Tag Archives: Jack Lindley

Vt. GOP struggle: Go moderate? Or stay the course of conservative?

Posted on April 17, 2013 by | 3 Comments
Phill Scott

Phil Scott

They’ve descended to super-minority status in both the House and Senate, and lay claim to just one of Vermont’s six statewide offices.

By the numbers at least, the once-dominant Vermont Republicans have reached a new low in their years-long fall from grace. Their fight for the future, however, is being waged not with the Democrats that so embarrassed them in the last two election cycles, but among fellow Republicans vying against each other for control of the party’s organizational apparatus.

The emergence of two factions — one led by Vermont Republican Party Chairman Jack Lindley, the other by Lt. Gov. Phil Scott — has pitted the old-guard GOP against a cadre of upstart reformists looking to put some distance between themselves and the Republican National Committee.

As a group led by Scott pieces together a statewide re-branding strategy aimed at picking up the centrists and Independents he says have been turned off by the party in recent years, Lindley and others are beginning to push back against a plan that would, in Lindley’s words, “turn its back on the national party.”

“I’m not about to go down the road of trying to have a party in Vermont that’s Democrat-lite,” Lindley said in an interview last week.
Continue reading →

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Elections, Politics, State House

Tagged ,

As Shumlin sounds alarm over sequestration, GOP chairman urges calm

Posted on February 26, 2013 by | 1 Comment

As Congress inches closer to the brink, lawmakers and administration officials in Vermont are beginning to sound the alarm over the financial impacts of sequestration. But Jack Lindley, chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, says it’s much ado about nothing.

“There’s very, very little evidence that would indicate the sky is going to fall,” Lindley said this afternoon. “I think things are being terribly overblown.”

A report put out by the White House last week enumerates the financial impacts of sequestration on Vermont. Across-the-board cuts to human services, public safety, education, health care and the military will see a reduction in federal revenue of at least $9 million over the next seven months, according to the White House projections. And that figure doesn’t capture the dollar effect of furloughs or job losses for the thousands of federal employees that call Vermont home.

For a complete list of the Vermont-specific impacts, visit: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/sequester-factsheets/Vermont.pdf

But Lindley said Vermont can more than withstand the looming cuts. He said the “cuts,” after all, are actually reductions in rates of increase.

“There’s going to be very minimal damage,” he says.

Lindley said he’d like to see the D’s and R’s get together and cut a deal. But he said it needs to include at least as significant a spending cut as the one awaiting the country if they do nothing. If Vermont and the U.S. can’t absorb the kinds of spending reductions associated with sequestration, Lindley said, then we’re all doomed anyway.

“This is exactly what needs to happen if we’re going to get ourselves where we’re not borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we’re spending at the federal level,” Lindley said. “If we can’t get this accomplished, lord help us all in terms of what it means for our kids and grandkids.”

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Budget, Elections, Politics

Tagged

With only a week until Election Day, pols cede center stage to Sandy

Posted on October 29, 2012 by | Comments Off

A storm named Sandy may have relegated politics to the backburner for at least a couple days, but don’t expect politicians to batten down the hatches on their campaigns.

With only a week until Election Day, retail politics is in full swing. And Republican candidate for governor Randy Brock today said he won’t let Sandy take the wind out of his sails.

“I always get the best responses at sign waves or other events when it’s snowing and the wind is blowing,” Brock said. “People know you want the job and are willing to endure some discomfort to get it.”

As a practical matter, the storm will force some rescheduling. Incumbent Treasurer Beth Pearce was to have received a high-profile endorsement earlier this morning from former Gov. Howard Dean. The Democrat’s campaign called reporters Sunday evening to say the Statehouse event had been postponed until later in the week.

Continue reading →

Comments Off

Posted in Elections, News, Politics

Tagged , , , , ,

GOP chairman now alleging election fraud by Shumlin, Progs

Posted on September 6, 2012 by | Comments Off

He doesn’t have any evidence to support the claim, other than the somewhat bizarre circumstances surrounding the apparently erroneous counting of votes in the Progressive gubernatorial primary. But Jack Lindley, chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, just fired off a press release  alleging “collusion” between Gov. Peter Shumlin and Progressive candidate Martha Abbott.

Lindley says he’ll withhold the Republican signature on today’s updated report from the canvassing committee. The committee is, at Jim Condos’ behest, recertifying results in the Prog gubernatorial primary. The new results show Martha Abbott winning by a single vote over anti-mountaintop-wind activist Annette Smith. Smith has said she’ll request a recount.

Look for more from Press Bureau reporter David Taube in tomorrow’s editions of the Times Argus and Rutland Herald. Meantime, Lindley’s screed:

STATEMENT BY GOP CHAIRMAN JACK LINDLEY ON TODAY’S CANVAS REPORT
 
“I am withholding the Republican signature on today’s canvas report of the August 28 primary. This entire process has served to cast doubt on the validity, accuracy and accountability of the Secretary of State’s office and the whole election process.
 
It suggests collusion between the Shumlin campaign and the Progressive party nominee, who has miraculously has been declared a winner by a suspect process, who has now announced she didn’t really want the nomination after all; a person who has since declared she will decline a nomination she won in favor of Governor Shumlin. 
 
I will not allow our Republican vote to validate a process that does not pass the smell test.”

Comments Off

Posted in Elections, Politics

Tagged , , ,

Bertrand leaves GOP post, party coffers sapped

Posted on March 22, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Mike Bertrand ended his short stint as executive director of the Vermont Republican Party last week, departing the post to dedicate more time to his private consulting business.

Bertrand succeeded Pat McDonald last November, but said growing demands on his time meant he “couldn’t in good faith” stay on as the party’s executive chief.

“I’d kind of bitten off more than I could chew,” Bertrand said. “But I absolutely plan to stay involved in the party. In fact I was at the (GOP’sMontpelier) office for a couple hours (Thursday).”

Bertrand hadn’t been paid since the beginning of the year, according to GOP Chairman Jack Lindley. An ebb in fundraising, Lindley said, has temporarily sapped the party’s accounts. Lindley said he intends to deliver Bertrand his back pay, though Bertrand said it really isn’t a big deal.

“Trust me,” Bertrand said. “It isn’t a lot of money and I’m not worried about it.”

Lindley said he’ll stand in as the party’s chief communications officer until the organization brings on a new executive. Lindley said he’s trying to raise enough money to fund the party through the 2012 election cycle.

“Obviously there’s a lot going on this summer, and we’ve got to figure out our configuration in terms of field personnel,” Lindley said. “We’re in a cycle right now where we’re in a little bit of a lull, fundraising-wise, but I’m working on that right now.”

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Elections, Politics

Tagged ,

O’Keefe video renews debate over voter ID laws

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | 8 Comments

A video that surfaced today purporting to show voter fraud inVermont last Tuesday has elicited dueling responses from the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties.

The video, reportedly produced by James O’Keefe, the conservative activist who won infamy for his undercover videos of ACORN offices, will undoubtedly reignite the old debate over voter identification laws.

That debate began Tuesday evening as Jack Lindley, chairman of the Vermont GOP, and Jesse Bragg, executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party, lauded and lambasted O’Keefe’s alleged evidence of voter fraud.

“It does expose flaws in the whole system, in my judgment,” Lindley said. “And it should give us all concern about the integrity of the voting system.”

Lindley had asked Secretary of State Jim Condos to investigate voter-checklist “irregularities” inBurlingtoneven before O’Keefe’s video hit the internet Tuesday. He said he had no inkling what O’Keefe was up to, but that the video footage only cements his concerns.

“If we have to show identification to get on an airplane, we surely ought to have to show ID at the ballot,” Lindley said. “I don’t think regular old Vermonters like me need to have the concern that there are people voting in elections that aren’t (registered voters).”

Bragg said the only evidence of voter fraud he’s ever seen is in the video that surfaced Tuesday. A gimmicky ruse designed to play on irrational fears about voter fraud, eh said, shouldn’t be used as basis to impose new restrictions on voting.

“He’s a radical right-wing activist and he is presenting a problem that doesn’t exist,” Bragg said.

Bragg saidVermontalready has law prohibiting the kind of behavior portrayed in the video. Adopting new laws that require residents to show proof of identification with a driver’s license or other state-sanctioned document, Bragg said, will disenfranchise marginalized sectors of society.

“Anything that requires a voter to travel somewhere, to pay a registration fee, or to take any extra step besides going to the polls, is a form of disenfranchisement,” Bragg said. “Any time you have to get an ID renewed and pay a fee, it becomes a poll tax. The point of our democracy is everyone has an equal vote, and the second we start putting restrictions on our right to vote is the second we start valuing one person’s vote over another’s.”

→ 8 Comments

Posted in Elections, Media, News, Politics

Tagged , ,