Category Archives: Vermont State Senate

The New State Senate Will Be… Something

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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.

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Repeat After Me: “It’s Only a Movie”

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Sen. Chris Bray seems to have contracted a mild case of the fantods regarding his prospects for re-election to a [checks notes] seventh term in office. He’s raised quite a bit of money, and he’s spent even more than he’s raised. Before the August primary, he and fellow Addison County Sen. Ruth Hardy spent big against a challenge from Rep. Caleb Elder that, frankly, was doomed from the start. As I said in my previous post, incumbent senators just don’t lose unless they’ve committed gross malfeasance, aged beyond the electorate’s tolerance, or done something equivalently heinous.

And now, Bray is spending beyond his means against a surprisingly well-funded challenge from Republican Steven Heffernan (and a not-nearly-so-well-funded challenge from Republican Landel Cochran). And I get it; in his position, he shouldn’t be taking anything for granted. But I’m here to tell you that Bray ain’t losing. Heffernan’s odds are roughly equivalent to a snowball in a very hot place.

Look. Besides the fact that incumbent senators never lose, there’s the district. It’s been a full generation since Addison sent a Republican to the senior chamber: Tom Bahre in 2000, the year of the great civil unions backlash. Since then, two Democrats every two years for a grand total of 22 elected Dems to zero Republicans. In 2022, Bray and seatmate Ruth Hardy each received more than 33% of the vote, while third-place Republican Lloyd Dike lagged with 16.4%. Republicans have routinely finished far out of the running in Addison, except for those years when the GOP didn’t even bother to field candidates.

Yes, Heffernan is a more credible figure than Dike, one of the radical right hopefuls who co-signed a 2022 newspaper ad denying that global warming exists and asserting that greenhouse gases are actually good for us and the planet. Heffernan isn’t one o’ them. But he’s not winning, either. Not in Addison, not in a Senate race against two established Democratic incumbents.

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The Senate Reset of 2024

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The campaign for Vermont Senate is the main battleground in our rather underwhelming 2024 election season, thanks to a number of open and potentially competitive seats. Plus there’s little on the statewide ballot to divert attention, and the Dem/Prog supermajority in the House appears to be safe. That leaves the Senate, where key vacancies have attracted strong candidates and very generous donor support.

I’ve written previously about the highly unusual, possibly unprecedented, amount of turnover in the Senate between the 2022 cycle and this year’s: 2022 saw the departures of ten sitting Senators, fully one-third of the entire chamber. Six more incumbents will be absent next January through retirement (Brian Campion, Jane Kitchel, Dick McCormack, Bobby Starr) or death (Dick Mazza, Dick Sears).

Furthermore, five of the six vacancies are in districts that haven’t been seriously contested in years because of long-established, nigh-unbeatable incumbents. That’s especially impactful because sitting senators are virtually bulletproof. The last time an incumbent senator lost a bid for re-election was in 2016, when Bill Doyle and Norm McAllister were defeated. Doyle was 90 years old and had developed a widely-known habit of falling asleep during hearings; McAllister faced a bunch of criminal charges.

That’s about what it takes for an incumbent senator to lose. Which means this year’s winners are likely to be in office for a long time to come. Those are high stakes.

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Making Two Lists and Checking ‘Em Once

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Now that the truly historic veto override session is over, it’s time to take stock of my fearless, or possibly feckless, predictions about what bills Gov. Phil Scott would veto and which vetoes would be overridden by the Legislature.

But first, let’s acknowledge a masterful performance by legislative leadership, a phrase that doesn’t often escape my virtual lips. Even with supermajorities, overriding a gubernatorial veto is a nettlesome task. You’ve got to make sure all your people are (a) present, not a small item when dealing with 180-odd individuals (some odder than others), and (b) absolutely unified on every vote, including some toughies.

The House and Senate held a total of 15 override votes in a single day, and they won 13 of ’em including a clean sweep in the House. Just scheduling 15 votes in two chambers on one day is fairly amazing, let alone winning 86.67% of ’em.

As for my performance…

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Whatever Happened to the Great Phil Scott Recruitment Drive of 2024?

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When the leader of your party describes your candidate recruitment effort as “disappointing,” it’s a sign that things have gone off the rails. So said VTGOP Chair Paul Dame to Seven Days’ Kevin McCallum, and then added “It’s one of the smallest recruitment classes that we’ve had in the last 10 years.”

Can confirm. I spent a few hours poring over the Secretary of State’s list of candidates who have filed for major party primaries. There may be a few late adds; the deadline was last Thursday, and as of Monday morning the Elections Office was still checking petitions. But what we’ve got so far, by my count, is a total of 69 Republican candidates for House. Which sounds a little bit respectable considering they’ve only got 37 seats right now.

Except for this: At least 30 of those candidates have no shot at winning. There are a few Republican primaries where someone’s gotta lose, a few repeat candidates who have been uncompetitive in the past, and a lot of Republican candidates in deep-blue districts. In other words, the VTGOP has no better than the longest of longshot chances at eliminating the Democratic/Progressive supermajority in the House. They’d have to run the table in competitive districts and hold all their current seats.

On the Senate side the Republicans have 25 candidates, but I count 14 who are not competitive. The R’s do have a shot at ending the Senate supermajority thanks to some key Democratic departures, but that’s all it is: a shot.

So what happened to Gov. Phil Scott’s “pledge” (McCallum’s word) to recruit moderate Republican candidates? Either it was a failure, or it never happened at all.

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It’s Complicated.

