The Campaign for Lieutenant Governor Gets Personal

The two leading candidates to be Vermont’s lieutenant governor are, on the surface, strikingly similar in many ways.

Incumbent David Zuckerman and challenger John Rodgers are both farmers. Both are white, middle-aged married men and fathers. And both have spent a significant part of their adult lives as Democratic politicians, with similar views on marriage equality, reproductive freedom and cannabis regulation.

Despite that, the candidates in the most competitive statewide election this year say they couldn’t be more different from one another.

“Choosing to run as a Republican right now means you are OK with a label for a party that is owned lock, stock and barrel by Donald Trump and his angry, lying rhetoric.” David Zuckerman

Zuckerman, who runs as a Progressive and a Democrat, has taken Rodgers to task in emails, debates and interviews for seeking office as a Republican and has sought to link him to the party’s national leaders, who are deeply unpopular in Vermont. Before running this year under his new party banner, Rodgers spent 16 years in the Statehouse as a Democrat, though he represented a conservative Northeast Kingdom district and often expressed a strong Libertarian streak.

“Choosing to run as a Republican right now means you are OK with a label for a party that is owned lock, stock and barrel by Donald Trump and his angry, lying rhetoric,” Zuckerman told Seven Days.

Rodgers, 59, has tried to paint Zuckerman as a wealthy gentleman farmer and professional politician who is disconnected from the struggles of common Vermonters and perpetually eyeing his next run for higher office.

“He grew up in privilege in a family of millionaires and inherited millions of dollars,” Rodgers said. “He can’t understand how these policies are hitting the ground because he lives in a different world than the rest of us.”

In Vermont, the role of the lieutenant governor is largely ceremonial, with little influence on legislation. The officeholder presides over the Senate and steps in if the governor can no longer serve.

Yet in a year with few compelling statewide races, this matchup has become something of a referendum on the state’s rising cost of living and whether Democratic policies are making the situation better or worse. The contest, for an office that comes with an $89,000 annual salary, has become the costliest campaign in Vermont this year. It has also gotten unusually personal, with each lobbing attacks about the other’s honesty and integrity.

“It’s really ugly,” Rodgers acknowledged.

Both men have had long legislative careers. Zuckerman, 53, served in the Vermont House from 1997 to 2013, when he started the first of his two terms in the state Senate. He won election as LG in 2016, then mounted an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 2020. After two years out of office, Zuckerman was elected lieutenant governor again in 2022.

“He grew up in privilege in a family of millionaires and inherited millions of dollars. He can’t understand how these policies are hitting the ground because he lives in a different world than the rest of us.” John Rodgers

As a lawmaker, Zuckerman focused on bills to address climate change, label food that contains GMOs, and legalize cannabis for recreational use. As LG, he went on a “banned book tour” last year and visited libraries around the state to stress the importance of free speech. He read excerpts from books that had been banned in other states, including one about gay penguins.

Zuckerman grew up in Brookline, Mass., the son of a lung and heart surgeon. His family was well-off, but his father died of stomach cancer when he was 13, which changed their circumstances, he said.

Thanks to an inheritance, Zuckerman graduated debt-free from the University of Vermont in 1995 and was able to buy a modest duplex in Burlington, where he lived while farming on rented land in the Intervale.

Zuckerman and his wife, Rachel Nevitt, purchased a 151-acre conserved property in Hinesburg in 2008 and have run their Full Moon Farm there ever since. They have a daughter and actively farm about 25 of the acres in a community supported agriculture model. Zuckerman is a fixture at Burlington’s weekly summertime farmers market.

Despite Zuckerman’s more than 30 years in Vermont and his bona fides as an organic vegetable farmer, Rodgers has tried to paint him as an outsider. At a Vermont Public debate earlier this month, Rodgers asked his opponent which cow breed produces the best milk for chocolate milk. The question was reminiscent of a Vermont U.S. Senate debate in 1998, when Tunbridge dairy farmer Fred Tuttle famously asked his opponent, businessman Jack McMullen, “How many tits does a Holstein have, and how many does a Jersey have?”

McMullen didn’t pass the test, but Zuckerman appeared ready for the moment. “Jersey or Guernsey,” he responded, because of the high fat content in the milk of both breeds. Rodgers, with a smile, seemed to grudgingly accept the answer.

“You gotta have Jersey. It’s all about the milk solids, the protein and the butter fat,” he replied.

It was a lighthearted exchange, but one that underscored Rodgers’ strategy. He grew up on a dairy farm in West Glover that has been in his family for more than 200 years. He’s said his parents couldn’t afford to send him to a four-year college, so he attended a two-year technical college in New Hampshire and became a stonemason.

“I graduated pretty much with nothing and started my first business with a $750 rusty Chevy Blazer, some hand tools and some ladders,” Rodgers recalled.

He served in the Vermont House from 2003 to 2011 and in the Senate from 2013 to 2021. In 2018, he ran unsuccessfully as a write-in candidate for governor. He and his wife, Brenda, have two adult sons and live on the 500-acre farm he grew up on, where they raise hemp and cannabis.

As a lawmaker, Rodgers supported efforts to help grow the craft beer market and also sought to legalize cannabis, which he acknowledges he grew before it was legal. He has strongly opposed any new restrictions on gun ownership and has argued that efforts to restrict certain kinds of hunting and trapping amount to an assault on the rural way of life.

Rodgers has repeatedly contrasted his upbringing with Zuckerman’s in an attempt to appeal to the working Vermonters he thinks aren’t being heard. Many tell Rodgers that they plan to leave the state when they retire or finish raising their kids because of how unaffordable it has become. Those departures, Rodgers said, will only deepen the state’s demographic and workforce crises.

