BRATTLEBORO-Daniel Quipp, a former chair of the Brattleboro Selectboard, has announced his candidacy for the Vermont House of Representatives seat representing Windham-8, following Rep. Mollie Burke's decision not to seek re-election.
Quipp, who works as a program coordinator in the family services department at Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA), says he is running to bring practical, collaborative leadership to Montpelier - and to keep the lines of communication open with the people he would represent.
"Brattleboro deserves a representative who listens carefully, works hard, and is focused on getting things done," he says. "I'm running to represent the entire community: working people, families, seniors, young people, business owners, artists, and everyone who wants this town and this state to be affordable, healthy, safe, and full of opportunity."
A community-rooted resume
Originally from Wrexham, Wales, Quipp has been a U.S. resident since 2011 and moved to Brattleboro in 2014, drawn in part by family ties to the area - his wife, Sarah Freeman, is from Newfane. He has been visiting the region since 2004.
Before joining SEVCA, where he works daily on housing and heating emergencies, around 2018, Quipp built an extensive record of community involvement.
He volunteered and later worked as a paid organizer with 350Vermont and 350.org, and he was a community organizer with Vermont Interfaith Action before the pandemic. He also served as president of community radio station WVEW for three years and as DJ there for six.
His six years on the Brattleboro Selectboard, including time as chair, brought him through some of the town's most demanding recent chapters - the pandemic, significant public safety challenges, and long-range infrastructure planning. He said that experience has taught him lessons he expects to carry directly into legislative work.
"None of this work gets done by just one person - you always need a majority to agree," he says. "You can't write anybody off. You can't behave in such a way that your relationship with your fellow board members is adversarial. You have to be collaborative, and you have to listen."
Quipp acknowledges that serving in the state Legislature can feel less visible to residents than siting in a local board seat, and he says he intends to be intentional about staying accessible. He has started knocking on doors in town and hopes to sustain those conversations throughout a potential term in office.
He notes that monthly legislative listening sessions are already held on Saturdays at Brooks Memorial Library and that he hopes to continue participating in those community conversations if elected.
"When I'm up in Montpelier, my only job will be to serve the people of my district," he says. "I think it's really important to stay connected with constituents."
The issues: affordability, housing, healthcare, and more
Quipp's campaign centers on affordability - which he describes as an umbrella issue - along with "housing, health care, safe communities, and preserving what makes Brattleboro a place people want to call home."
Regarding affordability, he draws from personal experience.
"I grew up in a single-parent household, and we struggled to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table," he says.
His daily work at SEVCA, he adds, keeps him close to those same pressures facing families today - rising rents, high energy costs, and a healthcare system he calls both overpriced and opaque.
Healthcare is among the issues Quipp says he would be most eager to dig into at the state level. He cites unaffordable premiums, shrinking access to providers, rural hospitals at risk of closing, and deep inequities in coverage.
"There are stories of people with health insurance, technically, but it's so useless, they'd be reluctant to seek healthcare," he says. "Some end up passing away because they don't think they can go to the doctor."
As to housing, Quipp describes a rental market in Brattleboro that has tightened to the point where families can tip quickly from stability into homelessness. He's careful to frame the broader crisis in structural rather than personal terms, invoking an analogy he says has stayed with him.
"It's like musical chairs - someone might say they were too slow and so didn't get a chair, but really, there just weren't enough chairs," he says.
For people in housing crisis, "not one of us would trade places for one night," Quipp says. "It's important to have compassion and build systems that move people out of homelessness, and there are challenges in doing that.
"People want to paint homelessness, projecting stories on to it, but even for me, who is relatively close to it at work, you mostly don't understand how this happened to people," he continues. "Even focusing on the personal and not the structural is the wrong thing."
Quipp cites the importance of working both with other elected officials and constituents as high on his list.
"I've always been a fairly balanced person, and I can talk to a lot of people and listen to a lot of opinions; sometimes the room is packed, and other times it's quiet," he says of Selectboard meetings. "But you want to be ready to hear what people have to say and be curious and ask questions. Seeking opinions as well is important."
He also addresses the community's struggles with drug trafficking and addiction with particular urgency, adding that he has had personal and family experience with the issue.
Quipp calls for a strong continuum of care - more recovery housing, better access to treatment, and expanded harm reduction services - and pushes back against the impulse to give up on people in the grip of addiction.
"Folks struggling with addiction need more support from the community rather than our turning our backs on them," he says. "We're really doing them a disservice if we write them off."
While he values Brattleboro's scale and connectedness - "this is the smallest place I've ever lived, and I really love the size and connectedness of this community" - Quipp worries about isolation among lower-income residents and seniors.
He sees investment in public spaces and recreational infrastructure as essential to community health in ways that are hard to quantify, but easy to feel.
"Sometimes, when I was on the board, walking down the street, it was like a minefield, but I love knowing when I go downtown there's always someone I know and want to have a chat with," Quipp says with a smile.
"Having connected communities is good for our overall health, and then investing in recreational facilities and maintaining the land to be a benefit for all," he continues. "Go for a walk on the West River Trail, and you'll run into all kinds of people. It's kind of hard to quantify how it improves people's lives."
On the campaign trail
Quipp will face a Democratic primary in August. He has raised about $3,000 in his first week as a candidate - far more than anything he raised running for Selectboard - and acknowledges he is still learning the financial realities of a State House race.
The candidate, who is to date running unopposed, urges supporters and curious voters to reach out through his website, danielquipp.com. He's also recently started an account at Instagram at @quippforVT.
"I want to hear what's on people's minds," Quipp says. "I hope people will connect with the campaign."
This News item by Virginia Ray was written for The Commons.