Vermont
In Vermont, Becca Balint’s Congress run is inspired by her Holocaust survivor father
JTA — Becca Balint threw her palms as much as her cheeks, mimicking her Holocaust survivor father’s horror when he realized the mailman was pleasant.
“He was very, very anxious that the postmaster appeared to know a complete lot about my life and different streets that I lived on,” she mentioned, describing her transfer to Brattleboro, Vermont, about 15 years in the past.
Perched on her porch couch, Balint leaned into the Zoom digicam. “And the letter provider got here by and, you recognize, he mentioned, ‘Oh my gosh, like, how do you do that? How do you reside in a small city the place everyone is aware of what you are promoting?’”
Balint, 54, the Democratic nominee for Vermont’s single seat within the US Home of Representatives, is working a marketing campaign directly outlined by her household’s Holocaust expertise and in search of to maneuver past it.
If she’s elected (and he or she possible will probably be in a district the nonpartisan Cook dinner Political Report has rated protected for Democrats), she is going to arrive with an ethos outlined by the Holocaust to an extent not seen since Tom Lantos, the California Democrat who was the one survivor elected to Congress, died in workplace in 2008.
“What occurred to my household within the Holocaust has guided me my complete grownup life, it guided me in the direction of being a compassionate particular person, to attempt to, you recognize, heal divisions,” she mentioned. “This second of watching the rise of autocrats and authoritarianism, it’s not theoretical for me. It’s impacted my household instantly and [it’s important] to make that connection for folks, that it’s not one thing that occurred so way back and it’s nonetheless impacting us now, and it may be a guidepost for a way we do issues on this second.”
Vermont Senate President Professional Tem Becca Balint delivers a victory speech to her supporters gathered on the Concord Lot, in Brattleboro, Vermont, August 9, 2022. (Kristopher Radder/AP)
In a strikingly candid interview, Balint defined that her mom isn’t Jewish, and that she is married to Elizabeth Wohl, who additionally has a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mom. Balint describes her household as “Jew-ish.”
“My non secular life is an amalgamation of Judaism, Quakerism and Buddhism — and I do know a few of your readers might discover this uncomfortable and even offensive,” she wrote in an e-mail on Friday, a day after the interview. “However I believe it’s an necessary a part of my story, and I’ve discovered this not unusual amongst left-leaning Jews in Vermont.”
Within the interview, Balint recalled conversations along with her father as she entered public life, when she was elected to the state Senate in 2014.
“After I was first in elected workplace, my dad would name me and say some model of ‘Have they slit your tires but? Have they spray painted your home?’” she mentioned. “And that’s deep trauma, proper, so I’m not making an attempt to make mild of it, however it was like, ‘Hey, while you greet me with that each time it’s just a little difficult.’”
In her e-mail the following day, she wrote, “I wish to be sure that I got here throughout as deeply loving and respectful of my dad. He has been by way of horrible trauma in his life and I do know that’s a horrible and painful burden to bear. I might by no means ever wish to come throughout as disrespectful to him. He has been an exquisite dad.”
Vermont state Sen. Becca Balint, who’s in search of the Democratic Celebration nomination to run for Vermont’s vacant US Home seat, speaks to voters in Colchester, Vermont, on July 24, 2022. (AP Picture/Wilson Ring, File)
She needn’t have frightened: It was clear she adores her father. Anybody who is aware of or who has lived among the many second technology of Holocaust survivors instantly understands the push and pull Balint has felt all her life: The survivor dad and mom’ relentless want to guard their youngsters generally is a salve and an irritant .
“He introduced me up with a robust sense of social justice and a wholesome skepticism in regards to the human situation,” Balint wrote of her father. “I take advantage of these items on daily basis in my work.”
Peter Balint was born in Hungary, and his household moved to Germany after the upheaval of the warfare. His household emigrated to america when he was 13. Becca Balint was born in a US Military hospital in Heidelberg, the place he was stationed. She was raised in New York State and has lived as an grownup in Michigan and California earlier than shifting to Vermont in 1994.
Balint, who gained her August 9 major resoundingly, has made her father’s Holocaust trauma — but in addition her willpower to emerge from it — a centerpiece of her marketing campaign.
“I do know what can occur after we flip away from one another,” is how her signature TV advert begins, that includes photographs of her grandfather, Leopold Balint. “My grandfather was murdered on a loss of life march within the Holocaust. I grew up with the information that individuals could be led astray once they’re scared.”
The phase leads instantly into Balint, her spouse, and their two youngsters singing Hanukkah blessings, a public affirmation of Jewish residing.
