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Our verdict

LiberalMind endorses Phil Scott

Election Day is November 3. Vermont elects its governor every two years, elects its lieutenant governor on a separate ballot line — this year Republican John S. Rodgers defends that office against Democrat Molly Gray — and has a Republican incumbent, Phil Scott, seeking a sixth term in a state whose Cook PVI is D+17. The raters have all moved his way is wrong — they have moved toward his challenger: Cook says Likely R ("After a massive 52-point victory in 2024, Republican Gov. Phil Scott should easily win another two-year term in 2026"), Inside Elections moved to Likely Republican on October 14, and Sabato moved to Likely Republican on September 29. The polls, unusually, do not agree with each other: PollingSource's last-three average is Scott 44.3, Amanda Janoo 42.0 — with the University of New Hampshire's September poll the only one putting Janoo ahead, 49–43, a result UNH itself describes as a statistical tie. The center of this race is the veto: 65 of them, a state record by a factor of three, and what changed when the 2024 election broke the supermajorities that used to override them. This is the whole race, claim by claim. LiberalMind endorses Phil Scott.

The race

The confirmed ballot, from the Secretary of State's general-election candidate list: Phil Scott (R), incumbent since January 5, 2017, unopposed in the August 11 Republican primary; Amanda Janoo, whose ballot label is the Democratic/Progressive fusion line — she is the nominee of both parties; June Goodband (Peace and Justice); Brian Judd (Independent); and Dean Roy (Freedom and Unity) — a party Roy created himself to secure ballot access. Vermont has no running mates; statewide offices are elected separately.

The money (Secretary of State filings, via Seven Days' report of the Sept. 29–Oct. 12 period): Janoo has outraised the five-term incumbent — $888,000 cycle-to-date and $307,000 cash on hand, against Scott's $590,000 raised and $202,000 on hand. Janoo has accepted no corporate donations; $150,000 of her total came from donors of $100 or less, against $40,000 of Scott's. Outside spending includes more than $460,000 in anti-Janoo ads by A Stronger Vermont, an RGA-operated PAC (Vermont Political Observer). One conflict, printed and unresolved: Seven Days' September report says Scott carried in $219,000 from prior campaigns; the VPO's October report says he entered the cycle with "over $300,000." We print both and adopt neither. Historical context that cuts against reading the money as destiny: David Zuckerman outraised Scott in 2020 too, and lost 68.5–27.4.

Phil Scott (Republican) — the proven moderate, and the veto record in full

The electoral record is the most lopsided cross-party record in the country: first elected in 2016 with 53% against Sue Minter's 44.2%; roughly 55% in 2018; 69% in 2022; 73.43% in 2024 — a 52-point margin in a D+17 state. Morning Consult has ranked him America's most popular governor for 14 consecutive quarters (74% approve / 19% disapprove in its Oct.–Dec. 2025 tracking). We print, alongside, the Vermont Public September 2026 poll's 45% job approval — a different pollster at a different moment; both are in this article, neither is suppressed, and they are not blended.

His distance from his national party is documented, not rhetorical: Scott is a Trump critic, endorsed Nikki Haley for president, and has said he was among the Vermonters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Democrats criticize his 2025–26 posture as picking his battles with the Trump administration rather than confronting it head-on (Seven Days) — printed as their criticism.

The signature signings that cut against his party — proven, in service: In 2018 he called for and signed the gun package — near-universal background checks for private transfers, magazine limits (10 rounds rifle / 15 handgun on new sales), a bump-stock ban, extreme-risk protection orders (and in 2019 he vetoed S.169, a 24-hour waiting period, citing that package as sufficient). In 2019 he signed H.57, preserving abortion rights in Vermont law, in his own words: "I have consistently supported a woman's right to choose… those decisions remain between a woman and her health care provider." On marijuana he vetoed the first bill (S.22, 2017), then signed H.511 on January 22, 2018, making Vermont the first state to legalize through its legislature — "what adults do behind closed doors and on private property is their choice" — and later let the taxed retail market (S.54) become law without his signature, a middle move he has used repeatedly (also S.119 in 2020, H.126 in 2023, H.55 in 2024). This publication's mission is flipping moderate voters to moderate conservatism; Phil Scott's file is what that voter's governor looks like in office.

