 Andrew Champagne here from the State Democratic Party. I'm on my live show here at 525. I'd like to thank my friends, Kevin and Daniel, for their help. They are producing the show today. I would like to thank Lauren Glendividian and Megan, and anyone who's helping on this. And I just want to say hello, and also to Jordan, who books the show for me. Now, I'm starting the show off with a mask to make a point. The point is that we see that the mask mandate has worked. We see that the Omicron variant has been going down. I always have to start this show, and hopefully it'll only be a few more months before I have to start this show, by saying that we cannot move forward as a society until virtually everyone is vaccinated. Okay, now we will never get 100%, but I want to reach out to those people, I especially have a couple of great friends that haven't been vaccinated. And I'd like to let them know, for example, I'd like to give a shout out. The vaccine is, you can get the shots over Community Health, and you can also get them right in this building where we are today on North Winooski Avenue. So, most of the people here that are watching the show are from Burlington. I know I'm going out to all the 13 towns in the county, so I thank you all for watching. I thank the support of CCTV Town Meeting Television. And, you know, we're really going to earn our name because we are exactly three weeks away from Town Meeting. And, you know, a huge part of our democracy, and it's going to be a really interesting race in Burlington. I can't comment too much about what's going on in South Burlington and other towns, but this show is definitely Burlington-centric. So, what I want to do, again, let me try to get over this point about the COVID, is I have to repeat this, we cannot move forward as a society until everyone is vaccinated. So, I would just like to let anyone know if you're watching the show and you have any kind of anxiety about getting the shots, the first shot is virtually pain-free. And when I got the shot, I didn't even know that I said to the nurse, I said, I don't think you got it. And she said, oh, yes, I did. There was no side effects, and that's 70% effective. So, you know, for those people that are nervous about the vaccine and even anti-vax, don't be nervous. You can always give me a call. I will go with you to get vaccinated and we'll get lunch after. How does that sound? 802-540-0717 is my telephone number, and that's the easiest way to reach me, 802-540-0717. Now, if you're having questions about where to get the vaccine, or perhaps you're not working or money's tight or there's not so much food in your pantry, the state has a great telephone number, just simply 211, okay? And that's like a social services number. Oh, there's a lot of people in Burlington and all through the county that are definitely eligible for the Three Squares Plan, which that name has been changed. That's basically, it was a food stamp program. It's now called Three Squares. And with the stimulus and with the work that President Biden has done, there is a lot of federal money here to help people with housing, with health costs, with Medicare applications and Medicaid applications. So, 211 is that number to call. Okay, let's talk, okay, I guess I have about 30 minutes. So, what we're going to do is talk about, we're going to take it from the top and bring it down. As always, I am a huge fan of President Biden. I was fortunate enough to be a delegate for him and I think he's doing a wonderful job. And what we've seen is the resistance, the Republicans' resistance. Now, we need to talk about their treasonous behavior, them basically condoning the insurrection of January 6, where people, for the first time in American history, broke into the Capitol, assaulted Capitol police, tried to kill them, did vandalism, desecration. People went to the bathroom in the Capitol, they went through with Confederate flags. And this is okay, and this is fine. Now, the Republican Party of my youth, I grew up in Connecticut, where there's a lot of Republicans where people like Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan or I'm just trying to think, moderate Republicans, they'd be horrified by this. And the fact that the Tea Party class of 2010 has been able to put this message that it was just civil discourse is wrong and it's treasonous. We think about the—I've been reading these special reports about the Capitol Hill police, how they have post-traumatic stress because American citizens were trying to kill police officers inside the Capitol. And for the Republicans, for Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise to say that this is okay, it's horrible. And history will be the judge. History will judge them very harshly. I've got to give credit, and I give very little credit to Republicans, but to Congresswoman Liz Cheney and I believe his name is Adam Kissinger in Illinois. They were too—not really moderate, they're very conservative, but at least they realized the illegality