Elections 2020 Initiative: Tim Ashe

Local Initiatives

Jul 30

Current President Pro Tempore of the Vermont Senate and Democrat/Progressive senator representing the Chittenden District, Tim Ashe of Burlington, VT will be running in the Democratic primaries for Lieutenant Governor of Vermont this August 11, 2020.

2020 Elections Initiative

The VCWA, an independent, non-partisan, and apolitical non-profit, is working to raise awareness, education, and voter participation in the upcoming primaries through our 2020 Elections Initiative. The views and opinions expressed are those of the candidate and do not necessarily reflect the VCWA’s position, nor is this initiative an endorsement for any candidate

As an organization we want to encourage citizens of all ages and backgrounds to make their voices heard by voting in the August 11th primaries. As a result, we asked Governor and Lieutenant Governor candidates four interview questions relating to leadership style, platform, and their vision for Vermont. Our objective is to help future voters feel confident and secure in the votes they cast. The questions we selected will provide voters with a well rounded understanding of each candidate.

To learn more click here!

Tim Ashe

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a“favorite failure”?

Where to begin?!?! When you serve in a public leadership role like I have in recent years there are too many mistakes to keep track of. Some small, some not so small. Frankly, one of the main takeaways as Senate President has been that it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s human. The important thing is to recognize them, own up to them, learn from them, and improve from them.
I could put you to sleep with a long list of mess-ups and mistakes and what I learned from them personally or professionally or in my service role. Instead, I’ll keep it simple, with a fairly comprehensive failure on my part, which COVID made me recognize in a way I hadn’t previously.
My failure has been to not say “thank you” enough. I am a tough judge in everything I do. I expect a lot from myself, and from my friends and family, and from coworkers and people I serve in office with. In each realm, I am amazed at how talented and honorable and committed people are. And how giving. In each realm of my life though, I have too rarely said thank you in recognition of what someone has done for me or for others. COVID cured me of that failure. In the first two months of the crisis, I suspended active campaigning to focus on my duty to serve and help manage the state through the fear and anxiety we all felt. I knew it was detrimental to my campaign but I didn’t take an oath to protect people only to ignore it when people needed the most support. Anyhow, during those two months I received about 5000 unique emails and calls from Vermonters who had problems and who were in search of help. In what was perhaps the most emotionally and physically taxing stretch of time in my life, I was a virtual 24-7 shop trying to find solutions for the people contacting me. Some of these solutions involved state departments, some non-profits, some private businesses. Everywhere I turned, despite everyone sharing the same fears and anxiety, people were stepping up to solve other people’s challenges.
I found myself saying thank you a lot. A whole lot! But then I thought to myself: people step up like this ALL THE TIME! And while COVID presented new stresses and new heroic behavior, people are always doing selfless things, taking heroic actions, volunteering their time, their money, their knowledge, to help others.
I resolved then that I’d say thank you when a hearty thanks is deserved, whether in crisis or not. It already feels good to so frequently recognize good deeds and goods work with that simple phrase.

What strategies have you used to respond to diversity and equity challenges in the past? How will you apply these strategies to engage with the Black Lives Matter movement in Vermont?

I am going to be brutally honest. Too many white people think about terms like “diversity” and “equity” and “inclusivity” as ways to assemble a mini-resume of things that make them seem progressive and non-racist or even anti-racist. “I have friends who are Black, or from other non-white groups, and I read this trendy book, and I attended a march and held a sign.” In short, they think of a question like this in terms of how it reflects on them.
I’m sure I’ve fallen prey to that way of thinking before. For me, though, the important thing is not to do things that make me feel better about myself, or convince me that in the eyes of others they’ll think “I get it.” What’s important is to do things that eliminate systemic racism in all spheres of our society.
In a second I’ll talk about some specific things I’ve done to root out injustice in our criminal justice and law enforcement systems. But first, I want to relate to you that it is so critical that those of us in privileged positions truly listen to those who are not. Imposing “solutions” on marginalized communities will merely result in structurally flawed responses.
Every action I’ve taken personally, professionally, and politically to address systemic injustices has been informed by what I’ve learned directly from communities who’ve suffered from these injustices. As an affordable housing developer, I created affirmative fair housing policies based upon what I learned from renters about the barriers they faced, including discrimination, as they sought quality affordable housing. As a legislator, I spoke to young Vermonters facing discrimination based upon their sexual identity before committing funds in the state budget for anti-bullying and harassment programming. I spoke to the Abenaki before helping lead the effort toward state recognition. And I spoke to communities of color before leading the Senate’s work on criminal justice and law enforcement reform.
Now I’ll explain my efforts in criminal justice and law enforcement reform.
My dad was a probation officer for more than 40 years, and my uncle was a cop. So I know these jobs are hard, and they’ve become more complicated as we've asked law enforcement to take on more and more of society’s problems. But that does not excuse any individual or systemic injustices that exist in this field. Before wrapping up for the summer, the Senate and House passed important measures to reform our criminal justice system and to evolve our law enforcement practices. This is not the end of the work, but represents significant progress in these intersecting institutions. I'll start with reforms to law enforcement practices. But before I do, I need to tell you why I was so determined that we needed to act and now. Over the years I’ve helped write many laws aimed at making progress at rooting out injustice in our law enforcement and criminal justice systems only to see the public officials who are supposed to carry them out delay action, water them down, or just plain ignore them.
As I told the Senate, “enough is enough, we need to act now.” And we did. Before adjourning we passed the following measures and sent them to the Governor:
• A requirement that all State Troopers wear body cameras whenever on duty
• A prohibition of the use of chokeholds that prevent people in police custody from breathing, and requiring other officers to intervene if they see another officer use one
• A hold back provision that will block state funding to law enforcement agencies that do not submit racial policing data to the state • A requirement that each State Police barrack have an embedded mental health professional, building off a successful model at the barracks in St. Albans and Westminster
• Establishment of a Use of Deadly Force policy for all Vermont law enforcement (passed the Senate, will be taken up by the House in September) We also passed the most comprehensive criminal justice reform package in fifteen years. For years I’ve heard politicians say we should stop using for-profit, out-of-state prisons, but then they never did anything to make it possible. So last year I challenged the Senate Judiciary Committee to come up with a package of reforms that would reduce the inmate population, keep people safe, and save taxpayer money. Working with Representatives like Maxine Grad, Chair Dick Sears, Senator Phil Baruth and the rest of the Committee met the challenge by passing S.338, the Justice Reinvestment bill. Once implemented, it should eliminate the need to send Vermonters out of state at great expense.
As Lieutenant Governor, I will continue to be a champion for justice in these two systems by: • Investigating racial disparities in sentencing
• Reforming the Criminal Justice Training Council to have more citizen oversight
• Overhauling the job responsibilities of correctional officers so they can help inmates successfully re-enter our communities when they’ve served their time.
• Transforming the women’s prison to reflect their relative low-risk profile to support more successful community re-entry
• Continuing to increase investment in community and restorative justice programs

