First-Time Candidates Richards, Janoo Vie to Take on Scott

In February, Amanda Janoo and Aly Richards met for coffee at the café inside the Williston Gardener’s Supply store. Both women had decided to run for the Democratic nomination for governor, but neither had publicly announced her decision.

Despite growing up just 40 miles from each other — Janoo in Strafford and Richards in Newbury — they had never met. Among the plants in the glass-enclosed atrium, Janoo, 38, an economist who’s worked with governments around the world, and Richards, 40, who spent a decade leading the charge for affordable childcare in Vermont, got to know each other. The two pledged that they’d run a respectful, positive primary race, they both recalled in interviews. Neither had a desire to bring more divisiveness or negativity into the political sphere, they agreed.

In the months since, Janoo and Richards have kept their word. They’ve shared the stage at numerous forums and events around Vermont and shown a mutual respect that’s increasingly rare in politics.

At a Vergennes forum in June, Richards described herself and her opponent as “two smart women who are fed up with the status quo.”

“I’m not running against Aly, but for Vermont,” Janoo asserted the following week in an interview.

In fact, the collegiality between the candidates, neither of whom has ever run for elected office, has made it difficult for the casual observer to figure out where their differences lie. The July 21 Green Mountain State Poll of 558 likely Democratic voters, conducted by the University of New Hampshire, found that 52 percent of respondents were still undecided. Another 26 percent favored Janoo and 19 percent went for Richards.

Now, less than two weeks before the August 11 primary, it’s go time.

Richards and Janoo have ramped up their campaigns, packing their schedules with house parties, meet and greets, and public events. As they connect with Vermonters, each is hoping that her diagnoses of the problems that face the state and her proposals to address them will persuade those undecided voters. The winner will face Republican Gov. Phil Scott in November.

The two Democratic candidates share common beliefs that President Donald Trump is harming the country and Gov. Scott’s leadership is ineffective. Both also stress the importance of addressing Vermont’s high cost of living. Still, they differ significantly in both style and substance.

Richards, the former CEO of Let’s Grow Kids and deputy chief of staff for former governor Peter Shumlin, describes herself as a strategic leader who understands the inner workings of state government. She says she is ready to hit the ground running with a pro-growth economic action plan that helps address housing and health care challenges by setting goals and building coalitions — the same recipe she used to successfully push for sweeping childcare reform.

She’s a Montpelier resident and is raising twin 7-year-old boys with her lawyer husband, Vermont Cannabis Control Board chair James Pepper. Richards projects a high-energy, can-do attitude — tackling each question she’s asked with the fervor of a debate team captain. She is similarly enthusiastic about workaday issues such as the need to pave more roads and complex problems such as how to reverse the exodus of young people from Vermont.

Janoo, who has worked as an economist with the United Nations and global advocacy organization Wellbeing Economy Alliance, has portrayed herself as a disruptor who believes in a more self-sufficient Vermont, in which the wealthy pay their fair share and decisions are made at the community level. The candidate, who is single and lives in Burlington, has a quiet gravitas and a measured, deliberative approach. At the start of her events, she often asks attendees what they’re most proud of about their community.

Middlebury political science professor Bert Johnson said he sees their matchup as part of a broader national trend in Democratic politics, with centrist Richards facing a more progressive, grassroots candidate in Janoo.

Richards has received contributions or endorsements from three former Democratic governors: Madeleine Kunin, Howard Dean and Shumlin. She’s also got the support of the Vermont Building and Construction Trades Council; the Professional Fire Fighters of Vermont; and business leaders she collaborated with during her decade running Let’s Grow Kids, including Adeline Druart of Lawson’s Finest Liquids and Michele Asch of Twincraft Skincare.

Janoo, meanwhile, has the support of David Blittersdorf, who founded renewable energy company NRG Systems; Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s; the Vermont Progressive Party; the Vermont State Employees’ Association; the Vermont AFL-CIO; and more progressive public officials, including former lieutenant governor David Zuckerman and one-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee Christine Hallquist.