and the treason of this. Now, you know, I'm saying that word a lot, but I think it has to be reinforced that what happened there cannot be forgotten, and we are a country of laws, we are a country of democracy. Unfortunately, President Trump, because we had to use mail-in ballots, which are fantastic, they get so many people involved, he was able to kind of pursue this story or tale that the election was rigged. Now, we know that voter fraud is so, so rare, and I saw someone got six years in prison for voter fraud, so it's a very severe sentence. And virtually, we cannot find it. So what the Republicans do is try to scare the populace, maybe some people who aren't so politically cognizant of what's going on. And the fact was that President Biden won by several million votes, okay, and the election was fair. And unfortunately, you know, you can't have the Yankees without the Red Sox, you can't have the Democrats without the Republicans. This is really watering down the brand of the Republican Party. Now, the Republican Party was known for many years for economic conservatism, but liberal or progressive on civil rights, on voting issues, and now they've disparaged their own image. As we know, voting rights are on attack in America. For example, what happens like in nearby New Hampshire? I've repeated this before. If you don't have a New Hampshire driver's license, you can't register to vote. So those 10,000 kids at UNH and maybe half of them are out of state or 40%, they have to have something to perform in New Hampshire ID. Now, what we do in Burlington, or we do in Vermont, excuse me, is we can register you with the last four digits of your social security. So you don't have to give out your full social. And you don't have to have a driver's license. We have a one-day residency requirement in Vermont. Excuse me. I've got to remember this show is going out all over the place. So we want a registry to vote. We also have, which is amazing, as I said before, I was skeptical about it, but we also have same-day registration, which I thought, the only reason I was nervous about it was I thought that it would be too much paperwork and it would be too complicated. But what we do is we just have a person at the polling place where I am an inspector of elections, which is Ward 2. We just have someone there registering voters. And, you know, we usually register about 20 new people to vote that day. So it's amazing. So Vermont has some incredible laws. Same-day registration. One-day residency. You don't have to have a driver's license. I don't understand what driver's license has to do with voting. Absolutely nothing, okay? They didn't have a driver's license when the founding fathers rode their horses to Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention. We also have up to 35 days of early voting, which is really incredible. So in Vermont, we want you to vote, but we see in a lot, a lot of other states that they really don't. And how these people look at themselves in the face, we are all, except if you're an Indigenous and American, God bless you, I hope you're watching the show, we are all immigrants. We all came here from somewhere. My grandfather came from Ireland with $50 in his pocket, and he knew one person in America. So the fact that we would have this prejudice against people with different languages or different countries of orange really shows that we've kind of strayed a little bit far from the shore, as Bob Dylan would say. What we've seen is all these laws meant, to example, stop early voting to limit drop-off boxes. To, for example, as a justice of the peace in Vermont, I'm allowed to pick up a ballot. People can pick up ballots for other people. In some states, they want to make that a felony. So it's ludicrous. But what is happening again, too, we're seeing gerrymandering. We're actually seeing gerrymandering on both sides. And somehow, because the congressional and the legislative districts, both nationally and statewide, work off the census, which is constitutionally mandated every 10 years, so we just finished our 2020 census. Now, so what is happening with this is that there is realignment of congressional districts. And honestly, we have seen it's really too bad, and I never knock Democrats, but I've got to be honest here. We've seen what they call gerrymandering, creating districts that are favorable to you and most unfavorable to your opponent. So in my humble opinion, I think we've got to take the politics out of the gerrymandering. I've saw some maps, including New York State, that made absolutely no sense, especially in New York City, cross boroughs, cross neighborhoods. And I think people have a lot of reason to be skeptical of politicians and political maneuvering. And one way to renew trust is to have some maps that make some sense. Okay, that's my two bits, and that's my one knock at the Democrats, but you've got to call them like you see them. So what we're also seeing here, oh, another thing in Vermont, I just want to