Reporting on partisan victories is sometimes a complicated affair, especially in states that allow fusion. On November 4, Tim Ashe was elected to the Vermont State Senate from the Chittenden County district, which elects six Senators. Ashe was on the ballot as “Democrat, Progressive.”
Vermont, California, and Massachusetts allow fusion and use office-group ballots. That means a candidate with two party nominations is only listed once on the ballot. The party the candidate considers himself to be a member of is listed first. Other parties that nominated that same candidate are listed after the comma that separates the party names.
So, by that standard, Ashe is a Democrat who had been cross-endorsed by the Progressive Party. On the other hand, he was elected to the Burlington city council in a partisan election in 2007, and at that election he was listed solely as “Progressive” (Burlington city elections are partisan). Although he is expected to join the Democratic caucus in the Vermont Senate, he is perceived by most to be more loyal to the Progressive Party than to the Democratic Party. This newspaper story identifies him as a Democrat, but with strong ties to the Progressive Party. The story also relates how he had apparently been defeated on election night, but the next day a vote-tabulating error was caught, so that actually he had won the race.
The Progressive Party’s webpage is somewhat misleading on the question of Ashe’s election. It says, “Tim ran as a P/D”, which implies he was listed on the ballot that way, but that is not true. The Nation Magazine, December 1 issue, says, “The Vermont Progressive Party won its first State Senate seat” and does not explain any of the subtlety.
Vermont does not have registration by party.
