By Michael Bielawski

Two of the Green Mountain State’s leading conservative voices are producing a news talk show, “Right Side Up,” on WNTK 99.7.

Co-host Bill Huff has been in Vermont for 40 years, he’s a retired airline pilot and financial planner who then got into politics including three runs for State Senate and once for the House.

He’s also on the Vermont Trappers Board and is Vice President of a local ATV club and he serves on the VASA (Vermont ATV Sportsmans Association) board as a club representative.  He’s been married for 40 years he has a large family including five grandchildren.

In his bio sent to VDC he wrote about how the show began.

“Mike Tagliavia [the other co-host] was smart, passionate about the issues, and had recently run a political campaign himself so was learning to put his passion for issues into an articulate and thoughtful format,” he wrote. “It was then the idea for “Right Side Up” was spawned with myself and Mike as cohosts.”

Tagliavia has run for Attorney General and he’s got a background in running a successful pool service company as well as he’s been a CDL-licensed driver. He is also married and has been a full-time resident in the state since 2019.

He wrote in a bio sent to VDC that he really values this radio experience.

“I couldn’t have a better co-host than Bill Huff!  Having very different backgrounds and approaches to topics, I think we balance each other very well,” he wrote. “We are hopeful that our show will streamline informing and educating the public about what is really happening in their neck of the woods.”

Recent show highlights growing conservative media

On Oct. 17 they had Steve MacDonald on the show who is the managing editor, and owner of GraniteGrok.com, a news blog site that has garnered millions of followers from throughout New England. They now have a ‘Vermont Grok’ page as well.

“We’ve got over 52,000 published posts since 2006 so we have a lot of content, we put up about 11 posts per day,” MacDonald said on the show.

He talked about how as far-left policies are implemented in the once-conservative Vermont, the impacts they have on quality of life can be clearly observed.

“You can actually see the crime increase in Burlington after BLM and they cut the police, we’ve been seeing increases [in crime] statewide, you can see that by just letting immigrants come into a sanctuary city,” MacDonald said.

Huff said that media showing local issues and how they relate to the larger national issues is an important strategy. He used the national border crisis as an example as Vermont has been seeing increased illegal immigration at its northern border with Canada.

“Everything that is happening nationally just like you said, it’s actually happening right here. People are people and it’s going on here too whether you are aware of it or not,” Huff said.

Governor’s race in New Hampshire

The conversation shifted to New Hampshire, where current GOP governor Chris Sununu is not planning to run for office again. MacDonald commented that Sununu made some progress in key areas.

“He did great things for taxes, he did great things for Second Amendment rights, there’s a handful of issues where we never would have made progress, we are getting rid of our business tax, and without a Republican governor none of that stuff happens,” MacDonald said.

Not all the review from MacDonald was positive.

“But he was bad on social issues and he wasn’t great on COVID. He came around near the end but he could have done a lot more to secure our liberties,” he said.

The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle