Pat Brennan, the Republican candidate for State Senate representing the Grand Isle District, and Andy Julow, the Democratic candidate. Photos by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
For the first time in nearly four decades, the residents of most Grand Isle County towns — and almost all of nearby Colchester — will elect a new state senator this fall. In a region that, bisected by Lake Champlain, does not fall neatly along party lines, both Democratic and Republican leaders are making the district a campaign priority.
The race is also steeped in the image of the man who held the seat all those years — former Senator Dick Mazza, a Colchester Democrat, who died in late May. Mazza’s decidedly centrist politics have led both parties to tie themselves to his legacy.
“Nobody’s had to run a Senate campaign for this district since Dick Mazza took over,” said Deborah Lang, chair of the Grand Isle County Democratic committee. “So actually having a Senate race in Colchester and Grand Isle is a novel experience for most voters.”
The district includes four of the five Grand Isle County towns — South Hero, Grand Isle, North Hero and Isle La Motte — as well as nearly all of Colchester, except for an area around St. Michael’s College and the Fort Ethan Allen complex off Route 15.
In the Nov. 5 election, Sen. Andy Julow, a North Hero Democrat, is facing off against longtime Republican Rep. Patrick Brennan, who hails from Colchester. Put another way, one is from Mazza’s party, while the other is from the former senator’s hometown.
Both candidates have outlined some similar policy priorities — top among them, curbing the high cost of public education for taxpayers. But they also diverge on certain social issues, something that Julow and his supporters are trying to highlight for voters.
Julow is, technically, the seat’s incumbent. He was appointed to the post in May by Gov. Phil Scott after Mazza resigned due to health issues. But the timing meant Julow served only a single day in the Senate before this year’s Legislative session came to an end.
It was, to be sure, a consequential day: when lawmakers voted to override six of the eight vetoes that Scott issued this year. Julow voted to override five of those vetoes, though unlike many other Democrats, sided with the Republican governor on two.
He voted against legislation creating an overdose prevention center, also known as a safe injection site, as well as against a sweeping data privacy bill (the latter did not become law). Julow was not in the chamber when lawmakers chose not to attempt to override Scott’s veto of a proposed flavored tobacco ban earlier in the session.
“I’ve shown the willingness to go across party lines,” Julow said in an interview, adding that is “something that senator Mazza was known for.”
Brennan, meanwhile, voted to uphold all of Scott’s vetoes that day. The longtime House member, who recently retired from running a food stand, “Bloomin’ Onion Concessions,” at fairgrounds throughout the state, also has the governor’s backing in this fall’s race.
(It is customary for governors to appoint new legislators, as in Julow’s case, who are from the same party as the legislator being replaced.)
“We desperately need more common sense in the legislature,” Scott is quoted saying on Brennan’s Facebook page, adding voters should elect Brennan so he can “continue his good work” in Montpelier. A photo of the governor sits at the top of Brennan’s campaign website.
The Colchester Republican is one of the few lawmakers Scott is stumping for this year. Jason Maulucci, the governor’s campaign manager, has said that Scott’s camp sees Grand Isle as one of five districts where they believe the GOP has a chance to pick up a Senate seat. The party currently holds just seven seats in the 30-member Senate.
Scott was close friends with Mazza, as was Brennan himself, Brennan said. And last week, Brennan scored a key endorsement — that of Mazza’s son, Mike Mazza.
The late Sen. Dick Mazza, D-Grand Isle, seen in January 2023 chairing the Senate Transportation Committee at the Statehouse in Montpelier. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
“Pat will fight passionately to restore affordability for all of us and will lead with the same dedication and integrity that my father did,” reads an endorsement, attributed to Mike Mazza, on Brennan’s site.
At the same time, the Democratic Party has turned out for Julow. Jaimie Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, knocked on doors in Colchester for Julow’s campaign during a visit to Vermont last week, among other Democratic candidates.
Julow has been endorsed by former Democratic Gov. Howard Dean — who noted in a Facebook post supporting Julow that he was the one who recruited Dick Mazza, in the first place, to run for the Senate in the ‘80s — as well as by other current statewide Democratic candidates including U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt.
“We’re not going to replace Senator Mazza,” said Jim Dandeneau, executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party, in an interview. “Everybody in the district knew him and loved him, and there’s no one we could find with that same kind of profile.”
“But,” he added, “we’re happy to have Andy start to try and build something similar.”
A ‘purple’ district
Having a seat occupied by the same candidate, for so long, can make it challenging to predict what voters will decide this time around, some party leaders said. Mazza was first elected in the one-member district in 1984 — and by the time he resigned about four decades later, he’d become the chamber’s second-longest serving member.
The Grand Isle Senate District spans the area of three different House districts, one of which — Chittenden-19 — is Brennan’s. He’s been reelected every biennium since 2002. Brennan is one of four total House members who serve parts of Colchester, but is the town’s only Republican representative (the other three are all Democrats).
Meanwhile, the five Lake Champlain Islands towns have two different representatives in the House among them — and one is a Democrat, while the other is a Republican.
For Brennan, that 4-2 local Democratic majority means the Senate district is “stacked against him, a little bit,” said Paul Dame, chair of the Vermont Republican Party.
“It’s not like he’s running in Franklin County or Rutland County,” Dame said, referring to two counties that have sent many Republicans to the Legislature in recent elections. “So it’s going to be a tough race — but it’s going to be an important race.”
Brennan could benefit, in some ways, from the district’s demographics — about 75% of its roughly 20,000 voters live in Colchester, state legislative data shows.
At the same time, Julow likely benefits from substantial name recognition on the Islands. He is director of a county-wide economic development organization and has run two times, albeit unsuccessfully, for the Islands’ two-member seat in the Vermont House. In 2016, Julow came within just 18 votes of winning a slot in the Democratic primary.
