 Hi, my name is Pivan Lukumhan, and I'm Adrienne O'Rourke. We're here at the Barry Elks Lodge for the Vermont GOP's watch party here on Election Good Night. And we are going to watch the results come in, and we hope to get to talk to some folks that are here tonight. And we are thankful for Orca Media for providing the tech service today. Hi there, I'm Pivan Lukumhan. It is Election Night here in downtown Barry. We are at the Elks Lodge, and this is the watch party for the Vermont GOP. Standing next to me is John Clark, candidate for the Senate in Orange County. Do you want to say a few words, and how's it going tonight? Well, it's been a long haul, and I think we're all sort of excited to have it over with, for better or for worse. It's a very tiring ordeal. But I really want to reach out to thank all my supporters and everybody who runs. I mean, in this democratic process, it really is a state where the tail can wag the dog, and regular Vermonters can run and be involved and have a chance of winning. And I think maybe we'll take some seats tonight, is my hope, whether or not I do. Well you told me earlier that you're quite new to politics, and tell us how you got into it, and what you hope to achieve as an average citizen going into politics. Well I got involved a few years ago just trying to shape a conservative message that was more moderate, more in between Phil Scott and Donald Trump for conservatives. And to try to appeal to Vermonters on conservative issues that would unify people rather than divide us. And I ran two years ago against Phil Scott, and we had almost 40 people run with me, several of them won. And so that's kind of the foundation that I ran with, but it's kind of a, I've been called a rural populist, and I kind of like that. I mean, I know there are negative connotations to that. But I think people want authenticity, and they want people who they can trust. And that's what brings me to the party, as a person who was before that Democrat for most of my life. So I'm kind of a walk away. That makes sense. Yeah, and if you do win this election, you've got two years. What do you hope to accomplish? Well, I think that we've got some real problems to tackle that require centrists from both the left and the right to come together. And I've actually been outspoken and supported some Democrats who understand the fiscal problems facing us, particularly with our pensions. Our government's too big. Our schools are the second most expensive in the country as a function of our income. And our government's growing faster than the underlying economy. And we can't simply be dependent on tourism and handouts from the federal government as Vermonters. We need to rebuild our economy. And I believe that we can do that, believe it or not, not solely, but a lot with farming and building along those strengths and even agritourism. I mean, our tourism industry as well is built on farming. And we're losing our farms and not just our dairy farms. So we have a huge opportunity with increased inflation and fertilizer and fuel costs to start exporting food again, like the way we did. And there's actually a huge business plan right there. Great. As you heard me say. Yes, but we're talking to a whole new audience here. And what are your hopes for the Vermont GOP in general? So as a party? Well, it's a good question. There's an increasing division on the left, which we saw, particularly in the Molly Gray, Becca Ballant Race. But elsewhere, there's there's really an increasing division there. And on the on the right, there's been a division for some years, which is evidenced by Phil Scott and Donald Trump, who themselves have never exactly been allies. And so there's a middle there. And it has been my goal for several years. And we're trying to see it take shape to form a GOP post Phil Scott, post Donald Trump, not wishing death on anybody. But when those those those personalities are in the past, perhaps we can repair Vermont's GOP because it's created a real division. And nobody wants to donate to this party because either they hate Phil Scott and love Donald Trump or they hate Donald Trump and they love Phil Scott. So why would you give to the party that you see? So it's created a real a hole in the conservatism. I believe in a two party system. We've had essentially a progressive one party system right now. I think we only have six Republican senators, maybe seven. That's not very balanced. And that's why we have such a, you know, the governor has been unable many times to resist veto overrides. So we need more balance. So that balance, I think, comes from a conservative party that's reshaped around a more centrist, traditionally conservative list of platform issues. I love public access television. I wish more people would produce for it. More people would get involved watching it. And it's a huge opportunity because freedom of speech is the core of any sound and growing culture in society. So thank you for doing what you do. Thank you for joining us. I'll let you get back to your party. Thank you. I haven't even started my party. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thanks for coming out tonight. Obviously, it's been a little over half an hour since the polls have closed. So I just want to thank you all. I know so many of you. We've got some candidates here. We've had folks who have volunteered. Town chairs, county chairs. Thank you guys for coming out and doing all the work that has taken to get up to this point. So thank you. I'm excited. I think tonight is going to be a good night for Republicans across the country, for sure. We are going to have a red wave. I think we look across the border at New York and New Hampshire. Some of these other Senate races. There's a lot for Republicans to be excited about. The most important thing for us to be excited about is the food has been served. So if you haven't had a chance, make sure you grab some of the appetizers. These have been prepared by the Vermont Young Republicans. We have an