“Regular Vermonters like me that are out there doing a trade or working as a nurse or a teacher, they’re opening their tax bill and going, ‘I can’t do this anymore,'” Rodgers said.

That’s a message echoed by Gov. Phil Scott, who is cruising to reelection and has spent more time this year campaigning for moderates who he hopes will join him in Montpelier. Rodgers is one of the candidates Scott has endorsed; the two men have even released a television campaign ad together.

As LG, Rodgers thinks he could more effectively advocate for policies that help regular people, in contrast to how Zuckerman has served in the position.

“He’s traveled around and annoyed a lot of librarians, but other than that, he hasn’t really been using the office to the benefit of Vermonters,” Rodgers said.

Questions about Zuckerman’s finances have dogged him for years. He admits he is more “privileged” than most people, and certainly most farmers. But he has also stressed his hard work and long hours on the farm, in Montpelier and on the campaign trail as just as important to his success.

“I will acknowledge we were very comfortable. I don’t think there is any shame in anybody’s circumstances that they are born into,” Zuckerman said.

What’s more important is “the values that you are raised with and how you treat other people,” Zuckerman said, adding that he was taught to work hard and lift other people up.

“Both John and I work our tails off,” Zuckerman said. “Both of us love this state. One of us was born here, one of us has chosen to be here.”

After his mother died five years ago, Zuckerman inherited additional money, but he declined to give the amount. Financial disclosures show that in 2023, he and Nevitt earned $310,000. More than $200,000 was from dividends, interest and capital gains from investments.

Rodgers’ disclosures are more complicated and include profits from his cannabis business but steep losses on his hemp business. He reported that he and his wife, a nurse, earned $190,000 in 2023.

Rodgers noted that while the cannabis business did well, high taxes and a steep mortgage on the farm, a shoulder injury, and crop damage have left him financially stressed.

Zuckerman said he respects Rodgers’ work ethic but finds it noteworthy that his opponent attacks him as privileged while having significant family land holdings himself.

“He didn’t come from nothing, either,” Zuckerman said. “If you grew up on owned land, that is already an advantage that 35 to 40 percent of the population doesn’t enjoy.”

The debate about wealth and class has spilled over into the policy arena. Zuckerman stresses that he supported a larger increase in the minimum wage than Rodgers. But Rodgers argues that Zuckerman supports energy policies, such as the Clean Heat Standard, that are regressive and could hit low-income people hardest.

Rodgers has called for an overhaul of the education system to address property tax increases that he says the legislature has failed to rein in. Zuckerman agrees major reform is needed but criticizes Rodgers’ call to “start over” as impractical.

On housing, Zuckerman supported a bill that would have imposed a 3 percent tax on people making over $500,000 per year for 10 years. It would have raised $70 million for affordable housing, but the measure died in the Senate. Rodgers says he’s open to new taxes on the wealthy but thinks making it easier to build homes is a better place to start.

With such long legislative careers, both candidates have also accumulated some baggage. Zuckerman was chastised earlier this year by House Speaker Jill Krowinski (D-Burlington) for mentioning in meetings with female lawmakers that his office provided free feminine hygiene products. Rodgers also got in hot water in 2020 for responding to criticism about his attendance by referring to a colleague as a “snippy little bitch.”

The policy debates have been overshadowed, however, by the animosity that has been building between the two as they draw sharp distinctions between one another.

In a recent fundraising email, Zuckerman’s campaign claimed that Rodgers had “stepped out of a reality-based world where people can work together to handle the big issues and into a world of anger, distortion, and … well … concepts of plans instead of actual solutions.”

Another email observed that the Republican party was “dominated by toxic men these days” and linked Rodgers to Trump’s “degrading comments against women, record of sexual assault, and horrifically dangerous policies.”

As fundraising tools, the emails appear to be effective. Zuckerman has raised $207,000, mostly from smaller donors, to Rodgers’ $143,000. Zuckerman’s donors include Marielle Blais of Brandon, who appeared as a placeholder on the Progressive primary ballot for governor; the Vermont Public Interest Research Group’s political action committee; and unions.

Most of Rodgers’ cash came in big checks from well-known wealthy Republican donors, including Bruce Lisman, a retired Wall Street executive; the family of Jerry Tarrant, businessman and son of former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Richard Tarrant; and Mark Bove, one of Chittenden County’s biggest landlords.

Rodgers hasn’t appreciated Zuckerman’s emails one bit, calling them “lies.”

“Do you think I’m a toxic male?” he asked his opponent directly during the Vermont Public debate earlier this month.

Zuckerman said he didn’t call Rodgers that explicitly but then went on to note his “angry energy.”

“Part of toxicity is just pointing fingers as opposed to presenting reasonable ideas and thoughts and solutions, which is the Vermont way that I have come to know,” Zuckerman replied.

Rodgers, who said he left the Democratic party because it became too liberal, has said he, like Gov. Scott, does not support Trump. He has blasted Zuckerman as dishonest for insinuating otherwise and said the emails have been hurtful.

“It is so disturbing to me that Dave has stooped to that level because for years, even though he and I disagreed on a lot of policy, I considered him a friend,” Rodgers said in an interview. “When I look at his emails, I say, ‘No friend would ever say things like that about me.'”

It’s unclear whether their friendship will survive the campaign. But they’ll have some distance afterward: One is headed to Montpelier, while the other will be back on the farm, full time.

The original print version of this article was headlined “Farmers’ Feud | The candidates for lieutenant governor, David Zuckerman and John Rodgers, are slinging mud in this year’s campaign”