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life? How will you apply this to strengthen your vision as the Lieutenant Governor or Governor of Vermont?

The last four years I’ve been the President of the Vermont Senate. At the same time I’ve continued to play organized soccer in Vermont’s premier men’s league. I wish I could say it’s easy to keep up with the 21 year-olds I play against all summer, but I’d be lying. Sometimes it’s downright humiliating!
I mention I still play organized soccer because, in addition to loving to play, it also reminds me why I love team sports so much – every person has a role to play in the team’s success. The lead scorer or the last person off the bench or the person who coordinates the practices. Each person is integral to the overall success of the team.
When I became President of the Senate I was determined to apply this belief to my role leading 29 other people from across the state.
First, I should mention that before I was the Senate’s leader if you were a new Senator, or a Senator who quietly went about your work, you were often completely ignored. I know firsthand – my first term, I believe the Senate’s then-President Peter Shumlin asked me into his office to talk about a bill a grand total of one time in two years!
I wanted to build a different culture. So I have been very determined and purposeful to make sure that every Senator, from the longest serving to the newest, had a meaningful role to play, that their passions and interests would be respected, that their contributions would be valued, and that their own leadership skills would be nurtured.
I’ve not just had an open-door policy, but when something interesting or instructive is happening in my office, I frequently ask my chief-of-staff to find first term Senators to bring them into the room so they can observe and participate. At the end of a long, difficult day in the Senate, I ask eclectic groups of Senators to come in the room for informal discussion and to get to know one another better. I’ve delegated responsibilities to every Senator, so that every person is playing a role and making a difference.
I’ve done all this because I think it is the right way to lead a group, and because I think it produces the best result.
As Lieutenant Governor, my role will be different – presiding over, but not leading, the Senate. But I remain committed to the principle that EVERY person has a role to play.

VCWA’s motto is, "Bringing Vermont to the world and the world to Vermont". What do you believe Vermont’s primary role is in engaging in an interconnected world? What can Vermont contribute to the world that other states or countries cannot?

Vermont has so much to offer the world, but I’ll focus on something I intend to make a priority as Lieutenant Governor.
I believe Vermont can be the national leader, and a model for anywhere in the world, in building an economy based upon the triple bottom line ethic of the socially responsible business movement.
Vermont has some of the pioneers of this movement in our midst, and we rightly celebrate them. But we’d be fooling ourselves if we said our state’s economic development strategy was built on this triple bottom line philosophy. Governors in particular, and some of the more parochial legislators, fall prey to the “race to the bottom” style of economic development typical of other states – throwing money to companies to move or stay here while diminishing our expectations of them. Low pay, little concern for the environment. As long as they bring jobs our Governors have been eager to attract them.
Well, I want to attract and retain business as well, as do most Vermonters. But I want our existing and new businesses to buy into a strategic policy of doing well by doing good – offering good pay and benefits, mitigating environmental impacts, emphasizing local supply chain opportunities, all while making a buck.
We have the reputation, even if it is overstated. We have the self-belief, even if we’ve not realigned our resources in this spirit.
Now is the time to be the socially responsible economy that is the marvel of the nation. As Lieutenant Governor I’ll work with the Governor and the Legislature to re-orient our resources to make us the beacon we can be.