Longtime Burlington city councilor and progressive stalwart Jane Knodell was rejected by her party Sunday as voters endorsed challenger Perri Freeman to represent the Central District on the ballot in the March election.
Freeman earned 85 votes to Knodell’s 55 during the Progressive Party caucus at the Sustainability Academy in Burlington’s Old North End. The result could mark the end of an era; Knodell, a former council president, has served 19 nonconsecutive years on the council. On Sunday, she said she didn’t yet know whether she’d run as an independent.
More than 220 Progressive voters turned out to endorse candidates for the Town Meeting Day election. Members of some organizations, including the Democratic Socialists of America and Rights & Democracy, helped mobilize residents to support Freeman.
In recent years, Knodell has fallen out of favor with some in her party. She supported Don Sinex’s bid to redevelop the Burlington Town Center mall, while Progressives also worried she aligned more closely with Mayor Miro Weinberger, a Democrat, on various other issues. In 2017, Knodell won reelection by just 81 votes after a spirited challenge by independent Genese Grill.
A community organizer and a home care provider, Freeman ran Sunday on a platform of increasing the voice of working Burlingtonians on the city council. She criticized Knodell’s votes to sell Burlington Telecom to Schurz Communications, disagreed with her endorsement of Republican Kurt Wright in his bid for the state legislature and disparaged the council for its lack of transparency in local decision-making.
Freeman described herself as a renter who works multiple jobs and would bring the “values of an organizer” to the council. Knodell, meanwhile, pitched herself as a City Hall insider with the skills to leverage municipal resources for grassroots initiatives.
Freeman will face Democrat Jared Carter in the March 5 Town Meeting Day election.
It was the only contested caucus of the evening. Voters endorsed Progs to run against incumbent Democrats in three other districts up for election this year.
Mohamed Jafar was unanimously selected to represent the party in the South District. He’ll face 16-year incumbent Joan Shannon, a Democrat, and first-time Republican candidate Paco DeFrancis. Jafar, 22, said he hopes to serve as a council liaison for New American voters and improve access to early education and affordable housing.
Voters also unanimously endorsed Jack Hanson to challenge Richard Deane (D-East District) and attorney Kienan Christianson will run against Democrat Dave Hartnett in the North District.
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Finally, a group of truly active progressives that challenge our present city council board of corporate developer enablers. As a New North Ender, living in an city that seems to sell out ordinary working people for short sighted greed, a chance to get it back!
Congratulations to Perri, its a great pleasure and relief to overcome and after all these years have competent, kind, and honorable leadership. Knodell ought to be run out of town on a rail, her dirty dealings are everything that is wrong in local governance. Burlington can again breathe clean, honest representation in this district!
Wow! 220 Regressives involved. Really big-time politics in Burlington. Joke.
Knodell has been in office too long and has proven to side with the mayor on failed projects such as the Don the con deal, Burlington telecom and various other issues
Knodell has been in office for to long and has sided with the mayor on failed projects such as the Don the con deal and various other issues. We need someone with fresh ideas and someone who won’t side with the mayor on everything
Jane is a neo-liberal sycophant for Burlington’s gentrification class. Good riddance, Jane. She was also the only Prog to vote to maintain the white supremacist Marketplace mural. One racist down, seven more to go.
Strongly disagree with Jane Knodell’s support for basing the F-35, especially after she had promised voters and campaigned on opposition to it. And strongly disagreed with her support for making special zoning exceptions for Don Sinex, instead of just letting him build within existing zoning requirements and PlanBVT. So perhaps it is time for someone new.
That said, Knodell does bring a certain hard-earned knowledge and realism to City Council (as did Kurt Wright). People may forget but it wasn’t that long ago that progressive Mayor Bob Kiss led the city. And Burlington ended up in very bad condition. Terrible financial management. There are ideas that sometimes sound good on paper but that when implemented have very real world consequences. I am guessing Jane Knodell learned through these experiences during the Kiss years.
I’d like to thank Jane for her time in city affairs . . .BUT it is time to move on. Jane seems to have been doing little on City Council except either napping or rolling over for everything our Real Estate Huckster Mayor demanded. The Old North End needs voices on the Council , other than Max Tracy, who actually will fight for their constituents instead of this Get-along-go-along circus that we’ve had for a while now.
