In the Democratic primary race for governor, Aly Richards and Amanda Janoo are two strong contenders who present distinct opportunities for Vermonters dissatisfied with what Janoo aptly describes as Gov. Phil Scott’s decade of “managed decline.”

Janoo, 38, is an Oxford-trained economist who’s spent much of her career working internationally and for the past four 8 years has lived in Burlington where she co-founded the Wellbeing Economy Alliance of Vermont. She also serves as the Economics and Policy Lead for the global Wellbeing Economy Alliance. The alliance is a global collaboration of organizations, movements, and individuals committed to transforming the economic system to prioritize human and ecological wellbeing, rather than focusing solely on financial growth. She is a fellow at New America with a master’s degree from Cambridge University. She has over a decade of experience working with governments and international development institutions around the world, including the United Nations and the African Development Bank to create just and sustainable economies.

She’s also a native-born Vermonter. She was raised in South Stafford and attended the middle school in Stafford before graduating from Hanover High School. Afterward she attended Macalester College and the University of Cambridge in England. Through her career she has specialized as an industrial policy and structural transformation expert on economic policy.

Through her conversations about the benefits of an economic model that emphasizes community wellness, she’s been attracting a wide swath of voters eager to embrace new ideas and has tapped into a grassroots energy that has powered her campaign.

Richards, 40, is known for her successful tenure of Let’s Grow Kids, a nonprofit organization she founded and led as the CEO for a decade. Under her leadership, the group helped pass childcare legislation that has rejuvenated and expanded what had been a disastrous childcare system that was failing Vermont’s young families. Gov. Scott vetoed the legislation, but the Legislature overrode that veto with Richard’s hard-earned legislative support. That legislation has since been one of the few bright spots in what has otherwise been a litany of poor performances throughout state government during Scott’s tenure.

Prior to her role at Let’s Grow Kids, Richards served as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Gov. Peter Shumlin where she led the effort to pass Vermont’s universal Pre-Kindergarten legislation. That legislation established Vermont as a leader in early childhood education policy and significantly increased access to early childhood education opportunities for Vermont’s youngest learners.

Her commitment to education dates back to 2001, when Gov. Howard Dean appointed her as the youngest person to serve as a student member on the Vermont State Board of Education. Richards also served on the 2008 Obama Campaign after graduating with honors in International Relations from Brown University.

A Montpelier resident and mother of two twin seven-year-old boys, Richards also been actively engaged in her community, serving as a Trustee of the University of Vermont Medical Center and Vice-Chair of the Board of the Vermont Council on Rural Development, and is a former Trustee of the Vermont State Colleges. Born in Newbury, Vt., she attended Oxbow High School where her father was a high school teacher in English and math.

CANDIDATE STRENGTHS

Richards’ strength is her years of experience working with Vermont’s Legislature and her strong relationships she’s forged in almost 20 years of government service. And that matters. To push through the changes needed to address the state’s major crises — housing, education, health care, our aging demographics, and how we address climate change and energy costs — it helps to be thoroughly familiar with the systems in place and to have alliances with groups and legislators that will help make change possible.

And while neither candidate has previously run for statewide public office, Richards has been imbedded in campaigns at the national level (with President Obama) and served for years with Gov. Peter Shumlin. She will know how to bring the fight to Gov. Scott in the General Election if she were to win the primary.

Richards also has more realistic goals. She says she’ll be laser-focused on housing and healthcare describing them, like childcare once was, as “root causes that will truly help us rebuild the fabric of our communities.”

On health care, for instance, she has a specific plan. As she explained in an interview with The Commons newspaper in Brattleboro, she’d implement the plan presented in 2024 to the Green Mountain Care Board by consultant Oliver Wyman.

“Almost all of our hospitals are on the verge of bankruptcy,” Richards said. “This is an amazing place where the government must act. Two years ago we had a report that explained the situation perfectly. We have to coordinate the hospitals and decide who’s doing hips and who’s doing hearts. You decide the specialty, and you become a focus center. And then we decide what are the basic needs in every hospital, like access to an emergency room, basic healthcare needs. So we preserve all of that everywhere, and then we do the specialty services in different places.”

Richard explained that the governor must facilitate the conversation of regionalization and specialization. “There are anti-monopoly and antitrust laws that actually stop the hospitals from going into a room and doing it themselves,” she said. “It requires the government to do the work.”

The Scott administration, she reported, dropped the ball after that report and never proposed a plan. “The lack of vision from the state on healthcare has set us back very, very badly for 10 years, and we need to regrow that planning arm in state government,” she said.

Richards has also been critical of the Scott administration’s lack of vision and planning.

“For 10 years, we have not had a vision or a plan that actually led to a result,” she told the Commons, pointing to Scott’s veto of the childcare legislation and lack of action elsewhere (except the belated effort to consolidate the state’s schools into an unrealistic and unpopular scenario with five statewide districts.)

Describing herself as “relentlessly focused on outcomes,” she says she is “an optimistic pragmatist.”

Janoo’s strength is seen in her ability to excite a vibrant grassroot community and the willingness to think anew about how Vermont’s economy could be restructured to achieve better and more lasting outcomes. That focus is apparent in the Wellbeing Economy Alliance which aims, in Janoo’s words, “to fundamentally redefine progress, to really center social and ecological wellbeing as the ultimate aim… and to really build the power base needed to transform our dominant economic paradigms and the realities of our economic systems.”

She explains that effort as “the need to move upstream to stop just putting Band-Aids on the symptoms of this economic system, whether that’s in climate or inequality or mental health, et cetera, and to really think about how we can get the economic system to do more of the heavy lifting to deliver a more just and regenerative world.”

While developing a wellness economy sounds esoteric, Janoo’s policy goals are much the same as Richards’, though not on all issues. Janoo would be opposed to any state mandates to consolidate schools, believing those decisions should be made at the local level. Janoo is also quicker to provide the revenue needed for changes in health care and education by taxing second and luxury homes and raising income taxes on the wealthiest Vermonters. Richards has said she’s open to considering higher income taxes on the wealthy, but has refrained from making it part of her platform.

WHO CAN BEAT SCOTT?

Democratic voters whose most important metric is voting for a candidate most able to beat Gov. Scott this November have to weigh two very different forces: Richards has more support from the Democratic establishment, while Janoo has the support of the more progressive wing of the party and appears to have more of a grassroots vibe that could translate to more on-the-street energy and popular support.

Richards, however, has the edge, in this writer’s opinion, of being able to take the issues to Scott in a more forthright manner and will be more effective at driving home Scott’s shortcomings over the past decade.

That’s largely because Richards has been at the legislative table transforming childcare while Scott has been standing idle (even presenting obstacles) as the state becomes less affordable. Richards is also more familiar with state politics, the ins-and-outs of campaigning, and the tactics that’ll be necessary to take on a well-entrenched and popular incumbent.

As importantly, she won’t be labeled by Scott as an ultra-progressive with ideas too radical for most Vermonters. To be sure, Scott and Republicans would be pressing that theme relentlessly against Janoo if she were the candidate, and while unfair, it would also be difficult to defend.

For Democrats, it’s thrilling to have two very solid candidates in the race to take on Scott. We’d encourage a vote for Richards as the candidate who has the best chance to change the continued decline the state as seen under Scott, and usher in a new era of progress.

But we’re also very impressed by Janoo’s campaign and would hope, if Richards does win the nomination, she will work with Janoo to bring her ideas and talents as a transformational economist for Vermonters’ lasting benefit.

—Angelo Lynn