THE VETO RECORD — verified, and priced under the doctrine, carefully: Scott has issued 65 vetoes as of late September 2026 — more than any Vermont governor in history, triple Howard Dean's 21 (Vermont Bellwether's study of the legislature's records; the primary backbone is the State Archives' veto-message list). Seventeen were overridden. The shape matters more than the totals: in the supermajority years the legislature overrode him on the Affordable Heat Act / Clean Heat Standard (S.5, 2023 — Senate 20–10, House 107–42), on child care (H.217, Act 76 — House 116–31, Senate 23–7, investing $120M+ annually; Scott's message said he was vetoing "a regressive payroll tax," not child care), on the FY24 budget, and on June 17, 2024, in a single day, on six of seven bills — including H.887, the yield bill carrying a ~13.8% average property-tax increase (House 103–42, Senate 22–7), and H.687, Act 250 reform. In the first 171 years of Vermont's history there were six successful overrides total; that one day matched it. Then 2024 changed the arithmetic: Republicans gained six Senate seats and 19 House seats per FYI Vermont/Electoral-Vote, or 17 House seats per Governing and the Vermont Chamber — the conflict is printed; either count ended both supermajorities. The current legislature is Senate 16 D / 1 P / 13 R and House 87 D / 56 R / 7 Progressive-and-independent. Since the supermajorities died, his vetoes have held — five in 2025 (including two budget-adjustment bills and H.91, the motel-housing bill, vetoed on stated cost grounds), eight more in 2026, with the most politically live — H.727, data-center regulation (passed the Senate 26–3; vetoed May 28, 2026 on the ground that existing permitting suffices; House override failed 83–52) — now the race's sharpest policy contrast. And the post-2024 sessions end in negotiated laws he signed: the education compromise H.454 became Act 73 (2025) after he dropped from insisting on mandatory consolidation, and H.955 was signed June 19, 2026.

Priced under the veto doctrine: The Hobbs rule condemns the veto wielded as a wholesale governing method against the elected legislature's will. Scott's record is the doctrine's harder case, and we work it openly: 65 vetoes is rule-by-veto volume in the years when the legislature could and did answer him — seventeen times, on the record, including the largest bills of the era. A governor whose vetoes are overridden seventeen times is not governing by veto; he is losing vetoes in public and negotiating the rest, which is the check working as designed. The post-2024 pattern — vetoes holding, compromise bills signed — is the same instrument in a legislature his own coattails reshaped, with the voters' 2024 verdict as its warrant. We do not price the count against him. What we price: two items.

The $4/gallon claim — a checked signature claim that fails: Defending his clean-heat veto, Scott's administration repeatedly claimed the standard could raise heating-oil prices by up to $4 a gallon. The Public Utility Commission's own 2025 design estimated 8 cents a gallon initially, rising to 58 cents by 2035 (against ~$956 million in costs and ~$1.5 billion in societal benefits over ten years, per the regulators' design) — and Grist reports the basis of the $4 figure "was never clear." The legislature never took the second implementation vote, and in May 2026 the Senate voted to repeal the standard outright. The repeal vote does not rescue the number: an administration's signature cost claim that its own regulators' math does not support is the claim species, and it fails.

The sixth-term tax package — unspecified: Scott says he will propose a package of tax cuts or credits if re-elected and has directed agencies to plan for less revenue (VTDigger). As of September 29, the Bellwether record file found he had not disclosed specific proposals. A "$250 million in tax cuts" figure circulates attributed to "Republicans" collectively (FYI Vermont) — no source located attributes it to Scott's own campaign as a costed proposal, and we do not print it as his. His promise, as documented, is direction without detail: own-promise math, unclosed at filing time.