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My first reaction to the passing of Sen. Dick Sears? I was sad. Honestly. He was a genuinely nice guy who always tried to do what he saw as best for Vermont.

That said… I think the Senate will, on balance, be a better place without him.

See, it’s complicated.

Dick Sears was one of the last remaining Old Lions of the Senate. Like his fellow members of the pride, he was a raging institutionalist who loved the Senate exactly as it was. I see the Senate quite differently: far too self-absorbed and far less functional than it ought to be, too closed to new ideas and too scornful of the Legislature’s junior chamber.

But of all the past and present Old Lions, Sears was the most valuable. He brought a lot to the table. As longtime chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he knew the law as well as anyone. Due in part to his own humble upbringing, he often thought of the law in terms of those caught in its crosshairs, and that’s a rare quality in anyone who held a position of authority as long as he did. On the other hand, he thwarted many a reform measure if he thought it went too far, and was especially loath to enact any new gun bills.

And his voice was curiously silent when it came to the, shall we say, questionable practices of the police in his own backyard.

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What Will the State Senate Be In 2025?

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Time for some way-too-early speculation about what kind of state Senate we will have in the new biennium. To date, Sens. Jane Kitchel, Bobby Starr, Dick McCormack and Brian Campion have announced they are not seeking re-election. Sen. Dick Mazza resigned last month for health reasons, which brings us to five senior solons — in terms of lifespan and/or tenure — who won’t be there next January.

Disclaimer: The following post is based entirely on my own observations. There is not a lick of insider information at play. I do NOT have sources in Senate leadership.

By my math, the five retirees have lived a combined 372 years (average “only” 74.4 years, thanks to that 53-year-old whipper-snapper Campion, PULL UP YER PANTS young man) and legislative service totaling 158 years. That’s right, one hundred and fifty-eight, more than 31 years apiece under the Golden Dome. Also, three of the five are committee chairs.

This round of departures follows the seismic 2022 election season, when 10 senators — fully one-third of the chamber — did not return. That means fully half of the 2025 Senate will have, at most, two years of experience. In 2020, four senators stepped away (three by choice; John Rodgers came a cropper thanks to his own inattentiveness to the niceties of candidate filing law), which means that 19 members of the new Senate will have no more than four years of experience.

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.

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When She Was Good, She Was Very, Very Good…

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Amongst all the encomiums that accompanied Sen. Jane Kitchel’s retirement announcement (“most influential legislator,” “tireless work ethic,” “encyclopedic” knowledge of state government and, of course, “legendary“), this comment from Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth stuck out at me:

“I have adopted a two-word mantra as President Pro Tem, and it has served me well: ‘Ask Jane.’”

To which my first thought was, “Well, there’s your problem.”

It’s not that Kitchel doesn’t deserve praise on her way out the door. She has served the state for a long time with notable distinction. It will, indeed, be difficult to replace her. The Senate is in for an adjustment period.

But adjust it will. No one is irreplaceable. No one is truly encyclopedic in their knowledge of anything. And Kitchel’s biggest problem was that she thought she knew even more than she did, and she acted accordingly.

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On Monday’s Other Eclipse

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We began the new week with all eyes turned toward the sky, waiting for the sun to briefly disappear. But at the same time, an earthly, political-type sun also vanished — and this one isn’t coming back.

Sen. Dick Mazza, who served nearly 40 years in the state Senate and 30 seconds as a TV spokesman for a riding lawn mower, has announced his immediate retirement for health reasons.

On a personal level, Mazza was a tremendous guy. He was a joy to talk with. If he ever had a bad word for anyone, I didn’t hear it — and if anyone would have merited a bad word or two from Mazza, it was me, the guy who has posted images of mummies and skeletons atop essays about Our Sclerotic Senate. He was unfailingly polite to me, and seemed to earnestly mean it.

Mazza also had a deep knowledge of state government and a love for the Senate. As much as anyone, he was the human embodiment of a load-bearing beam in the Statehouse. I wish him all the best as he wages a long-odds battle against pancreatic cancer. Best wishes for a full recovery and many more years behind the counter at Mazza’s Store.

But I have to say his departure from the Statehouse is one more step towards a Senate that might be less hidebound, more open to new ideas and more reflective of the entirety of Vermont. Can I regret the loss of Dick Mazza while also feeling a bit optimistic about a future Senate that doesn’t include him? Whether you think I can or not, that’s where I find myself.

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A Stain on the Senate

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The Senate Appropriations Committee is a distillation of everything I don’t like about the Senate as a whole. It’s heavily weighted toward seniority. The senior solons get near-total deference from any junior colleague who manages to wedge their way onto the committee. Those veteran members are a knowledgeable lot — but they think they’re smarter, wiser and more knowledgeable than they actually are, and they sometimes reflect antediluvian opinions on current political issues. And they frequently express disdain, if not contempt, for the work of the House.

But the worst of the lot is Sen. Bobby Starr. He’s really been on one this week, as Appropriations considers whether to extend emergency housing programs for the well over 2,000 Vermonters who face unsheltering within the next two months. When it comes to homelessness, he crosses the line from “roguish bumpkin” to “hateful bigot.” Repeatedly.

Starr is allegedly a Democrat, and he does cast some useful votes. But the things that come out of his mouth are a stain on the Senate and on the Vermont Democratic Party, and both institutions would be better off without him. Even if his Northeast Kingdom district were to choose a conservative Republican to replace him, I’d prefer that. At least it’d be honest, and at least we wouldn’t have to deal with a Democrat displaying rank ignorance and prejudice in high office.

So what has he been up to this week? Well, let me tell you.

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