By BDN Staff

Last week, Burlington Progressives held their nominating caucus, endorsing four candidates for the March 2026 Town Meeting Day elections. All eight ward seats are up, but the party only fielded candidates in wards they already control and are likely to keep: Wards 1, 2, 3, and 8.

Incumbent councilors Carter Neubieser (Ward 1), Gene Bergman (Ward 2), and Marek Broderick (Ward 8) ran unopposed for renomination and were endorsed. 

In the only contested race that night, Laura Sánchez-Parkinson defeated Vikas Mangipudi to run in Ward 3, replacing outgoing Progressive incumbent Joe Kane, who took over the seat from Joe Magee in early 2024.

Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak addressed the caucus, highlighting her administration’s work amidst a $12M shortfall in the city’s budget and rebuilding the police force and department.

Candidates outlined what priorities they’ll be carrying into 2026. Broderick pledged to continue regulating greenhouse gas emissions and proposed rezoning residential areas for more housing. In recent months, Broderick has been at the center of debates surrounding the University of Vermont’s treatment of students and student housing.  

Both Broderick and Neubieser supported investing more in the city’s Housing Trust Fund for affordable projects. They also backed a consolidated waste collection system using city workers for garbage, recycling, and compost — countering an earlier mayoral proposal to outsource recycling to a private company for the foreseeable future. 

Bergman, a longtime Progressive and party leader, emphasized the Progressives’ role in educating voters and cultivating new leaders, candidates, and activists. 

The strategy marks a shift in what some saw coming after 2024: Progressives would seek to capitalize on their 2024 gains, where Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak handedly beat Democrat Joan Shannon. 

But that doesn’t seem to be the case. There will be no challenges to Democratic-held wards, Progressives said. So, if all four win, Progressives won’t gain seats on the Democratic-majority council. They will continue with a Progressive mayor and a Democrat-majority council. 

The focus, Progressives say, is preserving their current influence amid ongoing debates over housing, climate, and city services, leaning on their ability to change policy through the mayor’s office.

Burlington Democrats have yet to announce when their nominating caucus will be held or what candidate will be running. They did, however, recently share the announcement of Democrat Evan Litwin’s re-election campaign in the New North End.  

Though it does not happen often, local political parties have the ability, in some cases, to nominate candidates for office after the caucus has occurred.