reach out to anyone. If you are a felon, we want you to vote, okay? In, I believe, 27 states, felons cannot vote. So it seems like to me that's double jeopardy. You've done your time, you've paid for your crime. Why are you punished again? I think it's unconstitutional, but as we see, for example, an ounce bag of some grass in Louisiana in 1968, you're still not voting. It's insane. So what is behind a lot of this is deep, deep institutional racism, the fact that people that don't look like you or don't talk like you or you might find a little different or you might find their political views are different than yours. What we try to do is marginalize them. And, but this is not going to work. American democracy has weathered so many storms from, well, let's see, from the dog days of the Revolutionary War to the burning of the White House, to the Battle of Antietam in Gettysburg, to where the Confederates were so close they could see the Capitol Dome from Silver Spring, to the wars in World War I, the wars to end all wars over the trenches, to the dog days of Pearl Harbor in World War II, to the tragedies of Korea and Vietnam, Korea where my dad served as a 20-year-old young infantry guy, to our wars, to what happened on 9-11. Now, bin Laden said he'd never be able to beat America, he'd never be able to beat America militarily, but he could try to get them economically, and he almost did, to the dog days of our unfortunate forays in Iraq and our much too long 20 years in Afghanistan, now to the Omicron and now to the insurrection, the treasonous entry into the Capitol that people bent on murdering Capitol Hill police, vandalizing, coming in and sitting at the speaker's desk, doing all sorts of terrible things. You know, none of them massed. Who knows? What if someone had a suicide belt on, could have blown up the whole Capitol? So I can't forget about that. Now, the Republicans have this ploy where we can't talk about that. That is a top 20 event in American history, and I'm not going to let the Republicans forget about that and the fact that they have almost used it as a battering ram. It's not going to happen. I think it's a terrible idea that Mr. Trump is the face of the Republican Party. First of all, I think he's 75 years old. He's in terrible health. And America, as we know, we always have to look to the future if we're stuck in the past. And I also think, hopefully, I'm pretty convinced of his guilt on a number, number of charges that the Attorney General Letitia James is bringing in New York and the prosecutors are bringing in the Southern District of Manhattan. And there's a strong chance that President Trump will have to plead guilty to a felony. I know a few years ago I read in a book he'd been sued over 500 times. So for them to put all their trust in such a marginal criminal figure is folly. That's like putting all your eggs in one basket. Unfortunately, the xenophobia, the racism, the hatred that the Republicans are working with a lot of their followers is going to come back to haunt them. What we've seen is, we've seen some great work by President Biden. Sure, I know people say, oh, you know, he didn't get all this stuff through. We did get a lot of the packages through. When the Senate is 50-50 and we have a couple moderate to conservative Democrats in very conservative states, we're in a tough spot. So I think actually what he's passed has been remarkable. The work of Senator Chuck Schumer and the work of Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Stoney Hayer and people like Peter Welch in Congress, we've brought some good things in. So don't let the negative news get you through. You know, unfortunately, America, we realize how incredibly wealthy we are because we're able to, by buying bonds from the Federal Reserve, we're able to kind of spend our way out of this crisis. And that is truly an amazing thing. So I think some of his appointments have been fantastic. I saw that Carolyn Kennedy was confirmed as Ambassador to Australia. Now, we see, with the South China Sea, we see Australia really comes into play here. So he's made some great appointments. I think Vice President Kamala Harris is doing an excellent job. You know, I see the prejudice and the chauvinism that is directed to her. She is working really hard, and especially on the border problems in Mexico, which are, it's a terrible tragedy and it's a crisis times 10. And anyone who tells you they have the solution is kidding themselves. It's funny, when times are good, we want immigration, and when times are bad, we come down against immigration. So that's a very touchy subject. We see that the mass mandate is working. Okay, we see that the vaccinations are working. We see that the social distancing is working. We've got to try to get through this winter. And I think we're going to be fine. But a million lives lost in America. Now, I blame a lot of that on the Trump administration. They kind of thought that it would go away. President Trump never wore a mask. He had events