The Mayor is ramming through what he wants: the obsolete plan for the Southern Connector, turning City Hall Park into a heliport, the 14 Story Big Lie/Tumor/ City Place, gentrifying the ONE, making Burlington even more of a boutique playground than it already is. I also believe he still wants to tear down Memorial Aud to build some grandiose pyramid to his ego.
Neo-liberal policies and the rigged “free market” systems are failing for 95% of the population. The idiocy of flogging unlimited growth on a finite planet is insanity and depravity. Unfortunately Jane became a handmaiden of these things. The graceful thing to do is to step aside, Jane.
Prediction: Progs and Dems will devour each other and the GOP will gain seats on the Council….Progs are such silly little narcissistic dopes. See what all those years of Prog-Leftist loyalty got you Jane? The selfish little dopes you failed to educate at UVM have turned on you. It was all so predictable…..kinda like Robes-Pierre ending up on the guillotine…
Every councilor who voted to keep that parade of white notables mural on the marketplace failed to act on an opportunity to take a public stand against racism. No candidate who fails to denounce the mural as a portrayal of racism and colonization will get my vote, and sadly that includes Bernie.
I’m noticing a trend of under-representing the strengths of young and passionate politicians in your articles.
Of course I realize that this article’s primary focus is on Knodell, as she is the current City Councilor and this is a significant shift in Progressive Party endorsement.
Here is a quote from Aidan Quigley at VT Digger:
“Freeman, a community organizer and home care provider, touted her work campaigning for paid family leave and climate change measures. She also worked on Democrat Bob Hoopers successful campaign to unseat Wright. She said the goal of her campaign is to improve the lives of everyday Burlingtonians.”
And your description: “Freeman described herself as a renter who works multiple jobs and would bring the “values of an organizer” to the council.”
This is my fave. Hats off to poster ‘wahrheit:’
“Prediction: Progs and Dems will devour each other and the GOP will gain seats on the Council….Progs are such silly little narcissistic dopes. See what all those years of Prog-Leftist loyalty got you Jane? The selfish little dopes you failed to educate at UVM have turned on you. It was all so predictable…..kinda like Robes-Pierre ending up on the guillotine…
“Posted by wahrheit on 01/07/2019 at 4:48 PM”
In 2013, Jane Knodell betrayed the voters of Burlington. She ran on and was elected on a platform that opposed the F35 basing, and repeatedly promised her Progressive supporters to reject the F35 basing by voting to limit the noise of aircraft at the Burlington Airport. However, when the time for the vote came, she instead abandoned her constituents and her integrity by voting to support the basing. Apparently she was offered the Council’s future chairperson position by the Mayor and the Democratic council members, in exchange for her honor and her soul. I hope she feels shame at her actions. Hopefully we won’t all live to regret Jane’s betrayal and the dangerous and inappropriate basing of the F35s will still be stopped, and Jane and the others who voted for this fiasco won’t have to have blood on their hands when this inadequately tested bomber jet crashes in our residential neighborhoods. Perhaps shame is too inadequate a word for what they should feel…
Is that the same Paco DeFrancis that once wrote in the comments section of this site in an article about artists getting evicted from a building in the South End, that if artists in the South End couldnt afford rent in Burlington that they should just move to Barre and Montpelier??? Why yes it is!! Is it the same Paco DeFrancis who used sleazy political tactics trying to smear Deb Ingram??? Yes it is! Not the right choice for Burlington at any level of government.
@ Truthbeknown, and there is an oxymoron, Will you have blood on your hands if a commercial plane crashes? That’s a pretty stupid remark considering there have been no deaths associated with the F35 but have been many with commercial planes. maybe in your eyes they should just shut down airports in their entirety.
The irony here is that loons like old white Petrarca and old orange Trump are equally obsessed with a wall, for equally, and exactly opposite, false and foolish reasons. The Burlington wall has as much to do with racism in Burlington as Trump*s border wall has to do with security for the US: nothing. A pox on both of your houses for wasting our time with your obsessive, childish nonsense.