Statement on Reported Misconduct by Young Republican Leaders

The messages revealed by POLITICO this week are appalling — not just offensive, but dehumanizing.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/14/private-chat-among-young-gop-club-members-00592146

Leaders of Young Republican groups reportedly joked about gas chambers, slavery, rape, and Hitler, and used racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic language. That kind of rhetoric obscures everything good about public service.

According to POLITICO, Vermont Senator Sam Douglass participated in those conversations, and his wife was quoted using an antisemitic slur. Both declined to comment. This conduct has no place in our state, our politics, or our communities.

Governor Phil Scott was right to speak clearly and unequivocally calling the comments “disgusting and unacceptable,” and urging those involved, including Senator Douglass, to resign. That is moral leadership.

It matters when people in power say out loud that racism, antisemitism, and hate have no place here.

But condemnation alone can’t be where this ends. It must be the starting place for accountability — not just for the individuals involved, but for the political systems that elevated them.

In 2024, Katherine Sims — one of the hardest-working, most pragmatic voices for rural Vermont — lost her Senate race to Sam Douglass. Despite her record of bipartisan results and deep commitment to working lands and small towns, she was treated by her own party as too independent, too collaborative with the administration, and too focused on results instead of politics. Meanwhile, the Governor and his party endorsed Douglass, a less qualified candidate whose greatest credential was the letter after his name.

These types of choices aren’t just political misjudgments. These actions reveals a deeper problem, and one shared across both major parties. When pragmatism is punished and partisanship is rewarded, the people who lose aren’t the candidates; they’re Vermonters — especially vulnerable Vermonters — who depend on government to work for them, not for itself.

This system failure can’t continue to be normalized. It has to be fixed.

Laura Sibilia is an independent State Representative from Dover, serving the Windham–2 district. She has represented communities in Southern Vermont in the Legislature since 2014, focusing on rural economic development, energy, telecommunications and education.