Ruling the Queen City roost: Burlington voters to usher in new political era

By Shay Totten | Vermont Guardian

posted February 24, 2006

BURLINGTON — In a community that prides itself on lively public debate, and in some cases debacle, the race for mayor in the state’s largest city is quickly becoming an underwhelming, low-key affair.

For almost the first time in nearly a generation, the city’s top job will not be held by either Independent Bernie Sanders or Progressive-turned-Democrat Peter Clavelle.

Sanders, Vermont’s lone member in the House and a candidate for U.S. Senate, won the mayoral seat in 1981. In 1988 he ran for Congress and lost, and passed the mayoral torch to Clavelle. Other than one two-year stint out of office in the early 1990s, Clavelle easily won reelection through 2004, the year he had a political reawakening as a Democrat. Previously, he had been the titular head of the Progressive Party in Burlington.

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