incredible, let's give them a round of applause. I know Sam Douglas, chair of the Vermont Young Republicans, offered to do the food for tonight. So make sure you say a quick thank you to him. And we're just going to be watching and waiting for results to come in. But also we've got our longtime Republican former state legislator, Tom Koch, wanted to make an announcement. So go ahead, Tom. Well, I have a tradition of reporting the results from Barrie Town, which is often one of the first towns to report. And I hope that the returns from across the state are better than they are from Barrie Town. I have some bad news to report. The Democrats put forth an Emerge Vermont candidate who had over $10,000 funded mainly from Burlington. She worked very hard around the town. I have to admit that. And the bad news is that we only beat her by 600 votes. So our new representative, the top vote getter was Topper McFawn. And about 100 votes behind him was our new representative, Gina Galfetti. And I know she's going to do a super job. So that's the news from Barrie Town. Also, Paul Bean did pretty well. He came in at third, actually. But that's understandable because we have a local candidate from Barrie Town who came in first. And Cummings got 1,839 votes. Paul Bean got 1,829 votes. So 10 votes behind and Cummings ain't too damn bad. So we're hopeful for Paul tonight. I have the tape here. I haven't actually looked at all of it because I grabbed it and came down here. Joe Benning, 22, 24. David Zuckerman, 13, 16. Here's one that'll blow your socks off. Phil Scott, 3,040. Brenda Siegel, 458. So it's a good start for the night. Let's hope we keep it up. Sorry for the bad news. All right, so yeah, make sure you grab those. That is good news. To start, I joked with Tommy. Really had me going there for a minute. But so those are our first two contested wins that we know about. Republicans keep the two seats in Barrie Town, re-electing Topper McFawn, and also electing Gina Galfetti to replace Rob LeClaire. So there's our first two on the board. Please, we'll have some more music and make sure you get some food. As we get more updates, we'll let you know. Good evening. I'm Paivon Lukumhan here at the Barrie Elks Lodge in downtown Barrie. We are at the Vermont GOP Election Night Watch Party. And standing next to me is Erica Reddick. And I'll let her introduce herself and tell me what office you're running for and what you're looking forward to tonight. Yeah. Oh, are you holding it? I'll hold it. OK. My name is Erica Reddick. I am the Libertarian Party candidate for Congress. I also have the support and endorsement from the majority of the GOP apparatus here in Vermont, especially for folks who don't know the young man who does have the R behind his name is not actually a Republican. But I was very blessed to also have received the Libertarian Party endorsement. And so the thing that I'm most excited about is that I would say, number one, the Libertarian Party is going to become a major party here in Vermont tonight with my candidacy. So that's pretty exciting. So can you tell me a little bit more about the Libertarian Party and how it's different from the GOP? Yeah, great question. The Libertarian Party, much like the GOP, is very focused on liberty. So it's really about freedom, bodily autonomy, and just making sure that the government is in the right place in its citizens' lives. So they tend to be a little bit more focused on differently on social issues. So whereas the Libertarian Party has always been pro-gay marriage where the GOP was not previously, the Libertarian Party is also pro-cannabis. And so that's one thing that the GOP is not for. So they tend to be a little bit more liberal on social issues than the GOP does. That's probably the main difference. And remind me which congressional seat are you running for? Well, Vermont, the Vermont US House. US House seat, yeah. So we just have the one. And what was your motivation for running for that position? Great question. My motivation for running for Congress was just seeing our country running off of a cliff. I'm an accountant by trade. That's what I've done for much of the last 20 years. So I knew that this inflation spike was coming when those stimulus checks came out. I knew what was going to happen to the supply chain when they started shutting down, doing lockdowns, and things like that. And sure enough, it did happen. And then we see that our leadership is lying to us and saying, oh, no, inflation isn't there. It's transitory. And all this other stuff. And you're like, why are you not telling the American people the truth about what's going on? And selling our strategic oil reserve, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. I know. So I feel like our current leadership, while they may be well-intentioned, don't seem to understand the consequences of their decisions. And the American people deserve folks who are a little bit more stable and will take more caution and care before changing our institutions. Great. One last question. Let's keep it quick. Because I know, we got the wrap-up sign over here. So the Congress is large. And sometimes it moves really slowly. And sometimes it takes a while to make a name for yourself. What do you hope to accomplish in your first term if you get this seat? My goal is going to be, I'm going to submit three bills for consideration. One is going to be for term limits for federal officials. Another is going to be for a balanced budget, so no more deficit spending. Just run in the black card for $6 trillion a year, or whatever it is. And single-issue bills. So instead of these 10,000-page omnibus spending packages that they just stuff in, single-issue bill, one appropriation, one topic, these are items that are bipartisan, that Democrats, progressives, and Republicans all across the board, libertarians, everyone agree that that's how you can help restore accountability, transparency, and integrity to Washington. Thank you so much. We've been talking with Eric Oretik, who is on the ballot for the US House in Congress. