Gov. Phil Scott is standing on a towed trailer bed festooned with blue and yellow balloons, surrounded by young girls dressed as pill-shaped characters from the popular kids’ comedy franchise Minions.
Members of the Starlights Dance Academy have convinced the governor of Vermont to strap on a pair of oversized industrial goggles for this impromptu photo op Saturday night. He smiles widely as moms snap vertical iPhone shots for their social media feeds.
“This is the good part of the job,” Scott says after deboarding the float.
Scott is spending the penultimate weekend before Election Day the same way he has since he became lieutenant governor in 2010 — marching in the Rutland Halloween Parade.
“Rutland’s always been a reminder of what Barre was,” Scott says, referencing the Washington County city he grew up in. “It’s a blue-collar working community with the same opportunities, same challenges. Here it was around the marble, in Barre it was around the granite.”
Scott, a Republican, has spent the entirety of his 26-year political career — first as a state senator, now as head of the executive branch — invoking the working-class upbringing that informs his “frugal” approach to fiscal management. That message mostly continues to resonate in conservative districts such as Rutland, where Dave Harlow cheers the governor as he marches along the moonlit parade route.
“He’s promoted affordability throughout his tenure, and that’s important to Vermonters, especially now,” says Harlow, who lives in Middlebury. “And more than anything, he’s provided some balance to state government — low taxes, all the things we need.”
But the ideologically diverse coalition that handed Scott 71% of the vote just two years ago appears to be fracturing in real time. The Vermont Public 2026 Poll, conducted in late September, showed Democratic/Progressive challenger Amanda Janoo within 10 points of the five-term incumbent. Other surveys suggest the race is a statistical dead heat.
Scott’s declining approval numbers reflect growing disaffection among independents and Democrats who once viewed him as a refreshing foil to President Donald Trump.
“I thought he did a decent job through COVID, and I liked the moderation he brought to the Republican Party,” said Ben Beatty-Owens, who lives in Chittenden County.
But Beatty-Owens said he’s been troubled by Scott’s “top-down, authoritarian” approach to education reform. And he said Janoo’s “bottom-up” ethos, and her general positivity, feel like antidotes to the gloomy admonitions he hears from Scott.
“I really love Vermont, and I feel like she’s got kind of an optimistic view about what Vermont is and can be better about in the future,” Beatty-Owens said. “That’s one of the reasons why I’m kind of like, well, you know, maybe time to move on.”
‘I know you’re frustrated’
Once widely considered unbeatable at the ballot box, the Republican incumbent is saddled with a toxic national party brand, an unexpectedly formidable challenger and a stubborn affordability crisis.
“I know you’re frustrated,” his campaign has written in social media posts. “I am too.”
Scott insists that Vermonters’ frustrations do not lie with him, but with the Democratic majority in the Legislature. And as he asks Vermonters for a historic sixth consecutive term in the state’s top job, he’s reiterated his call for voters to send more “common sense” lawmakers to Montpelier.
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Past polling has indicated that voters trust Scott more than the Legislature. And the governor’s prior plea for more like-minded legislators worked extraordinarily well in 2024, when Republicans broke Democratic supermajorities in both the House and the Senate. Those losses for Democrats contributed to a remarkable about-face from party leaders on land-use reforms, and put Scott in charge of the education reform agenda in Montpelier.
“With the balance that we achieved two years ago, I think you can see that we were able to accomplish a lot in that two-year period,” he said last week during a Vermont Public debate.
“And so I'm not changing my style.”
But stumping for fellow Republicans in 2026 may come with more risk than it did in 2024 — particularly in this national environment.
“Once you take a stand out there and say ‘Elect people of like-minded orientation,’ you remind people that, ‘Hey this guy's a Republican,’” said Matt Dickinson, a professor of political science at Middlebury College.
One of Scott’s key vulnerabilities this cycle, according to Dickinson, may also be voters growing tired of a chief executive constantly “at loggerheads” with the legislative branch.
“I wouldn't pretend to know what size that level of discontent is in terms of voter support, but I think it's real,” Dickinson said. “I think he thinks it's real.”
Having more influence in Montpelier has also made it harder to point the finger back at Democrats, who argue Scott has long been passing the buck.
Former Democratic Gov. Howard Dean said it’s laughable that, after five terms in office, a chief executive would blame lawmakers for lack of progress in Montpelier.
“What are you kidding me? You're the governor,” he said.
‘Unfinished business’
On the campaign trail this fall, Scott plays a reluctant candidate who seems almost baffled by his own decision to seek another term. Asked earlier this month by Vermont Edition’s Mikaela Lefrak why he’s running for reelection, he said that’s “something that I ask myself almost every day.”
He doesn’t always or even usually have fun on the job, and recently told Vermont Public that he finds it curious when people often ask him, “Is it fun being governor?”
“And I always react the same way — if the governor’s having fun, he’s missing something, he or she, because this is tough work,” he said.
One of the main reasons the 68-year-old is running again, he said, is “unfinished business” on the biggest education reform package in modern Vermont history. Scott has long sought to curb spending on public schools, but the cost of education has risen by nearly $1 billion under his watch.
After the historic red wave in 2024 gave Republicans more seats in the Legislature than they’d had in two decades, Scott seized the moment by unveiling a proposal to consolidate Vermont’s 119 school districts into five. Critically, he also wanted the state to effectively take control over school spending from local boards and voters.