Lang, the county chair, said Mazza did “a great job” of connecting with constituents throughout his district — aided, no doubt, by Mazza’s long-standing Mallets Bay-area grocery store — but the Islands are long overdue for more delegates in the Legislature who hail from there, like Julow.
“It would be a refreshing change to have somebody from the Islands, who really knows the ins and outs of, and the difficulties of, living up here compared to Chittenden County,” she said.
People enjoy the Colchester causeway on Tuesday, June 4, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Even at the general election stage, several recent elections on the Islands have been tight. Lang called the five towns “definitely purple” overall.
Notably, then-House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, a Democrat from South Hero, lost her seat by just 20 votes in 2020 to Rep. Michael Morgan, a Milton Republican (the Grand Isle House district also includes part of Milton — though it doesn’t include Colchester.)
More recently, the 2022 House election saw only about 100 votes separate the first and last-place candidates among the four (two Democrats and two Republicans) who ran.
“It just shows how, really, evenly divided this district is, that we’re all basically within 2% of each other,” Rep. Josie Leavitt, a Democrat who won one of the seats, said at the time.
Both candidates have drawn a mix of donors from Chittenden and Grand Isle counties, according to campaign finance filings with the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office. But with about a month until election day, Brennan has hauled in significantly more cash overall: about $65,400 as of Oct. 1, while Julow raised about $39,400, filings show.
Brennan has thousand-dollar donations from a number of Chittenden County-area business owners and landlords, including Bissonette Properties, members of the Tarrant and Pizzagalli families as well as Raymond Pecor and Bruce Lisman, among others.
Julow has a number of substantially smaller donations, including from other current and Democratic candidates, filings show. At the same time, he’s put about $10,500 of his own money into the race, accounting for more than a quarter of all that he’s raised. That’s far more than Brennan, who has only put up $500 for his race, filings show.
On the record
Both Brennan and Julow have identified similar topics as priorities if they’re elected this fall — namely, addressing concerns over large property tax increases in many communities, and making structural changes to the way public education is funded in the state. Both also said they want to focus on promoting economic development.
Julow said he is well positioned to tackle education funding issues because he spent years chairing his local school board. Specifically, he helped consolidate three school districts in three towns — Isle La Motte, North Hero and Grand Isle — into a single entity, now called the Champlain Islands Unified Union School District.
“People coming out of the school board are probably the most equipped to tackle education costs, and that’s what we have to do,” Julow said. “All of it is taking place down there, and that’s where I’ve been working — building budgets that did well, and some budgets that failed. And, we had to respond to those concerns.”
Sen. Andy Julow, D-Grand Isle, listens to discussion on the floor of the Senate during a veto override session at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Monday, June 17, 2024.Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Brennan, on the other hand, pointed to his experience on the powerful, state-budget building House Appropriations Committee, which he has sat on since 2023. He noted, with some pride, that he was in the committee’s Republican minority consistently voting against legislation such as the annual property tax legislation that funds the state’s public school districts, known as the “yield bill.”
While Brennan’s long tenure has given him seniority, it’s also left him with a long voting record that, in some cases, Julow’s campaign has been quick to criticize. They’ve focused on two votes where the candidates, had they been in the chamber at the same time, would likely have diverged: same-sex marriage and abortion.
In 2009, Brennan voted against legislation that ultimately codified same-sex marriage into Vermont law (civil unions between same-sex couples became legal in 2000.)
In an interview, Brennan said he voted against the 2009 legislation after taking a poll of constituents in his district and finding that a majority didn’t support it. He said if he had to vote on the issue again, he would conduct another poll to gauge support — but insisted it was “a misconception” that he is opposed to same-sex marriage.
“I don’t care if you’re gay. I’m not anti-gay. I voted against gay marriage because that was in the infancy of my tenure,” he said. “I listened to constituents and voted no.”
Rep. Pat Brennan, R-Colchester, listens in the House Appropriations Committee at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Wednesday, February 14, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger Credit: Glenn Russell
More recently, Brennan voted against sending to voters a measure — which was ultimately approved, too — to enshrine “an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy” in the state, known as Article 22. The measure made Vermont the first state in the country to codify access to reproductive healthcare in its founding document.
Brennan said in an interview, citing his upbringing in the Catholic Church, that he is opposed to abortion except in cases of rape, incest or the “health of the baby, or the health of the mother.”
Julow said he strongly supports both measures.
“My daughter lives in the South, and she’s having a harder time than my mother did in the ‘70s getting birth control,” he said. “I feel that’s a step in the wrong direction.”
Julow’s campaign also pointed to how Brennan did not sign onto a Vermont legislative resolution in January 2021 that condemned the storming of the U.S. Capitol just days earlier “as an attack on democracy,” and that went on to call for Donald Trump “to resign or be removed from office.” The measure overwhelmingly passed both chambers.
Lawmakers’ votes on the resolution were unclear, in large part because they were participating remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In a Republican caucus meeting held before the vote, Brennan voiced opposition to the measure, but said at the time he did not support Trump’s actions leading up to the riot.
In an interview, Brennan said he missed his opportunity to add his name to the resolution because he did not receive a notification about it on his computer. Pressed, he said if the vote were held again today, he would add his name to it.
Brennan also said, though, that he has not decided whether he’ll support Trump, or Kamala Harris, or neither in this fall’s election. He noted for some GOP voters, his support or not of Trump appears to be a litmus test — he’s gotten multiple emails saying that someone’s vote for him depends on his support of the former president.
“I’m worried about Vermont right now,” he said. “I’m running for Vermont.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: In Grand Isle Senate race, both parties see an opportunity to build off Dick Mazza’s legacy.