Becca Balint’s win within the Democratic major in Vermont in August 2022 means it’s possible she is going to win the state’s sole seat within the Home of Representatives in November. (Balint marketing campaign through JTA)
The advert additionally articulates a worldview instantly at odds along with her upbringing. “We felt the aid that comes after we cease turning away from one another and begin assembly one another nose to nose,” she says within the advert. “I believe that we are sometimes inspired to close folks out.”
She would possibly as properly be describing her father, who she mentioned instilled reluctance to have interaction with neighbors. “I’m a latecomer to the idea that neighbors generally is a drive for good on the planet,” she wrote in 2012, two years earlier than she ran for public workplace. “My father was at all times, and stays, hesitant about connecting with neighbors.”
Balint’s neighborliness is what underpins her repute as a “peacemaker,” earned as a State Senate chief who efficiently drove by way of complicated laws with the backing of all events.
Balint, who has a grasp’s diploma in schooling from Harvard College and a grasp’s in historical past from the College of Massachusetts at Amherst, described one particularly harrowing reminiscence: Her aunt’s instructor in Hungary, gathering data for the authorities, requested college students if their dad and mom had been Jewish. “These are the injuries that may by no means, ever heal,” she mentioned.
She mentioned her rival within the major, Lt. Gov. Molly Grey, appeared in her advertisements to strike a nativist tone, emphasizing her birth on a Vermont farm. “So many Vermonters throughout the major got here as much as me and mentioned, ‘This isn’t who we wish to be,’” Balint mentioned. “Look, I can’t communicate to her marketing campaign technique. However the truth that it didn’t win, I believe could be very encouraging.” Balint bested Grey 60%-37%.
Democratic US Home hopeful Lt. Gov. Molly Grey speaks to voters in Middlesex, Vermont, on July 20, 2022. (AP Picture/Wilson Ring, File)
Her advertisements additionally emphasize her firsts, as Vermont’s first girl state Senate majority chief — and, if she wins, its first congresswoman — in addition to her legislative wins, in reproductive well being, well being care and housing.
She was assisted by an endorsement from the state’s Jewish senator, Bernie Sanders. “He mentioned, ‘I don’t wish to simply provide you with my endorsement, I wish to aid you get elected, I wish to do that barnstorming tour throughout Vermont.’ And he mentioned, ‘So in the beginning, we’ve acquired to feed folks. We’ve acquired to feed folks, and we’ve acquired to present them some leisure.’ So the band and the meals was handled first earlier than the rest.”
The endorsement rallies this summer time featured the band The Western Terrestrials, and mac and cheese.
Balint, ensconced on the celebration’s left, anticipated pushback from the small cadre amongst progressive Democrats who again the motion to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. She emphatically doesn’t assist BDS.
“It’s been extremely painful for lots of the Jewish group, particularly round Burlington, when town council was voting on points associated to BDS,” she mentioned. “I’m on the left a part of my celebration. I do know that’s going to be a unique dynamic. I believe it’s counterproductive.”
She has been assembly with the incumbent, Peter Welch, who gained the Democratic nomination to switch Sen. Patrick Leahy, who’s retiring. She has additionally been talking over the telephone with Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Jewish Democrat from Maryland. Raskin, a constitutional skilled, is on the committee investigating the January 6, 2021 rebel on the Capitol, led by these repeating Donald Trump’s false declare that he gained the 2020 election.
He’s “somebody that I shamelessly idolize,” she mentioned of Raskin. “I talked to him just some days in the past on the telephone. He mentioned, ‘Becca, now we have a democracy to avoid wasting, that’s the work forward of us.’ And I do know that to be true as properly. And so I’m going to be seeking to folks like him who’re very clear-eyed on that to assist me work out find out how to navigate as a result of I’m going to be a sponge.”
In accordance with the household story, Balint’s grandfather, on the loss of life march from the Mauthausen to the Gunskirchen focus camps in Austria simply weeks earlier than liberation, stopped to help an ailing fellow marcher, realizing that it possible meant they’d each be shot — as they had been. Balint by no means explicitly says it, however the selection between annihilation and doing the flawed factor is a no brainer for her. Balint mentioned she aspired to “delicate fearlessness.”
Requested what which means, she defined, “It doesn’t matter the way you push me, it doesn’t matter what you throw at me, backside line, I do know who I’m,” she mentioned. “So no matter you throw at me, it’s not going to stay.”