July 1 campaign finance filings show that Richards had raised a total of $365,000 and spent $234,000, while Janoo raised $245,000 and spent $190,000. Neither has taken money from corporations or corporate political action committees, or PACs.

Janoo, who studied economics at England’s Cambridge University, doesn’t mind the “progressive-versus-centrist” framing of the race.

“I’m always quite pleased when people will relate me to [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani. He’s given me a lot of hope in this moment,” Janoo said in an interview. “I feel like I’m part of that movement because so much of my motivation for running was because I was just watching this rise of fascism. I really believe that it is a result of the economic inequality and insecurity that people are feeling.”

So much of my motivation for running was because I was just watching this rise of fascism.
Amanda Janoo

Richards, meanwhile, is a Brown University graduate who worked in fundraising for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign before moving back to Vermont in 2010. She squarely rejects the notion that she’s the establishment candidate.

As proof, she pointed to her most recent job, which was running Let’s Grow Kids — a nonprofit that backed a 2023 Vermont law that injected $125 million annually into childcare with a new payroll tax.

“I just spent 10 years of my life as an organizer transforming a system that no one … thought was possible,” Richards said. “To call me an establishment candidate with that background feels very disingenuous.”

Richards said she views political labels as counterproductive and divisive.

“I’m Aly. I am a problem solver,” she said, noting that Mamdani’s office called her after he was elected New York City mayor to get advice on childcare.

Still, Janoo’s views about wealth and corporations clearly reflect the ethos of the progressive wing of the Democratic party. One of her centerpiece proposals is to create a state-funded preventative primary-care system that cuts out insurance companies, which she believes would pave the way to universal health care. Janoo envisions having a doctor or nurse practitioner for every 1,000 or so Vermonters who would provide basic medical treatments and bring down the exorbitant costs of emergency room visits and untreated medical conditions. She points to several communities, including Tunbridge, that already fund a town nurse as evidence that the proposal is something Vermonters would support.

To pay for the program, which she estimates could cost up to $320 million, she supports a 2 percent tax surcharge on annual income over $250,000 and a 5 to 8 percent surcharge on income over $500,000. That, she said, would allow Vermont to “claw back” the federal tax cuts on higher earners passed under Trump. She called this a “worthy use of a bit of extra-rich people’s money.”

Health care is also one of Richards’ top priorities. She’s a proponent of universal access to primary care, which she said could be achieved by beefing up workforce development for nurses and other medical professionals and shifting the burden of dealing with health insurance from primary care providers to a state-run entity, using a model that’s been developed in Massachusetts.

“It’s the way to get insurance out of primary care but not forgo, for no reason, all that insurance money and then just shift the cost to taxpayers,” Richards said. She also favors a model known as reference-based pricing, which caps the amount of money hospitals are allowed to charge for services to bring down overall costs. Scott vetoed a bill that would have created a pilot program earlier this year.

The governor’s decision, Richards said, illustrates a larger problem in Scott’s approach.

“He diagnoses the problems perfectly,” Richards said. Still, he puts forth “no tangible solutions” despite having staff and data to enable systemic change.

In contrast, Richards said, she’d bring her CEO skills to the governor’s office, working in partnership, rather than at odds, with the legislature. Richards said she’d set regional housing targets, temporarily eliminate the sales tax on building materials and make sure the state is taking full advantage of federal housing subsidies.

She’s also proposed free community college for every Vermonter, which she believes could be paid for through the excise tax on cannabis, which generated $20 million in fiscal year 2025.

In all areas, from housing to education, Richards touts the importance of using the executive branch to provide technical assistance to those in the field. She believes the state’s Agency of Education, for example, should function as a “service organization” that provides school districts with data and modeling so they can make good decisions.

