Scores 100% on the Democratic Socialist Party policy questionnaire.

by Rob Roper

Democrat Lieutenant Governor Candidate Molly Gray is out on the campaign trail projecting herself as some sort of moderate and a champion of rural Vermont. But, as highlighted in a recent interview on WVMT’s Morning Drive, Gray responded to the Green Mountain Democratic Socialists of America candidate questionnaire and scored a 100 percent policy alignment with the radical left wing party.

Just as a reminder, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are the folks who, among their other whacky ideas, want to abolish the US Senate, end the election of presidents by popular vote, and subjugate the Supreme Court to, in their vision, the one remaining chamber of congress, the House of Representatives. All of which jibes with the national co-chair of the DSA, David Jenkins, recent admission that, “Our goal is communism,” so there you have it.

The Vermont DSA asked ten questions of candidates on a wide range of policies:

“Do you support fully implementing Act 48 to provide universal single-payer healthcare.” You know, the plan that imploded in a giant figurative fireball when its price tag and the massive tax increases necessary to fund the fantasy became public. Should we take a time machine back to 2011 and relive that colossal cluster-act-of-fornication that proved to be the springboard to Vermont’s current highest health insurance premiums in the nation? Molly Gray answered “Yes.”

“Do you support a $20 minimum wage for all Vermont Workers.” Good luck to Vermont small businesses struggling to survive on small margins by hitting them with a nearly 40 percent increase in labor costs. And I’m sure Vermont consumers struggling to keep up with rising prices will love having to eat that cost when it is passed along in inflated prices for goods and services, assuming they’re still available at all when stores and restaurants close. Let’s be sure make Vermont even more business unfriendly and drive even more employers and jobs out of the state with this absolutely unaffordable proposal. Molly Gray said “Yes!”

“Do you support statewide rent stabilization?” In other words, are you for “rent control.” An idea that has proven over and over again in places like New York City and San Francisco to be a disaster of titanic proportions causing both housing shortages and skyrocketing housing costs. Only a total idiot would look at that history going back to World War II and say, yeah, let’s stick our finger in that particular electrical socket! But Molly Gray said “Yes.”

“Do you support boycotting, divesting from, and sanctions against Israel?” Or, to rephrase, are you a pro-jihadi antisemite who supports establishing a Palestinian state in the Middle East that will be an anti-women’s rights, anti-gay rights, anti-religious freedom, racially non-diverse totalitarian theocracy run by internationally recognized state sponsors of terrorism? Gray said Yes.

“Do you support divesting state investments from fossil fuels?” This is a proxy question for the overall “Green Raw Deal” climate agenda for which Gray has always been a pom-pom waving cheerleader. When she first ran for LTG, “Gray said she fully supports the Global Warming Solutions Act” (Bennington Banner), which is the mother ship law that spawned Act 181, the anti-rural land grab, Act 18 the “Clean Heat” Carbon Tax on home heating fuels that especially hard hits rural Vermont, ditto for Act 179, the Renewable Energy Standard driving up electric rates, and, if Democrats regain a ruling majority after November, the Cap & Invest tax on all fossil fuels for home heating and transportation, not to mention a host of new regulations to rein in the greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector of our economy.

Just a side note on this point for the folks in Rural Vermont Rising, which Gray is trying hard to woo: how can someone truly on your side “fully support” the GWSA and all its anti-rural legal offspring and, not for nothing, have the full-throated endorsements of VPIRG and the Vermont Conservation Voters who are most assuredly not supporting her cuz she’s on your side? Think hard on that!

Gray also said Yes to support for the abolition of ICE – not reform; abolition – but it is not clear what the Vermont Lieutenant Governor or any Vermont state elected official has to do with the status of a federal agency. And, of course, she said Yes to higher income taxes and a wealth tax on Vermont households earning over $250,000 because a state of 640,000 people and a budget of nearly $9 and a half billion budget and the third highest tax burden in the nation really needs to squeeze more revenue out of its citizens instead of holding the bureaucracies and NGOs accountable for all of our money that they waste by the bucketful not solving the problems we pay them handsomely to solve — and in many cases make those problems worse.

When pressed on her ten for ten answers on the DSA questionnaire and what it means, Gray repeatedly obfuscated by, instead of answering the question, saying she isn’t “into labels,” but rather wants to focus on issues. But these policy questions asked by the DSA are issues. And, unless she was lying to the good people at the DSA, she supports each and every one of their key policy positions. And, whatever label you want or don’t want to put on them, they are terrible ideas for Vermonters who want to make our state a more affordable and easier place to live.

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 25 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.