in Iraq. After Galbraith's interests in Iraqi oil were made public, The New York Times wrote that "[l]ike other writers for the Op-Ed page, Mr. Galbraith signed a contract that obligated him to disclose his financial interests in the subjects of his articles. Had editors been aware of Mr. Galbraith’s financial stake, the Op-Ed page would have insisted on disclosure or not published his articles." Meanwhile, the New York Review of Books wrote that "[w]e regret that we were not informed of Mr. Galbraith's financial involvements in business concerning Kurdish oil. If we had known about them, we would have wanted them to be disclosed when his articles were published." In a response, Galbraith defended his involvement in the constitutional process as an informal advisor, but apologized for failing to better disclose his interests as a commentator. Vermont politics Galbraith served as chairman of the Vermont Democratic Party from 1977 to 1979. In 1998, Galbraith briefly campaigned for the Democratic nomination for the seat in the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts then held by retiring Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II and previously held by Tip O'Neill and John F. Kennedy. In 2008, Galbraith told Vermont Public Radio he was considering a run for the governorship of Vermont, but later announced that he would not be running and endorsed former House Speaker Gaye Symington instead. He is a Senior Diplomatic Fellow, and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the research arm of the Council for a Livable World. On November 2, 2010, Galbraith won election to the Vermont State Senate from Windham County as a Democrat, and was reelected in 2012. in 2011, Galbraith initiated legislation to ban hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), making Vermont the first state in the country to ban fracking. In 2014, he introduced the legislation to finance Vermont's single payer health care plan, Act 48, a plan which eventually failed to pass. Among his Senate colleagues, he gained a reputation for speaking at length on the floor and introducing amendments to almost every bill, and he had a difficult time gaining political allies. According to the Vermont Senate Journal, Galbraith proposed amendments aiming to raise the minimum wage to $12 per hour, to ban corporate campaign contributions, to prevent wealthy persons from evading campaign finance limits, to delete a $5 million appropriation for IBM, to extend Vermont's bottle