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. Have a good night. Yes, hi, guys. Hi there. It's Paivon Lukaman here at the Berry Elks Lodge in downtown Berry. We are at the Vermont GOP election watch party. I'm standing here with Paul Dame, chair of the Vermont GOP. And the polls are closed. And the results are trickling in. Can you tell me what we've got, what we've seen so far? Yeah, so far, the first-only results that we have are from Berrytown, where we had Representative Topper McFawn running for reelection. And his previous seatmate, Robb LeClaire, had retired. So we had a new Republican running in that race, Gina Galfetti. And Gina was successful. So Republicans have retained that second seat in Berrytown. So the first news of the night is good news. So we just hope that it keeps coming. Great. I heard from my co-host over there that both Topper and Gina were doing a pretty rigorous door-to-door canvas campaign. Yeah, that's really what we recommend for all of our candidates. It's the best way to make sure that you get to know your district and the people that you're representing, and making sure that you're able to listen to what their concerns are so that you know how to represent them. And that's something that Topper McFawn has been doing for years. And so it's been great in that two-seat district to have an established veteran like Topper, who knows the area, who knows the legislature, and to have Gina kind of come in working with Topper to reproduce those results that are working for him. Yeah, so as the night rolls on, what other major or what other races are you really keeping a keen eye on? Yeah, I think we're keeping an eye on certainly a couple of our incumbents, like Vicki Strong up in Orleans or Samantha LeFave, who's here tonight to make sure that we keep the Republicans that we have that have been in there. And then we're also looking to kind of expand the map. I think there's a couple of opportunities we have up in Franklin County with a new Fairfax Georgia district that has Carolyn Branigan coming back and Ashley Bartley. So and we're keeping an eye here in Washington County on Paul Bean. He ran a very vigorous campaign for state senate. And in Washington County, you get to vote for three. So we're hoping that despite the fact there are two incumbent Democrats, there's an open seat. We're hoping that Paul, as a younger vermoner, is able to get in and be a voice for younger vermoners in the Vermont Senate. I've seen quite a lot of his signs around. Yeah, so let's touch back on something you were talking about, this new district. How has redistricting affected the campaigning? Well, in some places, the districts look very similar to what they had before. So in some places, there's not large changes. In other places, especially as you get into Chittenden County, where more of the population is, we had to do some redistricting because there's more people living there, so they need more reps. And then the other side of that is places like the Northeast Kingdom, Caledonia, Orleans, Essex County, lost some representation. So that has been kind of moving the map around a little bit. In some places, there's probably one place that's created an opportunity for Republicans in the Senate. It looks like we've got a good chance of getting a Republican Senate candidate out of this new district around Milton. And then in some other places, it certainly hurt us, a place like Vicki Strong I mentioned before. We kind of cut that district in half and cut Vicki off from some of the support that she's enjoyed for almost 12 years as a state rep up there. Yeah, so it looks like there's a pretty dedicated crowd here. What do you think about or how are you, as the chair, cultivating the future of the GOP here in Vermont? Well, I think the future starts now. And so we're going to take whatever the results are here tonight, take a careful look at those to identify where we had some good candidates and good districts, where maybe we came short a little bit and try to start looking for high quality candidates in more districts. That's one of the downsides we've had this year. We just didn't recruit as many candidates as I would have liked. And so that's something that we've got to start on right away looking at 2024. What do you find people are attracted to with the GOP? And so why would they enroll to run? Yeah, I think some of the things that we've heard is just the cost of living is just getting very difficult in Vermont. A lot of people just having a hard time filling in their gas tank, filling their home heating tank, just concerns about taxes affordability in general. And those are the kind of folks who have been looking to get involved in the Republican Party to be a little bit more of a balancing force in Montpelier. Anything else you want to say as we get back to watching the election results? No, I think we'll keep an eye on results as they come in. And thanks again for being here. Absolutely, thank you. We've been talking with Paul Dames, chair of the Vermont GOP. And we're here in downtown Barry at the Elk Slodge. And we're watching the results roll in. So thanks for joining us. All right, I've got results from two more races, some good news and some bad news. Unfortunately, Tom Kelly was not able to secure a seat here in Barry City. So the Democrats have retained both of those seats, incumbent Peter Anthony won that one. And we weren't able to flip that seat. The good news is Penny DeMar won in Franklin 7. And Republicans have retained that seat where Felicia Leffler had retired. So both parties basically had a draw there retaining the seats of vacancies. So that's all we've got so far. Well, we got some more news out of Franklin County in the brand new Georgia Fairfax District. Republicans picked up a seat. And we've got Caroline Brannigan and Ashley Bartley. And that was a seat that was held by an independent and now is in Republican control. So that's our first pickup of the night.