By Michael Bielawski
Three candidates are running for a seat in the House Rutland/Bennington District, they are Republican Chris Pritchard of Pawlet, incumbent Rep. Robin Chesnut-Tangerman, P-Middletown Springs, and Republican Ronald W. Lacoste of Wells.
Either Pritchard or Lacoste will face Chesnut-Tangerman. Both GOP candidates are critical of the established super-majority, though they vary in rhetoric and experiences.
Two Republicans, one seat
Ronald Lacoste of Wells told the Rutland Herald at the end of July that he had a 27-year military career including just in 2008 he went to Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Syria. He said once getting back to Vermont he noticed changes in the wrong direction.
“It’s getting ridiculous,” he said. He suggested that he’s concerned that neither his children nor many other Vermont children will be able to start their own lives here if current spending keeps up. He also said of the state’s climate goals that they are “overambitious and unlikely to be realized, though they will be expensive.”
Lacoste answered some questions for VtDigger. He wrote that he would like to “reduce regulations that are not attractive and are costly for any industry to make a move to Vermont. I would give initial tax breaks to large companies bringing jobs/careers here, to sweeten the deal some.”
On getting school funding and taxes under control, he’d like to, “balance a budget that doesn’t bleed the residents every year with a new tax.”
Pritchard told the Herald at the end of July that he is “fine with many of the initiatives coming out of the Legislature” but he says Vermonters have to be able to afford the changes that are being implemented.
He told them he is “concerned about the spending and the impact that it’s having on people that have to work and live in this economy.”
Some of his experiences include more than three decades teaching a hunter safety course and having been involved in a UVM 4-H Club teaching kids. He spent his professional career with auto dealerships largely working in service, including 27 years with Hand Motors.
An incumbent Progressive and climate activist
Chestnut-Tangerman’s website indicates that he is a Progressive with ambitious energy policies intended to impact climate change, he supports higher minimum wages, and he sponsored a bill to ban pesticides intended to help bee populations. He calls climate change “the overarching and underlying issue of our lives.”
In 2020, he wrote that Scott’s popularity with the Vermont public “had little to do with policy and everything to do with his temperate and level-headed response to the coronavirus.”
During a highly partisan disagreement over vote tallies during a House election in 2017, Chestnut-Tangerman was able to take a peace-maker role and explain to observers some of the issues concerning election integrity.
“In the partisan bickering that followed, several details got lost, details that help the average person understand why this process was appropriate…” he wrote.
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle