Peter Welch will be the Democrat primary winner for the open US Senate in Vermont. He is a Democrat Machine politician, big government, big spending, and more federal intrusion. Very popular on the Left. But who is on the Republican side, and what do you need to know before Tuesday?
We’ve mentioned Myers Mermel regarding his well-meant but IMO idiotic ski resort welfare idea. But a recent UNH poll has him at a paltry 3% with little name recognition and a primarily neutral or unknown favorability. He’s long odds at 3%, but 42% of those polled are undecided, not that this will likely help him before Tuesday’s August 9th primary.
The predicted favorite on the Republican ballot is Christina Nolan, endorsed by the likes of Susan Collins from Maine. That may be all you need to know, but if you need more, Nolan favored recent federal gun restrictions and supports a national solution to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v Jackson decision that returned sovereignty to the states.
She is still the on-paper favorite, but she’d be more likely to align with our Democrat Senator Shaheen than Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.
Gerald Malloy, the other “viable” contender on the Tuesday ballot, got 30% of the vote in the poll compared to 24% for Nolan, within the 7% margin of error, so they are statistically tied. But remember, 42% of those polled were undecided, and this is Vermont. We could call it the Blue Mountain state instead of Green. And Malloy is running like an actual republican.
He says enough with the federal spending, and it’s time to address the debt. He supports domestic energy production, defends the Second Amendment, and is 100% pro-life. He’d build the wall to stop illegal immigration and put a hitch in the step of the China-fed fentanyl cartels.
Malloy is running an America-First Save America campaign.
Nolan is running a third-way campaign littered with progressive pablum hiding under a patina of independence from “business as usual DC politics.” Nolan is the “republican” that we’d expect Vermont to send to DC if she could beat the actual Democrat in a general election, but why go for the generic when you can have the name brand?
And this is Vermont.
So, what is to become of the seat vacated by long-time Democrat Senator PatrickLeahy, who had held it for over 40 years?
Is the likely Republican primary voter in Vermont going to show up and vote for an actual Republican? Will the “independents” go with the third-way progressive republican or vie for something different and choose Malloy?
If they do, Malloy could pull off the upset primary win. If not, they’ll get Nolan, who will probably vote the right way on meaningless legislation and the wrong way on the important stuff. And that is assuming a majority of Vermonters don’t take the real Democrat in November.
Gerald Malloy would give voters an alternative, and, in the current climate, people are looking for something other than what they see down in DC and both Nolan, and especially Welch, are just more of the same.
HT | VT Digger