Enforcement — reported as fact: Vermont's 2017 law gives the governor sole authority to commit state or local law enforcement to federal immigration enforcement; Scott signed it, saying Vermont would not become a sanctuary state and would remain compliant with federal law. In May 2025 he signed S.44, closing a loophole that had let departments strike ICE agreements without his approval in emergencies; his spokesperson states Vermont "doesn't stand in the way of the federal government carrying out federal immigration laws in Vermont." A single-source VisaVerge report (July 2025) that he declined a National Guard clerical-assistance request is unverified and not printed as fact. Under our ICE framing, enforcement cooperation is the law being enforced; Scott's documented structure reserves the decision to the governor and keeps the state compliant — stated as fact, priced as no flaw.

Pros: The country's most durable cross-party mandate, re-earned five times; America's most popular governor by Morning Consult across 14 straight quarters; proven signings against his national party's line on guns, abortion rights, and marijuana; a veto record that functioned as a negotiating check (17 overrides absorbed, compromise laws signed in 2025–26); the property-tax fight carried consistently across nine years.

Cons: The $4/gallon claim fails his own regulators' math. The sixth-term tax package is direction without a disclosed, costed proposal. Property-tax and education-finance reform — his signature fight — recurred unresolved in eight of his nine years (Bellwether). His approval on in-state polling (45%) is a different and colder number than his national ranking.

The flaw, plainly: A signature administration claim ($4/gallon) whose math does not close, and an uncosted sixth-term tax promise. The veto count itself is not priced, for the reasons worked above.

Amanda Janoo (Democratic/Progressive) — a proven economist, an unproven executive, and math that does not close

Janoo is the Economics & Policy Lead at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, previously at the United Nations and the African Development Bank, a Fulbright researcher with a Cambridge MPhil (2012–13) under Ha-Joon Chang. She has never before run for office; her only elected office has been justice of the peace in Burlington (Compass Vermont). She won the August 11 Democratic primary over Aly Richards — the official canvass: Janoo 39,614 votes, Richards 37,570, a margin of 2,044 (44.56% to 42.26% of all 88,906 ballots cast including write-ins and blanks; election-night figures of 49.4–46.3 use the two-candidate denominator — both printed with their denominators, as the research requires).

Her program is authored out of her own professional work, not a party template: free, universal primary and preventive care — "Health care is a human right… no co-pays or deductibles" — as an explicit first step toward universal health care; housing policy taxing second homes, vacation rentals and private-equity buyers harder, with towns allowed rent control; wealth taxes "on stocks, dividends and inheritance" (to The Dartmouth); banning AI data centers — she calls AI "the most urgent and existential threat" to humanity and names "techno-fascism" a motivation for her run; a public bank and citizens' assemblies (these two planks rest on an analysis piece's enumeration and await direct confirmation from her site before we would print them as settled — flagged here); community schools instead of consolidation. She is backed by David Zuckerman and campaigned with Bernie Sanders in the closing weeks. A Republican Senate leader calls her platform "the left edge of the Democratic Party" — an opponent's characterization, attributed as such.

The math check — her signature program, on her own numbers: She estimates universal primary care at at least $320 million a year. At the October 21 debate she suggested her high-earner taxes could raise roughly $260 million — a ~$60 million gap against her own cost figure, with claimed emergency-care savings described as preliminary. And the threshold has been stated three ways: a surcharge above $250,000 (Seven Days' debate account), above $500,000 (St. Albans Messenger), and on the "top 1%" (WCAX); her campaign's Fair Share Tax Proposal specifies no rates or thresholds at all. Bellwether counts six different descriptions of the plan across six dates. That is the own-promise species at full weight: the signature promise's math does not close on the candidate's own figures, and its funding mechanism changes between tellings.

