Democrats Lost A Lot of Seats In Vermont— But Not Because The State Went MAGA

Aside From Bernie, The Only Blue America-Backed Candidate, Tanya Vyhovsky, Won

Vermont gave Kamala the strongest support of any state in the Union— 63.2%, more than Maryland (62.6%), Massachusetts (61.2%), Hawaii (60.6%) and more than where they know her best, California (58.5%). That was more a rejection of Trump than an embrace of a vice president few people felt they knew enough about to make an informed decision. Attorney General Charity Clark, Secretary of State Sarah Hanzas, Auditor Doug Hoffer and Treasurer Mike Pieciak all Democrats, won comfortably, as did the two federal candidates (Bernie Sanders and Becca Balint).

But when it came to the state legislature… not so fast. First of all, the top vote-getter in the state was incumbent Gov. Phil Scott, an anti-Trump Republican. In the 30-person state Senate, Democrats Christopher Bray, Jane Kitchel, Irene Wrenner, Andy Judlow, Mark MacDonald and Robert Starr were beaten by Republicans, breaking the Democrats’ supermajority. (All 5 Progressive Party incumbents, including Tanya Vyhovsky, were reelected.)

It was much worse in the state House, where the Democrats veto-proof super-majority went from 105 to37 to 87-56. Yep, the Republicans picked up 19 seats, their best performance in 2 decades! Wondering what happened? It was certainly not an embrace of MAGA. Yesterday, Jenna Russell explained the dynamics of dissatisfaction for NY Times readers, “the leading edge of the anti-incumbent wave that swept the country this election. More Democrats lost seats in Vermont than in any other state. The results stunned lawmakers, set off soul-searching and left even some stalwart Democratic voters elated.”

“It was a revolution,” said John McCormick, 81, of Bristol, who helped a Republican candidate campaign for, and win, a seat in Vermont’s State Senate. “I’m a full-blown Democrat and environmentalist, and I didn’t just vote for him— I did everything I could to get him elected.”

To be sure, the election did not come close to ending the Democratic majorities in either chamber of the State Legislature. In the 150-member House, Republicans will now hold 56 seats instead of 37; in the 30-member Senate, their number increased from seven to 13. But the shift is expected to change the dynamics at the State House, motivating Democrats who may have once ignored the minority’s views to engage in more discussion and consider more compromise.

That could allow for progress on the top priorities of Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican who won re-election: overhauling the school funding system, with a goal of reining in tax increases and streamlining Vermont’s strict rules for building new housing amid surging demand.

“The goal is to get them to come to the table,” Jason Maulucci, Scott’s policy director, said of Democratic lawmakers, “and to get enough support to work toward more affordability.”

Yet, outside of Burlington and several smaller liberal cities, a strong conservative tradition endures. Scott is among the most popular governors in the country; last month, he won 71 percent of the vote against a little-known Democratic opponent.

To many rural voters, the state’s delicate balance of ideologies appeared to drift off kilter over the last few years, as legislative goals skewed further left and Scott found his authority limited by the Democrats’ supermajorities. Of the eight bills he vetoed between April and June— including a property tax increase that averaged 14 percent statewide, an expansion of the state’s restorative justice program and the creation of an “overdoes prevent center” in Burlington— six were passed after legislators overrode his vetoes.

Many voters questioned why the Democrats, despite their unchecked power, could not come together to address the housing crisis, revamp school funding or curb tax increases, instead of undertaking efforts to ban vapes and force the board that sets rules for hunters to add members who don’t hunt. 

But many Democratic lawmakers appear to have misjudged the depth and reach of the exasperation— and the willingness to shake up a State House where voters felt their concerns about affordability had not been made a priority.

“Voters have been telling us for years that they’re sick of rising costs, rising rents, rising property taxes and grocery bills, and they feel like they can’t get ahead,” said Lachlan Francis, a pollster and consultant who analyzed the state’s election results. “They have felt that way for a long time, as the Legislature followed an agenda that was perceived as inflationary, and there was a price to pay for that.”

In Addison County, where dairy farms blanket the landscape east of Lake Champlain, Christopher Bray felt the rumblings of discontent. A Democratic legislator who served two terms in the Vermont House of Representatives before his election to the State Senate in 2013, Bray said he had sensed voters’ unhappiness as he campaigned before the state primary in August.

The mood had only grown more ominous by the time he stood out greeting voters on Election Day. “I’ve never had more people look away from me and not meet my gaze,” he recalled in an interview.

Bray, 69, lost his race to a Republican newcomer, Steven Heffernan, who said he had grown weary of just talking about the Legislature’s failures. Heffernan, too, could feel frustration in the air. “I knew it wasn’t a long shot,” he said of his candidacy in an interview, “because of the atmosphere.”

He soon heard from McCormick, the longtime Democratic voter in his district. A former environmental lobbyist, McCormick said he had previously voted for Bray, the incumbent and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. But McCormick had lately grown incensed by Bray’s pursuit of climate and clean energy legislation that McCormick believed would drive up home heating costs for lower-income residents.

“I needed a legislator to represent me,” McCormick said. “These Democrats are arrogant, telling people, ‘I know more than you do— trust me.’”

Governor Scott vetoed the contentious energy legislation, known as the Affordable Heat Act, last year, but the Democratic supermajority overrode the veto. The legislation, which set ambitious goals for the state to transition from fossil fuels to cleaner options, was envisioned as a long-term path to lower heating bills by Bray and other Democrats. But critics, including Scott, focused on the bill’s upfront costs to the government and consumers.

Campaigning for Bray’s seat this fall, Heffernan said the law was a top concern cited by voters. He intends to vote against the measure when it is taken up again by the newly reconfigured Legislature after it convenes next month.

“What I heard people saying was that they did not feel heard,” said Heffernan, 59, a longtime member of the Vermont Air National Guard who owns an excavation company, a car repair business and several scrapyards. He defeated Bray by about 650 votes.

…The governor’s endorsements of lesser-known Republicans provided a “permission slip” for Trump-averse Democrats and independents inclined to vote for change, but wary of electing MAGA candidates, Maulucci said.

No fan of the president-elect, Scott has acknowledged that he voted for Harris. 

I talked about the results with Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky today. Like I said, she and her Progressive Party colleagues were all reelected. She told me that “Given that progressives and progressive policies did well even in districts where corporate Dems lost my read is that the people want change not more of the same corporate elitism the Democrats are offering. The Democratic instinct to lean to the right has taken them to the right of Ronald Reagan on economic policy and people are hurting. If the Democrats want to win they need to take a sharp left turn, get out of bed with Wall Street, and get back to the kitchen tables of the regular people who have had enough of corporate cronyism. They need to be more Bernie Sanders and less Liz Cheney.”