at the White House where he infected people. He had COVID himself. So we had extremely poor leadership. And the fact that Republicans are using this healthcare crisis, the worth healthcare crisis we had since the AIDS, the height of the AIDS epidemic, and the height of the opiate epidemic, using it as a political tool, it's just very sad. And I think that they will be judged harshly in history and I think by their voters in their states. You know, the party of big business and white male America, my friend, you're in your last rounds. And unless you try to get a new coalition of new and young people, we see so many different people coming to the states, being born in the states. And if you're not helping them and with them and trying to help them, then you're falling behind. So that's my anti-Republican rant for today. So let's talk about some local and state races. We have, dear Senator Lehi, he's the best. He is retiring. He will have served, when he leaves in January, he will have served 48 years in the Senate chamber. Isn't that incredible? All the wonderful things he has done. I would just like to thank him for all the personal kindnesses. If anyone's watching this show, hi to Senator Lehi and Mrs. Lehi and all the staff, Carolyn Dwyer, John Tracy, they're retired, but still legendary John Goudreau. And I'd just like to thank them all. He, there is an extremely fine man that has represented his state with honor. Okay. We, to, to, to replace Senator Lehi, we have, we have our great congressman, Peter Welch, who's running. And I endorsed him on the last show. I'm going to endorse him again. We're going to talk about him every show in November. Fantastic, congressman. Former state senator, former president pro tem of the state Senate, which I think served him very well in the House. He has announced his run for U.S. Senate. He's been endorsed by Senator Lehi. He's been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders. And I think it's going to be smooth sailing for Peter. Peter is a part-time resident of Burlington for many, many years. And he's a personal friend. I think he's one of the top five congressmen in the country. He will be a great, great senator. I should say hi to his staff. Ryan McClaren, campaign chair. Thea Wurzberg. Ben Sarle. Let me think here. A couple other people. Excuse me. Skylar Nash. So he's got a great crew. So when the petitions come around, it takes 500 signatures to run for statewide office. Please sign those petitions for our Democratic candidates. Now, we do not, and this is tough, you've got to be real on this show, is Governor Scott is a formal opponent. He kind of uses the best traditions of the Republican Party. He's replacing a very small, peep-progressive governor, my friend Governor Shumlin. And, you know, he's a moderate down-the-line guy, a real Vermont guy, central Vermont, Barry guy. And he never tries to be something that he's not. And he's enormously popular. Fortunately or unfortunately, you call it how you see it, we get a lot of Democrats that vote for him. He is going to be exceedingly tough to beat, and we all know that. We don't know about— we don't have a governor's candidate yet. I hope we find a good one. And the reason is, it might be very tough to beat Governor Scott. But at least we get a dialogue of issues. So, the—now, let's talk about some other things. The Lieutenant Governor's Race. We've got a few candidates in there. We have—let's see. My old buddy, former Lieutenant Governor Dave Zuckerman, I believe, is thrown his hat in the ring. He'll be a foreign old opponent, and he's probably the favorite. We also have State Rep from Windsor, Charlie Kimball. Okay, Charlie, good luck. We also have State Rep Kitty Toll, who has a great reputation. I'm sorry, I don't know Kitty and Charlie, but they work hard in Montpelier. I also heard rumors of former Lieutenant Governor Doug Racine getting in the race, who is an extremely fine man. And so, Doug, if you're watching this, go for it. So, also, I'm really glad to report— I could not report this a month ago— is that the House and Senate are back in session at Montpelier in the beautiful under the gold dome. For over a year—I don't know, maybe it was two years— it was all done virtually. And I think we miss the dialogue when someone from Canaan is interacting with someone from Bennington, someone from the islands is hanging out with someone from Rutland. And what's always very interesting about the legislature to me is the camaraderie of the members and the stuff that they do together. The socializing, they're having a drink, the talking, the telling stories. In the old days, the legislators would be in Montpelier from January to May. And it must have been very interesting. That building is inspirational. Every time I go in and I see that Abraham Lincoln statue, I'm always inspired. I go down there for meetings, excuse me, of the State Democratic Committee. Also, I want to say hello to Claire Cummings, the ED of the party. And also, I have to