On enforcement: no stated position on Fair and Impartial Policing, 287(g), or ICE cooperation was located in her material — a genuine gap, printed as an absence, not an inference.

She is unproven in elected office — under our doctrine a watch posture, never a demerit, and we do not price it. Her program's classification is a judgment we make openly in the call below: universal primary care as a step to universal health care, wealth taxes, a public bank, and a ban on an entire industry, authored well to the left of Vermont's last two Democratic governors — a fact she has acknowledged — is a personal program of the kind our Extremist Rule describes, whatever one thinks of its author's evident sincerity and professional standing.

Pros: A genuine program author with a decade of real policy work (UN, African Development Bank, WEAll); outraised a five-term incumbent without corporate money; beat the establishment-backed primary opponent without moderating her message; the most competitive race any Scott challenger has run.

Cons: The signature program's math fails on her own numbers, with a funding threshold stated three ways. The program goes far beyond the party-standard offer in a state that has elected fiscal moderates of both parties for a generation. No enforcement position on the record.

The flaw, plainly: Own-promise math that does not close — the heaviest single item in her file — inside a program that prices, on its own terms, as a personal-program platform well outside the moderate band.

The minor candidates, briefly

June Goodband (Peace and Justice) — a Springfield licensed clinical mental health counselor who describes herself in her own words as "a socialist candidate for Governor of Vermont… We are the voice for Socialism here." Her program: implement Vermont's universal health-care law, fund education by progressive taxation instead of homestead taxes, state-built co-op housing at zero-percent interest. Her published platform provides no revenue or transition budget (Six State Signal). She drew about 1% in 2024. Brian Judd (Independent) — of Barre City; no campaign website was located. His official Secretary of State voter-guide statement promises three Day-1 executive orders including a "complete and total repeal of Act 181" — a statute's repeal is a legislature's act, not an executive order; the civics defect is in the promise itself, stated factually. (A single hostile opinion blog's account of his earlier council race and lawsuit was not independently corroborated and is not printed as fact.) Dean Roy (Freedom and Unity) — a Stowe high-school freshman who qualified at 14 (reported 15 by October), the first under-18 candidate on a Vermont general-election ballot for governor, possible because Vermont's constitution sets no minimum age, only four years' residency. His positions: restore nuclear energy, tax second homes, oppose Flock cameras. In his own words: "I don't expect necessarily to win. What I do expect is to start the movement."

A standing check: no pedophile-association material of any class — proven or unproven — was located for any candidate in this race. The absence is a negative finding, printed as such.

OUR CALL

LiberalMind endorses Phil Scott.

Work the doctrine in the open. Scott is the moderate-conservative model this publication exists to point voters toward: a Republican who governs a D+17 state by persuasion, who signs his conscience against his national party when the bill is in front of him (2018 guns, 2019 abortion rights, 2018 marijuana), who uses the veto as a check that negotiates — seventeen overrides absorbed without a constitutional crisis, compromise education laws signed in 2025 and 2026 — and whom Morning Consult's voters, of both parties, have ranked the most popular governor in America for fourteen straight quarters. His priced flaws are real and printed at full weight: the $4/gallon claim fails his own regulators' math, and his sixth-term tax package is a direction, not a costed plan. Janoo is a serious person with a real résumé, and we say so; but her signature program's math does not close on her own figures, its funding threshold has been stated three different ways, and the program itself — universal care as a bridge to a universal system, wealth taxes, a public bank, an industry ban — is a personal-program platform of the extremist class under our classification, which triggers the rule independently: when one option carries that program, we endorse the other, noting his flaws. Both routes reach the same call. Endorse Scott — the proven moderate, flaws printed, for a sixth two-year term.

For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Winner: Phil Scott (Republican) — called by the Associated Press. This result was appended on November 4, 2026 (results wave 1); the original article above is unchanged, exactly as published before Election Day.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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