2025 town meeting day roundup

Yesterday was Town Meeting Day and Progressives did very well across Vermont. Our members endorsed and supported 17 candidates running in Brattleboro, Middlebury, Weybridge, Winooski, Johnson, and Burlington - the largest slate of TMD candidates we have supported in recent memory. 

We are excited to announce that 13 of our candidates won! 

In Brattleboro we supported 3 candidates for selectboard and 2 of them won! Oscar Heller and Isaac Evans-Frantz won competitive races for the 1-year and 3-year seats. The selectboard only has 5 members, so we will have a strong presence when the new members are sworn in. We want to give a big thank you to Cristina "Ina" Shayonye who also ran a great campaign and came in 3rd out of 5 (the top two were elected). We were also excited to see that Brattleboro passed an apartheid free community pledge. 

In Johnson we supported Adrienne Parker for selectboard and Kyle Nuse for schoolboard. They both won competitive races.

In the Addison Central School District Jamie McCallum won reelection to schoolboard in the town of Weybridge. Ron Makleff and Jess Venable-Novak were first time candidates running for the two Middlebury seats on the school board. They both won their races. 

In Winooski we supported Robert Millar for school board and Charlie Judge for city council. They both won. We were also excited to see that the just cause eviction charter change passed overwhelmingly along with an apartheid free community pledge. 

In Burlington, we ran Melo Grant, Jen Monroe-Zakaras, and Kathy Olwell for City Council. Unfortunately only Melo won. We are so proud of the campaigns that Jen and Kathy ran, and we look forward to continuing to work with both of them. Turnout in some areas was down by as much as 50% compared to 2024 when we won the Mayor’s race. This had a major impact in Kathy’s race especially, where we only lost by 105 votes but nearly 1,000 fewer people turned out to vote. 

We also want to congratulate Wendy Coe for winning her Ward Clerk race along with Ezra Willson and Trish O'Kane who were elected Inspector of Elections. Thank you to Jack Sparr for running for Ward Clerk. He unfortunately lost a close race. 

We were also excited that all of the ballot initiatives in Burlington passed. Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak worked hard to ensure they passed, and it speaks to the support she has in the city that all items passed overwhelmingly.

Thank you to everyone who worked hard on Town Meeting Day elections. We are excited to get to work with everyone who ran as we continue growing our movement. 

In solidarity,

Josh Wronski 
Director, Vermont Progressive Party