announce, unfortunately, the departure of one of EDP's top staffers, Asha Carroll, my friend from Tin Mith, is leaving the party. She's taking another job. The party is so many hours and it's such hard work. Asha, you've been wonderful. And Burlington, Tin Mith, hi to your husband, Andy. Claire and I and the whole crew will miss you. Also, I touched about it in the last episode. But we have a new Democratic chair. Bruce Olson stepped down. It was just too much time for him. And we have Ann Lisak from the Hill section of Burlington. Hey Ann, how are you? Great former Rutland Party chair, longtime political activist, husband of former state rep and health commissioner, Dr. Harry Chen. Dr., always good to see you. I hope you're watching the show. Ann has done a great job. We had our first full meeting with her as chair. It went really well. We have some new officers. We have some new executive committee. The state Democratic committee meetings are open to all. They've been virtual, but we're hopefully they're going to be in person soon. And they are held at the Capitol in Montpelier about every six weeks. And those are always open to the public. We are a party of inclusion rather than exclusion. And we are a party of openness rather than closure. So what we have, we're going to have, we have, I guess I've got to talk about the council right now. We have eight, there are 12 counselors, and eight of them are up for election. We have a couple of great races that I'm going to highlight. One of them is my friend and full disclosure, I'm working on his campaign, Ben Travers. And he is in the South End, an attorney, father of three, homeowner, great guy, chair of Burlington Parks and Rec. He's running a great campaign to succeed Chip Mason. Chip, something like 15 years in the council, my friend. God bless you. That's a lot of Monday nights. And as we know lately, some of the discourse that the council has been of a very uncivil nature, obscenities, yelling, screaming, flags, almost near fighting. Sometimes I think that people have to respect for the process. So another race that I really want to talk about for a few minutes is my great friend, Hannah King. Ms. Hannah King is running for city council in Ward 8, which is, it's the newest ward. It was formed about 10 years ago. It's basically from UVM down to Memorial Auditorium, and it votes at the library. Hannah is a UVM senior. She's taken a semester off to work on the campaign. She has done wonderful work for the Democratic Party. She is a member of the State Democratic Committee. She is also a member of the Burlington Democratic Committee. But Hannah brings, you know, even though she's a young person, she brings that commitment to social justice to voting for tenants' rights, for public safety, for climate control, for cleaning up and maintaining our jewel, the lake. Hannah has run a wonderful campaign. She's probably out canvassing now, so she's not watching this. But she told me she watches the show. I'd like to thank also her friends and people that are helping her, especially Chair of Burlington Dems, Adam Roof, who, boy, he's a hard worker and a great guy, and her two campaign managers, Aidan Doherty and Owen Doherty, my two great friends from Burlington Democratic Party. So Hannah, she's been working on this like crazy for two months. Now, for anyone who thinks that running for council is, you know, some easy thing, first of all, you've got to get 50 signatures. Then you have to be nominated by the party of your choice, even though you can, if you want, you can run as an independent. You can make up your own party. But for someone interested as, like, for Democratic Prague, you have to go in front of your caucus, get the nomination, and then hit the streets. You have to knock on doors. You've got to call people. You've got to write people. You have to do honking waves. You have to do, and I'm not even talking about social network stuff. I'm not an expert on that, but you have to do Facebook, Instagram, all sorts of stuff. You have several debates. You have candidate forums. And let me tell you, canvassing, which is going door to door in February and January, is not a lot of fun. I remember I was out with Richard Dean once, and I almost fell off a porch. The ice was like a sheet of glass. And I mean, I've canvassed when it's blow zero. So Hannah and everybody out there, out there canvassing, all the Democrats, thanks for your good work. So I heartily endorse Hannah King, OK? We also have some other races. My friend Ali Zhang is running for re-election up in the New North End. He's running as an independent this time, but I am endorsing him. I think he's a great guy. He's my friend. He was also very pivotal to the new library up in the New North End, which is fantastic. I so worry about this pandemic is children losing those years from like third grade to fifth grade where you really learn how to read. So anybody watching this who's helping a kid out, bring them a library, bring them a book, read to them. Because