BRATTLEBORO-Vermont State Treasurer Mike Pieciak is running for a third term.
The Brattleboro native made the formal announcement May 29 outside the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office in Montpelier before heading back to his hometown for a campaign kickoff reception at American Legion Post 5.
Pieciak, who has been treasurer since 2023, was long rumored to be a possible Democratic challenger to Republican Gov. Phil Scott, who polls as the nation’s most popular governor and who has defeated his challengers by increasingly wide margins in every gubernatorial election since he won office in the 2016 election.
Scott announced he’s seeking a sixth term on May 29.
In Montpelier, Pieciak said that he decided not to run for governor for a flurry of personal reasons and that he wants to continue the work in his office.
“It’s been a really hard year for me personally,” Pieciak said. “I lost both my parents [and] separated from my husband, so it’s really just been a year of some reflection. And I think I’m really excited about continuing this job that I enjoy.”
The race that wasn’t
Pieciak easily won in his last two elections for treasurer, with 62% of the vote when he was first elected in 2022 and about 60% of the vote in 2024. He was first eyed as a future candidate for governor during his initial run for treasurer, when he made headlines for fundraising aggressively.
Without Pieciak in the gubernatorial race, Aly Richards, former head of the prominent childcare lobbying group Let’s Grow Kids, and Amanda Janoo, an economist, are the only Democrats to announce so far.
Scott is unlikely to face a competitive opponent in the Republican primary in August.
Democrats will have an uphill battle ahead of them, even as political observers seem to agree that Richards or Janoo could give Scott the toughest run for his money since at least 2020. None of the three Democrats to challenge Scott in that time garnered more than 30% of the general election vote. His most recent campaign in 2024 handed him his widest margin of victory ever, with 73% of the tally.
Though Pieciak won’t be a gubernatorial candidate himself, he said he thinks the national political climate will give Democratic candidates some “wind in their sails.”
Praise from former colleagues
At the Brattleboro kickoff, Pieciak received endorsements from three of his one-time colleagues in state government — former Transportation Secretary Sue Mintner; Beth Pearce, his predecessor as state treasurer; and former Gov. Peter Shumlin.
Mintner recalled the work that Pieciak did during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, providing the data that helped shape the state’s response at the Scott administration’s daily briefings. She also praised his work helping to get financial assistance to victims of the 2023 and 2024 floods in Vermont and in responding to the Trump administration’s actions in immigration law enforcement by securing money to beef up legal assistance for new Vermonters.
“This state asks a lot of its leaders,” said Minter. “We are in a very serious time in our country — a crisis of confidence and real fear for the future, not only for ourselves, our neighbors, and our communities, but for the very foundation of our country and our democracy. That’s why we need leaders who will stand up in times of crisis, who will step up and do the hard work, who will innovate and make change, and will follow through. That’s why I am so honored to be here to support Mike Pieciak.”
Pearce, who did not seek re-election in 2022 due to health issues, talked about how the treasurer’s office may deal with numbers and statistics, but never forgets that “those numbers mean something. They mean somebody’s life. It means financial security for someone.
“For me, that was the most important lesson as a financial geek turning into a state treasurer — coming in and seeing we could do things in the treasurer’s office to help people,” she said.
When she had to step down from what she called “the best job in the state,” Pearce said that “she did not want some yahoo running for treasurer who didn’t know how to add.”
“What I did was I reached out and found Mike,” she said.
They worked together when Pieciak was the commissioner for the state Department of Financial Regulation — “another geeky place,” Pearce said — when they were tackling reforms to the state employee retirement system.
“Mike bailed me out,” she said, and the result was a substantial reduction in insurance premiums for retirees and a better-funded pension fund.
“I was so impressed with his skill set — his financial skill set and his caring for people,“ she said. “This was the guy I was hoping would take over the treasurer’s office.”
Pearce said she was proud of her staff and its accomplishments during her tenure “but Mike raised the bar and made the treasurer’s office a better office, and he continues to do that.” She cited his “Baby Bonds” project, a financial assistance initiative designed to help parents save money for their kids’ future, and “Vermont Saves,” a publicly administered savings program for workers without employer-sponsored retirement funds, as just two examples of his innovation.
For Shumlin, who has known the Pieciak family for many years and brought Mike Pieciak into his administration in 2014, he reminded people about Carolyn and Joe Pieciak and the values they passed on to their son.
“If there ever there was a truth to the saying that ‘the acorn don’t fall far from the tree,’ [Mike] is a living example. Our buddy has had a tough year. As tough as it gets, but there’s no one better equipped to deal with tough, to deal with tragedy, with heartache, and still take care of us than Mike Pieciak.”
Carolyn and Joe Pieciak were stalwarts for their adoptive community of Brattleboro, Shumlin said, pointing out that they “quietly, without fanfare and often without recognition, would help out and reach out and give back to their friends, their neighbors, and total strangers. The reason Mike is so good is because of his mom and dad.”
Shumlin amplified Minter’s statement of the current situation in our nation.
“These are the most frightening political times in not only my memory, but in the memory of everyone in this room,” he said. “When you think about our values as a nation, and you think about this little state as the place that has always stood up for folks in need[,...] we remain the living example of a simple adage: If you live with us, you are part of our family. No questions asked.”
The next generation of leadership, he said, is arriving “at a time when character is going to matter more than any time in our history.”
Pieciak has many accomplishments as state treasurer, Shumlin said, but what is more important is “the values that Joe and Carolyn instilled in this guy, that he lives and breathes every single day. That he cares about who you are and how you get there, regardless of where you come from. [...] Our only hope for the greatest democracy in the world is leaders like Mike. They are rare. You won’t knock into them very often.”
Living up to a legacy
In his remarks in Brattleboro, Pieciak spoke of how his parents were the prime inspiration in his life. “That moral obligation, that commitment to each other and the community, is one of the guiding lights I keep when I think about my own public service.”
Recalling the many years that his mother helped run St. Brigid’s Kitchen on Walnut Street, he said that “it didn’t matter what their background, it didn’t matter who they were. Every person who walked through the doors were met with respect and kindness and love and dignity. It instilled in me this idea that, in a community, everybody matters. Everybody has value. And everybody deserves dignity. That’s the standard that I try to live my life by and the standard that I live my politics by as well.”
Part of that ethos of value and dignity, he said, starts with having a safe place to live, and he said he is most proud of a project that invests state funds in housing development. To date, more than $130 million has been invested in low-interest loans through the “10% in Vermont” program to support the construction of about 1,700 units of housing across Vermont.
“And we’re just getting started,” he said.
Access to affordable health care, which Pieciak said is a critical issue for rural states, is another key to ensuring value and dignity to all Vermonters.
He said his office advocated for and got passed a medical debt relief plan that seeks to eliminate up to $100 million in medical debt for working- and middle-class Vermonters, as well as setting up a pharmacy discount program, ArrayRx, that’s available to all residents regardless of their age, income, or insurance status.
Pieciak said everything that his office has already accomplished, and hopes to accomplish, is focused on making Vermont “a place that works for everyone, to make Vermont a place where everyone’s value is shown, and to make Vermont a place where everybody matters.”
“Vermont is ready to be a beacon of light in these really, really dark times,” he said.
With additional reporting from Montpelier by Charlotte Oliver of VTDigger.
This News item by Randolph T. Holhut was written for The Commons.