But fierce opposition torpedoed mandatory consolidation this past legislative session. And while Scott and key Democratic lawmakers say they still want to transition to a new funding system, that’ll require an affirmative vote by the Legislature during the next biennium.
The Vermont Public 2026 Poll suggests the funding concept might be even more unpopular than forced mergers. Asked whether they think decisions about school spending should be made primarily at the state level or the local level, 57% of Vermonters said at the local level, and 21% said at the state level. That spread is widest among Republicans, 73% of whom want school spending decisions made locally.
The governor has sometimes sought to downplay the extent to which local voters would lose their power of the purse under his reform plan, which would only allow voters to spend 5% more than their state-allotted amount.
“I do think that that's misinterpreted,” he said during the Vermont Public debate. “I think there'll still be local control. Maybe not as much as they have now.”
But he’s also acknowledged that his proposal is unpopular with plenty of people, and argued he’s the only person who can see it to fruition.
“It’s taken a lot of work to get it to where it is today, with some bipartisan support, and I’m afraid that without me in there, that they will go back to the easy path,” Scott said last week. “If it’s somebody else at the helm, there’s no leadership in this. They just won’t do it.”
Indeed, Janoo opposes the foundation formula and says local communities, not Montpelier, should retain financial control over schools — especially the small, rural institutions Scott has acknowledged could become casualties of his plan.
Even if Scott is reelected, he likely won’t enjoy the same buy-in from Democratic leaders he had during the past biennium. Many Democrats have grown skeptical of the funding reforms in the new education law.
And existing reform stalwarts, such as Brattleboro Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, now say they’ve grown so weary of the governor’s leadership that they’re reconsidering the path forward.
“If I do have to do this with this governor for another two years, or even another four years, I think I'm going to do it with an eye towards passing legislation that does not really require significant administrative support from the state,” said the chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means. “And I don't know what that kind of legislation is.”
‘You are the governor, sir’
Janoo’s campaign has amassed an army of volunteers to phone bank and door-knock on her behalf while she criss-crosses the state for rallies, town halls, barbecues and meet-and-greets.
The millennial candidate has also made deft use of social media with polished, direct-to-camera videos.
The once totally unknown candidate has also embraced both legacy press and new media content creators as she works, successfully, to increase her name recognition with everyday Vermonters.
Scott, meanwhile, has taken a characteristically minimal approach to campaigning. While he’s dutifully attended debates hosted by major media outlets, he’s declined a slew of media appearances and kept the interviews that he does grant relatively short.
He’s also eschewed large, public events where he takes top billing, preferring instead to meander about — often unannounced — at community events, striking up conversations with voters. His campaign staff say that his day job as governor comes first, and that the mild-mannered politician genuinely doesn’t like the limelight.
“We have to tell him: ‘Well, you are the governor, sir,’” said Emma Shouldice, his campaign spokeswoman. “Like: You are the main guy.”
And while Scott has taken care to draw contrasts with his challenger without appearing too harsh, others have been eager to go on the attack.
The Republican Governors Association, via a pro-Scott super PAC, has spent more than $930,000 as of Monday on attack ads painting Janoo as fringe and unqualified. That’s the most they’ve spent in Vermont since 2016, when they paid $3 million for ads that backed Scott’s first gubernatorial run.
‘A blue wave’
The RGA’s entrance in the race could be both a blessing and curse for Scott: The ad blitz has handed Democrats a potent attack line tying the never-Trump Republican to the historically unpopular president.
“Phil Scott wants credit for standing up to Trump without explicitly condemning this huge cash influx from Trump’s allies and the national Republican Party,” the Vermont Democratic Party’s executive director, May Hanlon, said in a recent press release. “It’s easy to say you don’t love outside spending. It’s harder to tell Elon Musk and Trump’s friends in D.C. to keep their money out of our state.”
As the Nov. 3 election nears, Scott has acknowledged he can feel the political headwinds freshening.
“I think in this race we see a wave, a blue wave, coming across the country that is even affecting Vermont,” he said.
And he says he, too, is “frustrated with tariffs and inflation.”
“All’s I can do is protect Vermonters the best way I can, by calling out Washington, the president, when he does something that is counter to what Vermont believes in and what is right,” he said. “And in other areas we have to work with them.”
The governor and down-ballot Republicans have sought to refocus the race on local matters, including Scott’s signature issue: an opposition to new taxes and fees.
“I’m frugal by nature and I don’t think we can fix every problem, every single problem, with more money,” he said.
November’s election is to some degree a referendum on his fiscal dogma: Janoo has proposed tax increases on second homes, income over $250,000 a year, and large technology companies.
Scott said his make-do approach is borne of the 35 years he spent in the construction industry, where his business had to survive the whims of the market.
He takes pride in his work ethic. Scott said he’s often the first person to arrive at the fifth floor of the Pavilion Building, and the last to leave. He’s taken one vacation since 2017 — a five-day trip to Joe’s Pond, where he rented a camp and still worked half days remotely.
If Barre native is elected to a sixth term, and becomes the longest-serving governor in Vermont history, he said he probably won’t take another vacation. Running state government, he said, requires tough choices on a daily basis.
“There’s an anvil dropping from the sky every single day,” he said of life as governor. “It’s just a question of how big it is, and whether it’s going to hit you or not.” ■