Vermont
Grace Potter 'Emotionally Preparing to Lose' Home in L.A. Fires as She Reveals Vt. House Destroyed in Flood Last Summer
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/grace-potter-fires-tout-010925-d2c8e62a185845dc85646ac8779d95d2.jpg "Grace Potter 'Emotionally Preparing to Lose' Home in L.A. Fires as She Reveals Vt. House Destroyed in Flood Last Summer")
Grace Potter is staying safe amid the fires in California.
In an Instagram Reel shared on Wednesday, Jan. 8, the “Mother Road” singer spoke about evacuating the Los Angeles fires after recently being in New Orleans during the terror attack on Jan. 1 and losing her Vermont home amid the flooding in July 2024.
“We are safely evacuated from Topanga Canyon but many are still in harms way,” Potter, 41, wrote. “Just now we discovered that the place we evacuated to is also under evacuation orders. They just announced the schools are shut.”
Potter said that she had just arrived in L.A. after a cross-country trip after being in New Orleans “amid the terror attack.” She also mentioned that last summer her Fayston, Vt. farm was “devastated by the floods.”
“Life is wildly unpredictable and it’s important [to] keep your heart strong and your mind clear. If you see smoke, don’t wait for cell signal,” Potter continued.
“Trust your gut. Pack the necessities & GET OUT. I’m feeling deep gratitude for family, friends, the firefighters and for community. We are lucky. Stay safe out there folks.”
Her Jan. 8 video showed her driving away from the smoke. “Am I a storm chaser, or do I just like being places where really bad things happen? Or is this just happening everywhere? I don’t know,” she said in the clip, adding that she would pick up her son Sagan, 7 this week, from school and found a hotel to stay at.
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On Jan. 1, Potter was in New Orleans celebrating the New Year when a truck intentionally drove through the crowd on Bourbon Street leaving at least 14 people dead and dozens injured.
“We were standing at the corner of the intersection where only hours later a car came crashing through in a terrifying & violent act,” Potter’s joint Instagram post with husband Eric Valentine read.
“Then this morning, as we were in our room packing our bags to leave, a bomb was detonated less than a block away from our hotel in the quarter.”
Valentine added: “I am grateful my family is safe. I am grateful for the brave people who put their lives on the line to do their best to keep us safe. Our hearts go out to those who were injured and to the families and friends of those who were lost.”
In July, the singer posted pictures and videos of the damage from the floods with water overflowing rivers and roadways. Following the flooding, Potter said that the annual Grand Point North Festival would also serve as a benefit for those affected by the Vt. floods.
“Vermont, my heart is with you. I’ll be home soon, and we will rebuild as we always do,” she wrote.
Grace Potter/Instagram
Potter also shared a picture of a map of the blaze on her Instagram Stories on Jan. 8, pointing out where her home was. “Emotionally preparing to lose our home,” she wrote. “All i can do now is hope for a miracle & send love to the Canyon that brought me back into the daylight.”
The L.A. fires began on Tuesday, Jan. 7. Thousands of structures have been affected by the disastrous blaze.
Click here to learn more about how to help the victims of the L.A. fires.
UVM hockey legend Eric Perrin returns to Burlington on coaching staff
Eric Perrin, UVM hockey’s all-time leading goal scorer returns to Burlington helping out on the coaching staff for the past nine days.
Vermont basketball scored the game’s first seven points and built multiple 10-point leads early in the first half of Saturday’s America East Conference showdown at Bryant.
But everything unraveled after the Catamounts’ roaring start.
The Bryant Bulldogs seized control by the halftime horn and rolled in the second half for a 73-53 victory, handing Vermont its biggest conference defeat in two decades.
The Catamounts (9-9, 2-1) haven’t loss by at least 20 points to a league opponent in the regular season since the 2004-05 finale at Maine, 87-66, when stars Taylor Coppenrath and T.J. Sorrentine did not play. They also suffered a 22-point setback to Stony Brook in the 2011 America East semifinals.
Vermont opened a 24-14 lead on a Shamir Bogues 3-pointer with 8 minutes, 21 seconds before the break. Then the Bulldogs unleashed a 20-6 spurt to close the half. Bryant, though, kept momentum on its side, scoring 20 of the first 22 points of the second half.
The advantage ballooned to 57-32 by the 12-minute mark. All told, Bryant had a 43-8 run spanning the two halves to carve out the insurmountable advantage.
Connor Withers, who started Bryant’s comeback in the first half with a 3-pointer, paced the hosts with 19 points. Rafael Pinzon and Barry Evans each had 13 points, and Early Timberlake added a dozen points for Bryant’s first win over Vermont since joining America East ahead of the 2022-23 campaign.