of that skill, I know a couple of people that are adults that are unfortunately illiterate. And I've worked at the polls many times where older people, they were just passed by in school. And adult illiteracy is still a problem in America. So if you can ever help anyone with that, let's do it. So again, a couple other races. Rob Gutman, who I saw on Canvassing, is running a vigorous campaign against Soraya Hightower. I think that we have a very solid chance the Democrats are taking the council back. Unfortunately, we have a problem in our charter that we need to change. We have 12 counselors. So a vote can be 6-6, but the mayor does not have, in a case of a tie, does not have the tie-breaking vote. Now, we have a strong mayor system, and we also have a strong mayor, and Mayor Murrow Weinberger. So I think that he should have the opportunity to break a deadlock. I think that we're going to end up with 7-5. I think people are very skeptical of the progressives about the police. We have gone from 95 to 63 officers. We've seen a lot of disrespect to the police. I am a big fan of the police. I, in my neighborhood, I live in where the college kids live. God bless them. We love them. But sometimes we need them. I think it's an extremely difficult job. But what I must stress to all police officers is that everyone needs to be treated with ultimate respect and judging someone on the color of the skin or how they look or if they're different than you or speak a different language than you. We've got to have respect. Good neighbors. There's some people on Luma Street have this flag that says, Good neighbors make police obsolete. And I don't know if police will ever be obsolete. We see some very, very rough crimes. Committed bank robberies, assaults, robberies, murders over the terrible problem of opiate addiction. And I don't know how we're going to get a handle on that. We see how big pharma has turned millions and millions of Americans into junkies. And it's really sad. And the thing about dope is that you need it every day. You wake up and you're sick until you have it. So these people, I don't think they would be doing these crazy crimes if they weren't doing this poison. There are no easy answers to that. So let's talk. I have three minutes left. Wow, that went by fast. So let's talk about voting. Town Meeting Day is Tuesday, March 1st. Coming up three weeks from today. You can register to vote at the polls. You can register to vote at City Hall. You can give me a ring, 802-540-0717 to register to vote. You can register yourself to vote. You can register online. With that, you can also in Burlington, and I think in most towns in Chinden, you can get a free library card, which is awesome. Our Burlington library is the best. So what's going to happen? We have a new law that was passed this summer, and thanks to Governor Scott for signing it, that everyone is going to get a ballot sent to them. Now, let's say you don't want to vote that way. Let's say your ballot is lost. You're thrown in the recycling. Eating by the dog, something happened, or you voted and you want to change your mind. What you can do is the polls will be open. Let's very quickly do all the polling places. Ward 1, Modern Christie School, next to Red Cross. Ward 2, Wheeler School. Ward 3, Barnes School. Ward 4, St. Mark's Church. Ward 5, the junior high on Main Street. Edmunds, sorry. Ward 6, Burlington Electric. That's where my friend Ben Travers will be. And then Ward 7, the senior center. And then Ward 8 with Hannah King is our wonderful Burlington Public Library. So you have, let's say you're going to the polls and your friend, roommate, someone you know, God, I'm not registered. We'll bring them along. We can register them at the polls. They can register and vote the same day. You can also, the ballots will be sent about Valentine's Day. This shows that airing February 8th, but the ballots will be sent out in about a week. You can also go to City Hall and register and vote right there. So we are down to one minute. So I'd like to thank my highly trained crew. They're fantastic. Kevin, Daniel, my favorite cameraman, Jordan, my executive producer, Megan, Lauren Glendavidian. I'd like to thank all the people that make Town Meeting TV, CCTV, available. This is being streamed on YouTube. Hopefully it goes all over the place. I know some friends see it all, you know, around America. And I think my sister watches it in the UK. So we're down to 30 seconds. I'd like to, like everyone, be well. Please vote on Town Meeting Day. Wear your mask. Please wear your mask. Please get your vaccine if you have not received it. I'll go with you to get the vaccine, 802-540-0717. I'm looking forward to a fantastic turnout for Town Meeting. I think we're going to have some great candidates. I'd like to you all at a national level, please try to support President Biden. He's doing fantastic work. From our beautiful studios in the Old North End, I want to wish you good day, good afternoon, good luck. Go Dems!