his website Thursday under the headline “Message from Infinite: We’re Stronger Than Ever.” The post appeared days after Culcleasure and the two other mayoral candidates, Carina Driscoll and Miro Weinberger, participated in a televised forum about the issues.
In his post, Culcleasure decried a Seven Days cover story that examined whether Weinberger, a two-term incumbent with plenty of campaign cash, could lose the contest. Driscoll, a Progressive Party-backed independent candidate, has political experience and is the stepdaughter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a connection she’s touted on the campaign trail.
Culcleasure lamented “being marginalized based on such superficial grounds as how we look and our lack of campaign resources,” which he referred to as a “practice of white normative politics in Burlington and Vermont.”
The independent candidate said he has not coordinated with Driscoll and has no plans of dropping out of the race.
Culcleasure pushed back against the notion that his campaign will split the opposition vote and allow Weinberger an easy path to victory.
“We should all be prepared for a little discomfort and not act in fear of a potential Miro victory, but rather in hope of transformative democracy in Burlington,” he wrote.
Culcleasure continued:
After 45 years of existing on the margins of American society, being coerced to drop out of a campaign for public office has been one of the most anti-democratic adventures I have ever experienced. Since politics is not a career goal of mine, but a means for survival, I have no choice but to resist.
Culcleasure, a community organizer, has never held elected office. He’s running on a platform of increased citizen decision-making in city government and bottom-up economic development that emphasizes the city’s social and environmental needs over the bottom line.
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Adam Salem, what do you have against the democratic process?
And why do you think its okay to substitute the endorsements of organizations like RAD for the votes of citizens?
Adam Salem: “Dogsforcats: are you one of the gentrifiers for Infinite?”
I am a native Burlingtonian who has been in the North End long before you popped up in VT politics. Does that give me any more say than any one else in who is elected to represent us? NO, it does not.
Gentrification is a complex problem that you are trying to minimize with equating it to political preference.
Also, who said I was voting for Infinite? If you read what I wrote before hitting the reply button, I argued that trying to push a candidate (ANY) candidate out of a race for political expediency was undemocratic.
Adam Salem: “if you’re framing your campaign as the one focused on “movement politics” isn’t a big red-flag when you don’t win the endorsement of the group (RAD) focusing on movement politics?”
No. An endorsement by any organization means very little. It means even less in this context where there are two candidates positioning themselves of left of center and a left of center organization wants to endorse. Organizations usually look to see if candidates check off certain boxes (supports X, is against Y) but here, my guess is it was hard to tell the difference with the exception that one candidate was related to Bernie Sanders. I am going to let you figure out which one.
This is bad. The fighting on the Left locks in the race for a Miro win ( which means we can count on more over development). Miro just has to sit back, quack about how “vibrant” he has made Burlington, and not get caught in bed with a goat.
Both Driscoll and Culcleasure have to do better than they are doing at present. Which means not whining about something they don’t like: as in being tied to Jan Sanders’ problems or being a black guy in Vermont. This is politics, not beanball, and Miro has the money and knows where to put in the knife if he needs to.
So, suck it up, you two and get serious because if both of you stay in the race Miro will easily mop the floor with you both. Like it or not, you are going to have to work something out between yourselves.
Sooner is better than later.
Unless you’d rather see Burlington become just another mediocre high-rise playground for rich folks.
How many times can Infinite play the race card?
Do vermonters really want to be called racist every time he fails?
That’s right Adam, cities should only exist for people who already live in them. Sounds very inclusive.
Also there is no doubt that a big reason Carina won both of those endorsements is because as soon as both of those organizations heard that Bernie’s step daughter was challenging the mayor they made up their minds to support her.
Dogsforcats: are you one of the gentrifiers for Infinite? And if you’re framing your campaign as the one focused on “movement politics” isn’t a big red-flag when you don’t win the endorsement of the group (RAD) focusing on movement politics? And by the way, that was a totally open vote of RAD members. No nefarious outside sources, just good people making a good faith decision about who they think would be the best mayor.
And the fact that he couldn’t win the Prog endorsement is another huge red flag. If he couldn’t win an election entirely composed of people who, for the most part, agree with his message – what does that say about his chances in a city wide election, which (spoiler alert) is going to include Progs, Dems and even a few endangered species Republicans. Just because you want something to be true, doesn’t make it true. And ignoring the writing on the wall doesn’t mean that the writing is not, in fact, on the wall…
Most people underestimated Infinite Culcleasure in this race. Remember he didn’t lose the progressive nomination vote by that much.
The Progressive Party and Rights & Democracy are so obsessed with beating the Mayor, that they’re trying to get rid of someone they see as a threat to their chances. They identified Carina Driscoll as their candidate so long ago that it doesn’t matter to them that Culcleasure might appeal to their supporters more than Driscoll does.
Adam Salem, as always, your comment seems to totally miss the mark (at least we can count on you for consistency).
First, a side note: how do you know (not “guess” but actually have really knowledge of) who is going to vote for Infinite? These are baseless claims that you are asserting as forgone conclusions.
Now to the main point:
In a democracy, candidates are asked to hold themselves out for public office if they think they can serve the people who they seek to represent and the people vote on who would be the best representative based on the election process. It is extremely UNdemocratic to demand, coerce, pressure a candidate to drop out of the race in order to restructure the competition “strategically.” That is not the democratic voice of the people and that is not giving the people as many options as they deserve to have.
Infinite seems to have put together an odd coalition of longtime Burlington residents who are victims of gentrification and young, college grads from out of state that are doing the gentrifying.
I get that it’s fun to be woke and make cool signs that say “Miro Lies” but that’s not going to do it for people. Infinite definitely brings something unique to the table and it would be foolish to dismiss his candidacy but there is just no way that he gets elected. The progs are going to have a hard enough time unseating Miro without splitting the vote.
And I just can’t get over the irony that a lot of his very vocal supporters are young people from out of state who moved to Burlington for it’s “character” and are now pricing out locals. To see a great example, check out the SevenDays article about gentrification – one of them is quoted.
I would vote for Culcleasure over Driscoll any day: Infinite clearly stands for something substantial whereas Carina just stands against Miro and as the daughter of Bernie.