Last May, I wrote a piece entitled “What Will the State Senate Be in 2025?” The idea was that for the second straight election cycle, the stodgy ol’ Senate was going to see an unusual quantity of churn:

This, in a body that values age and seniority above all else, and normally consigns junior members to purely decorative status. It’s gonna be interesting.

Well, the results of this month’s election will bring even more change to the Senate. It’s kind of staggering when you put it all together. By my count, 18 of the 30 senators will be freshmen or sophomores come January. That’s an amazing number. There were 10 newbies in 2023, and nine more will be new senators in 2025. (One 2023 newcomer, Irene Wrenner, lost her bid for a second term.)

The class of 2025: Democrats Seth Bongartz, Joe Major, and Robert Plunkett; and Republicans Scott Beck, Patrick Brennan, Samuel Douglass, Larry Hart Sr., Steven Heffernan, and Chris Mattos. Class of 2023: Martine Gulick, Wendy Harrison, Nader Hashim, Robert Norris, Tanya Vyhovsky, Anne Watson, David Weeks, Becca White, and Terry Williams.

What’s more, in a body known for very long tenures, only four senators will have served continuously since 2015 (Phil Baruth, Ann Cummings, Ginny Lyons, Richard Westman). Historically, you’d need to serve at least that long before the John Bloomers of the world* would consider you to be a Real Senator.

*Kidding. There is only one John Bloomer per planet.

To recap: At the time of my May dispatch, Sen. Dick Mazza had stepped aside for health reasons (and later died). Four other longtime senators weren’t seeking re-election: Brian Campion, Jane Kitchel, Bobby Starr, and Dick McCormack. In early June, Sen. Dick Sears died.

And then came the great Republican wave of 2024, taking four of the six vacant seats and sweeping away two more veteran senators: Chris Bray (2015) and Mark MacDonald (2003).

All this turnover means some startlingly junior solons will hold important posts in the new Senate. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, class of 2021, will be majority leader. Six of the 11 big committees will need new chairs in January, and relatively junior senators are next in line for five of them. Andrew Perchlik, class of 2019, looks to be the next Appropriations chair. Three members of the class of 2023 are vice chairs of committees with pending vacancies at the top: Hashim of Judiciary, Watson of Natural Resources & Energy, and Gulick of Education. Thomas Chittenden, class of 2021, is vice chair of Transportation, where Perchlik succeeded Mazza as chair but is now in line for Appropriations. (The vice chair of Agriculture is the relatively senior Republican Brian Collamore.)

(Apparently Ram Hinsdale wants to continue as Economic Development chair. That would be unusual for a majority leader but given all the newbies, she’ll probably get her way.)

Not that vice chairs are automatically in line for promotion, but the new chairs will have to come from somewhere and there’s not a lot of experience to go around.

It won’t be just musical Chairs (sorry); committee lineups are in for a serious overhaul. The Committee on Committees, which itself will have two new members out of three, is in for some heavy lifting. A sample of the work ahead:

• Agriculture is losing three of its five members: Starr, Campion and Wrenner.
• Natural Resources & Emergy will lose three of five: Bray, MacDonald, and McCormick.
• The same three currently serve on the seven-member Finance Committee, normally a repository for the most senior of senators.
• At least two seats on the powerful Appropriations Committee (six members) will be open with the retirements of Kitchel and Starr.

Other committees survived the election season more or less intact but given all the new senators, there could be a much broader shuffling of the deck.

The new session will be, to use an Only in Journalism word, fraught. The agenda will be full of issues and/or crises requiring urgent attention. Legislative leaders will be figuring out a new relationship with Gov. Phil Scott. Both chambers face significant upheaval, but the Senate more so than the House. More than two-thirds of its members will be brand new or entering their second terms. No time for learning the ropes or deferring to elders anymore.