Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (D-Brattleboro), the House Ways and Means Committee chair, backed tax increases this year that left some Vermonters incensed. Now, she’s got a challenger in a Democratic primary: first-time candidate Amanda Ellis-Thurber, a farmer.

Ellis-Thurber said she was galvanized when she saw a New York Times story about wealth taxes that Kornheiser proposed in January. She said she voted for Kornheiser in the past two elections but had expected her to focus on policy that would affect her constituents in Brattleboro — not the whole state.

“How many conversations has Emilie had with her local district about tax proposals?” Ellis-Thurber asked.



Kornheiser, who was endorsed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and got elected in 2018, made a name for herself for her quick ascent to the powerful House tax-writing committee. She has championed progressive goals such as securing equal access to health care, education, housing and social services.

Ellis-Thurber has long worked on her husband’s 600-acre family farm, Lilac Ridge Farm. She said she’s running in the August 13 primary — her first venture in politics — because she wants to help small businesses such as Lilac Ridge succeed.

“Maybe Emilie is bigger than we are," she said. "Maybe she’s a future lieutenant governor.”

Taxes and affordability are a hot topic in Vermont. Last winter, news that property taxes could increase 20 percent or more shocked Vermonters, and residents voted down 30 school budgets on Town Meeting Day. The property tax bills landing in mailboxes now have an average projected increase of 14 percent.
Further, on July 1, employers and the self-employed started to pay a new payroll tax of 0.44 percent to support childcare programs. Voters are unhappy, not only with tax increases but also with Vermont’s opaque education funding system, which will be the subject of a study this year — the 39th such inquiry in the past 25 years, say lawmakers who put their names on similar editorials about Vermont’s education funding woes last week.

“The formula is so obscure, and there’s no plan in place to avoid the same thing next year,” said John Kennedy, who has a "Thurber" sign planted in his lawn.

Jill Stahl Tyler, who served on the Brattleboro School Board for eight years, said she encouraged Ellis-Thurber, her acquaintance, to challenge Kornheiser because she’s concerned that high taxes are harming the state and she doesn’t think Kornheiser is taking that into account.

“I want somebody who has a practical mindset, who understands that sometimes there are limitations in budgets,” Tyler said.

Ellis-Thurber met her husband, Ross, at the University of Vermont, where she obtained a degree in plant and soil science in 1994. The two raised three children on Lilac Ridge Farm, where they now milk 40 Holsteins and run a farmstand and creemee business.

Ellis-Thurber obtained a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Antioch University New England in 2015 and worked for three years as an outpatient therapist at a clinic in Greenfield, Mass. From 2020 to 2024, she worked as a ski instructor at Stratton. She said the family has struggled to keep the farm intact, and her counseling job was the first to pay for their health insurance. She added that her family has never been able to afford a good health insurance policy on its own. “We’re in the catastrophic category,” she said of the coverage, adding that the family carries medical debt. “We’re generally very healthy.”

At a public forum earlier this month at Brooks Memorial Library, Ellis-Thurber said she was running at the behest of her neighbors and described a close-knit, cooperative community focused on bringing in the hay, milking the cows and making maple syrup. Working in mental health and raising her kids prepared her for office, she said.
Kornheiser, who earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from the now defunct Marlboro College and a master's in public policy, community development and economics from the University of Vermont, works as a consultant for nonprofit organizations and waits tables to supplement her income. She described her experience as a former café owner and single parent who ended up relying on welfare when her child was born about 20 years ago. She outlined her own financial struggles now as a renter who is also burdened by the mortgage on a home she owns with her former partner.
“I am paying off my student loans while my child is going to college, I have a mortgage, I have significant property taxes, my father just moved here and I’m going to have to care for him too,” Kornheiser said at the Democratic candidates' forum. “It’s a wild ride to be on.”

Kornheiser agrees with her critics that the state needs far-reaching property tax reform and said at the forum that she doesn’t have any answers for improving the existing system. “This last property tax bill is an unacceptable increase from year to year,” she said. “It is unfair to business owners who are trying to manage their costs and unbelievably difficult for anyone who is trying to moderate their bills.”

Her goal is to shift more of the tax burden to wealthy Vermonters and make life easier for lower-income residents through initiatives such as paid family leave and universal childcare. Last year, she authored legislation that would have established a 3 percent surcharge on adjusted gross incomes of more than $500,000 and a tax on unrealized capital gains. Neither gained traction.

This month, Mindy Haskins Rogers, a former Vermonter who lives in Northampton, Mass., published a letter to the editor in the Commons, a Brattleboro-based newspaper, challenging Ellis-Thurber’s description of her own middle-class struggles. Ellis-Thurber’s family is supported by the income from a $2 million farm property that Ellis-Thurber owns in Nebraska, Rogers wrote, and has a vacation home in the Northeast Kingdom town of Greensboro. “I question whether she really understands the plight of Vermont’s working and middle classes,” she wrote.



Ellis-Thurber confirmed these details. She said her own family’s money helped her to buy the Brattleboro farm from her in-laws and that income from the Nebraska property — along with a house on the Brattleboro property listed on Airbnb — keeps the family afloat. The Greensboro second home, she said, is modest.

“The economics of organic dairy farming for the last six years have just been so bad,” Ellis-Thurber said. “We use Airbnb to pay the grain bill and our property taxes and employees."

Ellis-Thurber said she was surprised that details about her financial situation had come to play in the campaign and said neighbors who shop at her farmstand have chastised her for challenging Kornheiser.

“Is Emilie and her campaign team worried that I am going to win, and are they trying to cancel me?” she said. “What is going to be the next stage?”

Correction, August 5, 2024: A previous version of this story contained a misspelling of Kornheiser's first name.