For Vermont, Bogues totaled 17 points and six rebounds, and Ileri Ayo-Faleye collected 15 points. Sam Alamutu picked up 11 rebounds.
The Bulldogs scored 22 points off Vermont’s 17 turnovers. Bryant also made 11 3-pointers.
The Catamounts return to action for the league home opener Thursday night vs. Binghamton.
Contact Alex Abrami at aabrami@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @aabrami5.
Phil Martelli, Jr.’s opening statement after Bryant’s win vs. Vermont
Phil Martelli, Jr.’s opening statement after Bryant’s 73-53 win vs. Vermont men’s basketball.
SMITHFIELD — Bryant men’s basketball’s addition to the America East three years ago didn’t alter the traditional powers.
Vermont captured the last two league titles to finish off a stretch of five crowns in six years for the Burlington program. Bryant, before joining the conference, largely had no history with its northern neighbors outside of a home-and-home series in 2013-14.
The Bryant-Vermont matchup was reintroduced in January of 2023 with Vermont winning all four meetings since they became conference foes. Bryant halted that run and redirected the league’s authority on Saturday night at the Chace Center.
Bryant (8-9, 2-0) blistered the Catamounts with an early run and thumped Vermont in the second half for a 73-53 triumph behind Connor Withers’ 19 points. The six-year guard caught fire at the end of the first half and shot 8-14 for the game. Bryant only kept that potent scoring going in the second half.
“I don’t even know my record against them,” Withers said of Vermont. “I’ve lost a lot more than I’ve won against them. And then losing in the championship, I’ve got a lot of respect for that team. They’re top of the conference every year, the team to beat every year. It does feel good.”
Withers transferred to Bryant from UMass Lowell last season. The guard lost to Vermont, 72–59, in the 2022-23 conference championship. Saturday’s win can’t erase that feeling, but his shooting can pace a conference run for Bryant this winter.
“It’s just another win and it’s just one win,” Withers said. “As good as it feels to beat them, it only counts for one win. It doesn’t count for five wins in the conference, it counts for one win. As good as it feels, it doesn’t mean too much if we don’t handle business next week and the next game that we play.”
The Bulldogs trailed, 15-5, before trading 3s with Vermont on six straight possessions. They withstood Vermont’s best punch through the first 12 minutes of the game and trailed just 24-17 on Withers’ second 3-pointer.
The shot from the wing got Withers going as he added his third trey of the contest just a few minutes later to give Bryant its first lead, 28-26, with 4:20 to play in the frame. He added another long jumper and a layup high off the glass for a personal 7-0 run.
“It’s the discipline,” Bryant coach Phil Martelli Jr. said of Vermont’s success. “I would bet there’s not a lot of games where they’ve turned it over that much (17 turnovers) and haven’t turned the opponent over. The game was played on our terms, outside of those first minutes, which is hard to do against them. They usually play it on their terms and then you get into that game trying to beat them at their game. That’s hard to do, as we’ve seen.”
Withers’ sequence started a Bryant run, 23-6, that ended only from the halftime horn. But the Bulldogs didn’t stop, and out of the break scored 20 of the first 22 points. All told, Bryant’s supremacy was a 43-8 run over 17 minutes of play.
“I was concerned about us settling,” Martelli said. “And then we came out, we got to the rim, we scored, and we’re able to get some layups and do some things. … And that goes to, we have guys that have the ability to do multiple things.
“That was key for us. I think being able to start that half and getting some layups, obviously, getting the stops along with it.”
Barry Evans and Rafael Pinzon both chipped in 13 points. Earl Timberlake added a dozen with six rebounds, four assists and four steals as Bryant shot 44.6% from the field and was 11-for-27 from beyond the arc.
“I get it, we haven’t beaten them,” Martelli said. “They are the standard. They are flat-out the standard. But it’s [only the second conference win].
“It’s good we beat Vermont because that’s who we played today. We got number two, now let’s get number three.”
Bryant vs. Vermont all-time
Nov. 16, 2013: Bryant 87, Vermont 64
Nov. 26, 2014: Vermont 73, Bryant 47
Jan. 5, 2023: Vermont 74, Bryant 64
Feb. 25, 2023: Vermont 70, Bryant 66
Jan. 27, 2024: Vermont 67, Bryant 57
Feb. 24, 2024: Vermont 65, Bryant 48
jrousseau@providencejournal.com
On X: @ByJacobRousseau
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