For week three of “Fringe Friday,” we feature independent candidate for governor Dennis Steele, a burly web-preneur from the Northeast Kingdom who says Vermont must secede from the United States — or else.

Fringe Friday is Seven Days‘ weekly web series about the independent and minor party candidates running for governor, U.S. House and U.S. Senate — many of whom are pitching more radical ideas for bettering the lives of average Vermonters.

While “fringe” might seem disparaging, we don’t mean it that way. Vermont has a strong tradition of putting independent and third-party candidates on the ballot, giving voters the option to choose from a wide menu of ideologies. Still, these candidates rarely garner more than 1 percent of the vote, perhaps due to their less traditional ideas, or poor organization or even lack of media exposure. As such, they remain on the fringes of the state’s political system.

Candidate: Dennis Steele

Party: Independent

Office Sought: Governor

Age: 42

Hometown: Kirby

Education:California Polytechnic State University (BS in liberal studies, minor in anthropology, 2003) Cuesta College (two-year degree in math and general science, 2000)

Occupation: “Web-preneur.” Founder/owner of chess-playing website chessmaniac.com and Vermont-centric radio site radiofreevermont.org.

Family: Steele grew up in Kirby, Vt., on the same street where he lives today. His father was a carpenter and his mother worked a factory job manufacturing industrial scales. Steele has Abenaki Indian blood and he’s been researching his geneology to connect with his native roots. His wife, Amber, is a stay-at-home mother and the couple have two kids: Angela, 6, and Luke, 3.

Campaign Websites: GovernorSteele.com, Second Vermont Republic, Dennis Steele for Governor Facebook page

Platform: Secession. Steele’s an active member of the Second Vermont Republic movement (publishers of Vermont Commons newspaper) and thinks Vermont must secede from the United States to avoid economic and social catastrophe. He believes the United States has lost its “moral authority” and that deepening federal deficits make it a “sinking ship” that Vermont should jump off of. Seceding would keep Vermont afloat, he believes, by reclaiming the $2 billion Vermonters currently pay into the U.S. Department of Defense budget. (Steele served in the U.S. Army for three years in the early 1980s — he joined to get money for college — and served as a helicopter crew chief.

We caught up with Steele at Langdon Street Café in Montpelier earlier this week.

Seven Days: Where were you stationed with the Army?

Dennis Steele: I served in South Carolina, Virginia and Hawaii. And then I ended up staying in Hawaii for another four years after I got out. I had all my paperwork to get into the warrant officer program and I got my real estate license. I looked at my landlord and he was driving a Mercedes Benz and the pilot was driving a Mazda 323. So I was, like, all right, I’m going to give the real estate thing a try. I failed the first time. I put three deals in escrow and they all fell out. Didn’t know what I was doing. So I was working at Radio Shack, had to call my dad to pay my rent. I saw an ad for Brothers’ Auto Sales that said you can make $5000 a month. Used cars. I was a used car salesman. This old Vietnam vet was the sales manager and he took a liking to me and hired me. The first month I made $5000. I was happy. Then I moved to California and was there for 14 years. I was teaching chess to low-income kids in San Luis Obisbo.

SD: How did your politics evolve?

DS: For me, the awakening started to happen in 2003 when we decided to go into Iraq. It didn’t make sense to me. I was living out in California. My in-laws were die-hard Reagan Republicans and here I was the only veteran in the family that was antiwar. And getting kicked out of family dinners and basically family arguments every time we were at the family dinner table. In 2006, I moved back to Vermont. In 2007, I was back in California visiting the in-laws. I was sitting on the couch with my father-in-law — he watches Fox News 24 hours a day. And on this thing came the O’Reilly show and there was Thomas Naylor, Second Vermont Republic. Vermont wants to secede from the Union, and I was just going, ‘Holy shit! What’s this? There is a revolution and it’s happening in my back yard.’ As soon as I got back here, I looked up the website, ordered the Vermont Commons, got the flag (pictured) and everything. I thought the movement was way bigger than it was. You see it on TV like that, you have different expectations.

SD: Up until that point, what had your politics been?

DS: I voted for Ross Perot. I knew Bill Clinton was lying right way. Oh — I got involved with Ron Paul, of course. I was, like, ‘This is the most intelligent person I’ve ever ever heard run for office.’ I was actually leaning toward Obama because he was talking about ending the wars and everything. One night I decided to turn on the Republican debate. I wanted to see what the warmongers were going to say. And this little guy, 76-year-old man, said, ‘Close all the bases. Bring all the troops home. Foreign policy of nonintervention.’ I about fell out of my chair on the floor. I was watching this guy all night tearing these neo-cons apart. The neo-cons completely sabotaged his campaign. So I called Thomas [Naylor] back up and said, ‘I’m back in the movement. The system’s broken and ungovernable.’

