I urge Windham County voters to join me in casting a vote for Dave Schoales for the Vermont State Senate. Schoales has said he is running to replace Senator Jeanette White.
As chair of the Government Operations Committee, Senator White has been the Legislature's leading proponent for allowing corporations to finance Vermont political campaigns. In 2011, she took the extreme step of not bringing a campaign finance reform bill that had been approved by her committee to the secretary of the Senate.
This unprecedented violation of Senate rules was intended to prevent a politically embarrassing vote on a floor amendment to ban corporate campaign contributions.
In 2013, she led the successful fight to preserve corporate campaign contributions and even opposed an amendment to prevent cheating (where wealthy contributors avoid the limits on individual contributions by giving the maximum personally and then additional amounts from companies that they control). Federal law has prohibited corporate campaign contributions since 1907, and it is significantly thanks to Senator White that these are still permitted in supposedly progressive Vermont.