The Democratic candidates for the state’s top two offices could have spent last Friday afternoon watching ax throwing, eating fudge or listening to bluegrass music by a band called Turnip Truck at the Tunbridge World’s Fair.
Instead, Amanda Janoo, who is running for governor, and Molly Gray, on the ballot for lieutenant governor, hung out at a booth for Rural Vermont Rising. The grassroots group sprang up earlier this year to push back against what its members viewed as onerous new environmental regulations targeting rural properties.
The group made its presence felt during the legislative session, when hundreds rallied on the Statehouse steps and bombarded lawmakers with emails denouncing the new land-use rules called for in Act 181. The 2024 law was intended to cut red tape for housing projects near existing development and to tighten regulations in natural areas considered sensitive, such as headwater streams and wildlife corridors.
Members felt that their properties were being unfairly targeted with arbitrary development restrictions — even as the rules were relaxed in urban areas.
Rural Vermont Rising quickly showed its might by persuading lawmakers to repeal environmental provisions that members considered objectionable. Now, as elections loom for statewide offices and the entire legislature, the fledgling movement is asking tough questions of existing and aspiring lawmakers alike and has the potential to influence what happens at the polls in November.
“Rural Vermont Rising is probably one of the most impactful modern-day grassroots movements in Vermont,” Gray acknowledged to about a dozen people gathered at the group’s booth.
Since the legislative session ended, the coalition has turned its attention to organizing local chapters in all 14 Vermont counties. It has pushed back on regional planning efforts it finds overly restrictive, critiqued conservation efforts that its members worry will erode the rural economy and grown its Facebook following to 18,000 strong.
And the group has sought, through events such as the one at the fair, to make sure political candidates know it’s a force to be reckoned with in state politics.
“This is a breakthrough moment for Rural Vermont Rising,” said Neil Ryan, a Corinth cattle farmer and writer who is a prominent volunteer with the group.
Not everyone is sold. Rep. Theresa Wood (D-Waterbury) said the rhetoric on the group’s Facebook page could get “nasty” at times. She also questioned whether all of the page’s followers were real.
“I was not disparaging the group,” Wood told Seven Days. “I was just saying that like any large group … there are ‘people’ who show up and join who may or may not actually be real people.”
Detractors have pegged Rural Vermont Rising as an effort that pretends to be local but is really funded by an outside organization, a practice derisively referred to as astroturfing. Ryan said that claim stems from a “whisper campaign” aimed at discrediting the group.
Rural Vermont Rising is a committed group of volunteers with some skills in writing and website design, he said, who are working hard to grow the organization to ensure that voices from rural Vermont are heard in Montpelier.
“Nobody wants to be doing this,” Ryan said, “but when you get the bit between your teeth, what are you gonna do?”
Paul Dame, chair of the Vermont Republican Party, said the group is already having an impact on races. Two longtime reps from rural Vermont, Jim Masland (D-Thetford) and John Bartholomew (D-Hartland), both voted for Act 181 and subsequently lost their primaries to newcomers. He predicted a similar fate for Rep. John O’Brien (D-Tunbridge) in the general election.
“The question isn’t whether Rural Vermont Rising will have an impact. The question is, ‘How big will it be?’” Dame said. “Every Democrat in a rural district who voted with their party leadership to pass Act 181 and override the governor’s veto should be very concerned.”
The group refers to itself as a citizen coalition. It has no centralized leadership, office or staff. It does not accept donations or contribute to political campaigns. Its regional chapters typically meet at potluck suppers in homes or community centers. A volunteer spent $4,000 of their own money to have T-shirts made and hopes to recoup the expense by selling them, Ryan said.
The question isn’t whether Rural Vermont Rising will have an impact. The question is, “How big will it be?”
paul dame
Members are less interested in getting specific people elected than in building an organization that will hold elected officials accountable, explained John Kellogg, a facilitator for the Rural Vermont Rising group in Burke. Kellogg, who lives with his wife on 30 acres in Charleston, is on a steering committee trying to bring structure to the organization.
The group’s goals include ensuring the people who work the land have a say in decisions about regulations, he said. Members feel strongly that the change they seek is going to take more than one legislative session to accomplish.
“My sense is that the people most active in [Rural Vermont Rising] are in it for the long haul,” Kellogg said. “The state legislature has stacked the deck over 40 years, and that doesn’t go away in 10 months.”
Many members weren’t appeased when the legislature repealed measures that would have made construction more difficult in sensitive areas and the “road rule” that sought tougher regulations for building long driveways, he said.
Most want Act 181 repealed entirely, Kellogg said, because the parts that remain are still concerning. Updates to regional land-use plans required by the law appear designed to set the stage for further restrictions, he said. “The policy seems to be: The land cannot be healthy if there are people on it,” Kellogg said.
Visitors to the Rural Vermont Rising booth at the Tunbridge fair tended to share that sentiment. Barbara Baumann, who lives in Randolph, said state goals to conserve 30 percent of land in Vermont by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050 represent a top-down, instead of collaborative, approach to conservation.
“I believe that land is being stolen via regulations and spreadsheets and fees, because we cannot use guns anymore to do it,” Baumann said.
Some members have complained that the group hasn’t been taken seriously by Vermont’s news media. Yet when a Seven Days reporter showed up last week to a meeting of the Washington County chapter at Hugo’s Bar & Grill in Montpelier, he was asked to leave.
“We’re not ready for prime-time,” organizer Wendy Bridgewater said apologetically.
On Friday Janoo and Gray submitted to individual Q&As moderated by Peacham content creator Morgan Gold at the group’s fair booth. Their incumbent Republican opponents, Gov. Phil Scott and Lt. Gov. John Rodgers, skipped the interview op and visited the booth on other days.
Former Democratic/Progressive lieutenant governor David Zuckerman, who interviewed Janoo at the fair a day earlier in his role as radio host for WDEV, said it’s clear Rural Vermont Rising has tapped into significant concerns. The group gained more followers on its Facebook page in a few months than he was able to build in a nearly 30-year career in politics, he noted.
“There is a real energy out there,” Zuckerman said.
While the group’s anti-regulation messaging clearly leans conservative, rural Republicans, Democrats and Progressives share concerns about property rights and affordability, he said. The “conflicting winds” from rural residents this election cycle make it difficult to predict the impact Rural Vermont Rising might have on results, Zuckerman said, especially when national anti-Trump political trends are factored in.
Some rural Vermonters clearly want less land-use regulation, which would generally lead them to support Gov. Scott, he noted. But many are also deeply skeptical about Scott’s push to close rural schools, which naturally aligns them with Janoo, his Democratic challenger, Zuckerman noted.
Lachlan Francis, chair of the Vermont Democratic Party, acknowledged that Rural Vermont Rising has raised awareness about issues affecting less urban areas of the state and has influenced how candidates talk about them this year.
“But they are an explicitly nonpartisan organization,” Francis said, “so it’s unclear exactly how that will sugar off in terms of partisan ramifications.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Rural Reckoning | A grassroots group convinced the legislature to roll back land-use rules. Can it influence elections this fall?”
This article appears in September 23 • 2026.
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