Richards knows those ideas don’t sound particularly sexy or make for good social media posts, but she believes they’re the key to getting things done.

I will not promise something that I do not think I can deliver.
Aly Richards

“I’m too much of a Girl Scout. I will not promise something that I do not think I can deliver,” Richards said. “And as a candidate that can be really tough, because it’s not a bright and shiny object.”

Janoo, meanwhile, said her abiding belief in the power of local decision-making would guide her in the governor’s office.

Janoo’s professional work brought her to countries including Ukraine, Myanmar, New Zealand and Iceland. She helped government agencies design policy to achieve their economic goals and develop tools to assess their effectiveness.

“One of the things that I’ve always really loved about Vermont and that informed a lot of my career was realizing that strong communities aren’t built by big billionaires or big investors,” Janoo told people packed into a living room in Burlington’s South End last week. “They’re built by people who know how to build what’s needed or fix what’s broken, who know how to grow food … or how to care for one another.”

“The economy is not something abstract,” she said. “It’s the way that we produce and provide for one another.”

Janoo believes that allowing local communities to change their own charters without state legislation would enable local innovation. In recent years, for example, Burlingtonians voted to ban guns in bars and to enhance renter protections, but the legislature has yet to approve the measures.

Janoo sometimes jokes about doomscrolling Zillow to illustrate that homeownership is out of reach for so many Vermonters, including herself. She believes in raising taxes on short-term rentals and second homes — a change Richards also favors. Further, she would use tax policy and state subsidies to support first-time homebuyers and invest in permanently affordable housing. She also believes that the state must reform its tax structure to discourage corporate and private-equity investment in housing, which she said has driven up home prices.

Longtime state Auditor Doug Hoffer, who isn’t running for reelection, has endorsed Janoo. In an email, Hoffer called Janoo an “unabashed policy wonk” who has “concrete proposals that go beyond standard talking points” and “creative solutions not limited by special interests.”

Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver, the 2025 Vermont Teacher of the Year, said she sees Janoo as part of the “progressive wave” across the country. She said she appreciates the candidate’s support of small schools and her belief that health care is the primary factor causing school budgets to balloon.

Richards has the support of more than 40 former Let’s Grow Kids’ employees. In an open letter, the staffers praised their former boss’s “joyful and transformational” leadership style and called her “innovative, collaborative and data-driven.”

Former governor Dean, who has known Richards since she was a 15-year-old Oxbow High School student and a representative on the State Board of Education, said he is optimistic about her prospects.

“She’s just an amazingly well-organized person and really smart … She totally gets how the system works,” Dean said. “I think it’s time for a change. I think Phil [Scott] not only can be beaten, but it’s likely he will be beaten.”

To that point, the UNH poll says Scott’s job approval had fallen to 48 percent — 11 points lower than it was in August 2024 — though he is still among the most popular governors in the country. The poll shows Richards performing slightly better than Janoo in a general election matchup with Scott. Scott polled ahead of both Richards and Janoo, though many voters were still undecided.

Johnson, the Middlebury professor, said the erosion of Scott’s popularity doesn’t amount to “a dramatic collapse” but “shows some vulnerability.”

“If I was him, I’d feel like this year was a little less comfortable than the last few cycles have been,” Johnson said. “There’s an energized Democratic electorate out there that wants to come to the polls, and they might see the Republican label next to anybody as a turnoff this year.”

On a recent Monday evening, South Burlington resident Jennifer Smith was among a handful of people who attended a meet and greet with Richards at Four Quarters Brewing in Winooski. Smith said she is a Democrat who supported Scott in the past but feels differently this year. Smith couldn’t point to anything specific the governor had done that angered her but feels Vermont needs a change.

In the waning days of the campaign, Richards and Janoo are seeking to convince people like Smith that they’re the one who can deliver it. ➆

The original print version of this article was headlined “New Faces, New Ideas | Aly Richards and Amanda Janoo are vying to be the Democratic nominee for governor”