SD: Why secede?

DS: What other alternatives are there?

SD: Well, why don’t you just explain why you think it’s a good idea?

DS: The U.S. government has lost its moral authority. It’s owned, controlled and operated by corporate America, Wall Street and the Israeli lobby. It doesn’t answer to the people anymore, so what choice do we have? Most people are in denial. The only thing I can do is try to wake people up and make them understand that Vermont’s pro rata share of the U.S. Defense Department budget is $2 billion per year. And what could Vermont do with that money? A lot.

SD: Explain how it would work.

This article appears in Aug 25-31, 2010.

Andy Bromage was a Seven Days staff writer from 2009-2012, and the news editor from 2012-2013.

28 replies on “Fringe Friday: Dennis Steele”

  1. @Jimmy Spelling snark aside, I think it’s a bit grayer than you make it out to be – the recent Kosovo decision cemented the right of self determination in international law. If we *democratically* and *peacefully* opted to secede, it would deeply undermine the moral authority of the United States to refuse to allow us to go. And if it did stop us, it would expose the lie that its power derives from the consent of the governed, which would lend greater force to the movement to put power in the hands of the people rather than corporations.

  2. “the only way to reclaim power for the people is to succeed.”I agree, I have found that by succeeding I’ve continually grown more powerful.I think people forget that secession is impossible without federal government approval. Maybe you can start a “let’s all sprout wings and fly” movement.

  3. By the way, Mr. Bromage, very good questioning of this guy. You didn’t let him off the hook when he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer your questions and tried to evade. Frankly, it’s stunning that a candidate for Governor running on a secessionist platform doesn’t already have the answers to these questions.

  4. Our country was founded by libertarians who were fundamentally against the concentration of power in the hands of a few. Government can do good things, but what I’ve come to realize is that much of what government does is simply correcting problems that it helps create. Like how we subsidize corporations and then have to pay the social costs of their irresponsible actions. This guy is absolutely correct that we need a more decentralized power structure, and since the trend seems to be increasing the size of government, the only way to reclaim power for the people is to succeed. I think the federal government would not tolerate it because it could be a precedent-setting catalyst for other states to follow suit. We would have to see. Oh, and I love how the minute someone criticizes Israel they are somehow anti-semitic! Let’s be honest, Israel is an apartheid state where non-Jews are second-class citizens, and it was founded by forcing the Palestinians off the land. And yes, the Israeli lobby has a great deal of influence in Washington. Every president has to take “the pledge” in front of AIPAC.The military-industrial complex must go. Let’s refuse to give money to Washington to pay for war!

  5. By contrast, I’d say quite far away; and, what’s more, I don’t think you can pigeonhole the separatist movement into one ideological category. Rather, it’s an alliance of folks who agree that the cost of the empire is tearing apart the fabric of our society, that Washington is unfixable due to the entrenchment of special interests, and who believe power should be vested close to the people rather than in legislative bodies in which each member represents close to a million people. What an independent Vermont will look like is dependent upon the will of Vermonters – in the meantime, secession seems to me to be the only viable anti-war strategy left since the election of Obama seems to have changed nothing, foreign policy-wise. I mean, his advisors have said that Iran is still on the table…

  6. How far away, really, are Tom Naylor and some of his secessionist friends from the confused “Gods, Guts, and Guns” loonies who are even now defiling the Lincoln Memorial at their little white-people’s rally? Not very far at all, I’d say.

  7. At least one of the recent Prog candidates for B’ton city council campaigned for this guy. Thank God that didn’t work out (for any of them)

  8. A few years back it came out that Thomas Naylor and the Second Vermont Republic were keeping some very unsavory friends on the extreme right-wing (and flatlanders to boot). Now I’m not saying Mr Steel had anything to do with that, and I agree that he has some legitimate things to say. But I do suggest that folks give a read to the related essesy “Vermont Secession: The Extreme Right, And Democracy”.The article is available at:http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20070424101147786 Free Vermont!

  9. He has no idea what would happen after “secession,” and he doesn’t care. Ridiculous.And saying that we’re controlled by “the Israeli lobby”? This borders on the usual paranoid, anti-semitic, crypto-christian survivalist stuff. Nice.

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