On a virtual debate stage Tuesday night, Vermont’s leading candidates for lieutenant governor found themselves in agreement on policy as often as not.
Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, a Progressive/Democrat, and his Republican challenger, former senator John Rodgers, pushed back on a recent report calling for structural changes to rural hospitals. They backed a higher minimum wage. They opposed overhauling the state’s Fish and Wildlife Board. And they concurred that further consolidating school districts could be one avenue to curtailing Vermont’s education spending.
But despite that agreement, the two candidates drew sharp distinctions at the debate, hosted by VTDigger. And Rodgers, in particular, sought to distance himself from Zuckerman on a personal level. He questioned the lieutenant governor’s honesty, accused him of spreading misinformation and characterized himself as the voice of the working class and Zuckerman as a member of the elite.
“Personally, my opponent and I couldn’t be more different,” Rodgers said. “My opponent grew up in privilege in one of the wealthiest communities in Massachusetts. I grew up the son of dairy farmers in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. And I believe that has influenced our values. I don’t believe my opponent can represent most Vermonters as well as I can, because I’ve lived the same life as they have.”
It was a characterization that Zuckerman contested. Though he grew up the son of a doctor — “I’ve never hidden the good fortune of that privilege,” he said — he noted that his father died when Zuckerman was 13 years old, changing his family’s economic status “dramatically.” He said he’d worked hard as a farmer most of his adult life and only recently came into an inheritance.
Rodgers has made the issue of socioeconomic status a cornerstone of his campaign for lieutenant governor. Though he spent 16 years serving as a Democrat in the Vermont House and Senate, Rodgers said Tuesday that he believed “the Progressives have taken over the Democratic Party that I grew up in” and left behind the working class.
That, Rodgers said, prompted him to defect from his former party — and challenge Zuckerman, who has spent decades in office pushing for progressive policy.
Zuckerman, for his part, argued that it was his policy prescriptions, not Rodgers’, that would help the working class. And he pushed back on his Republican opponent’s assertion that Progressives had taken over the Democratic Party, which now commands a two-thirds majority in both chambers of the Legislature.
“Ultimately, we haven’t seen full-on implementation of universal health care,” Zuckerman said at the debate. “Also, the Legislature … didn’t pass that marginal income tax to invest in affordable housing, which would have greatly helped working class people. And they haven’t raised (the) minimum wage the way that I would have liked over time, with incremental but serious steps above inflation, to really help working class people, as well.”
“So I think it’s a far cry to say the Progressive agenda has taken over the Legislature,” he concluded.
Zuckerman, too, focused on party affiliation. Though Rodgers sought to distance himself from former President Donald Trump, Zuckerman simply pointed to Rodgers’ new party label.
“My opponent has chosen to be a Republican, and that party has gone off the rails, and so I have associated him with the party he’s chosen to be a part of,” the incumbent said. “I don’t think that’s inaccurate.”
When given the opportunity to pose a question to Rodgers, Zuckerman asked whether he believed Trump to be a threat to American democracy and whether he should have been impeached.
“I think everybody should be held accountable for violations of any law, and that no one should be above them. As I’ve stated a whole bunch of times, I didn’t like Mr. Trump before he ran for office, and I would never vote for him,” Rodgers said, before turning the question on Zuckerman. “But trying to tie me to the national Republican and MAGA movement is dishonest on your part, and you know that. You know me.”
At several points during the debate, the candidates’ temperament took center stage. Citing a VTDigger report that Zuckerman had been reprimanded by legislative leaders in January 2023 after female lawmakers complained of his unprompted offerings of menstrual products, moderators asked if he thought he had done anything wrong.
“What I probably did wrong was, I should have just let my chief of staff make that conversation happen as a woman,” Zuckerman said. “But ultimately, a lot of folks are very upset that (the menstrual products are) now no longer available.”
As VTDigger reported, House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, urged Zuckerman in a February 2023 letter to take sexual harassment training and “Consider meeting with House members in the company of others.” Moderators asked Zuckerman on Tuesday, “How can you do your job as lieutenant governor, if you’re not supposed to meet one-on-one with fellow lawmakers?”
“First of all, it’s an interesting request, because there are separations of powers, and I think that’s a big question,” Zuckerman responded. “Second of all, I’ve had a number of legislators who are women say they were very upset with that directive by the speaker, because they’ve been empowered by their constituents to meet with whoever they need to and want to. And so I think it’s really up to the individual.”
When asked for his own take on the situation, Rodgers came to Krowinski’s defense.
“What I’ve been hearing from around the state is, a lot of folks just think it was inappropriate and showed poor judgment,” Rodgers said of Zuckerman’s actions. “But I believe that the speaker was within her bounds when she asked the lieutenant governor to be more careful about meeting with women who were made uncomfortable by their personal boundaries being violated.”
Rodgers also found himself defending his own prior behavior in office during Tuesday night’s debate. As VTDigger reported at the time, Rodgers as a senator in 2020 referred to an unnamed Senate colleague as a “snippy little bitch” after facing questions on his attendance record in committee — language that the Senate president pro tempore called “derogatory” and particularly troubling given that it appeared targeted at an openly gay colleague.
Asked about the incident Tuesday night, Rodgers said, “I owned it, and I apologized” before adding that, in the leadup to his email, “I had been failed by my (Senate) leadership.”
“That wasn’t the whole story,” Rodgers said. “There were a lot of other issues going on, but that statement was not pointed towards any person, and that’s clear if you read the letter. But I did own that I should have not used it, and I lost my temper because of lack of sleep and what I saw as abuse and neglect by my leadership.”
Given the opportunity to weigh in, Zuckerman said he could empathize with making a mistake when exhausted.
“I mean, I take responsibility for my misstep. I’ve certainly never yelled at anyone or called anyone names,” Zuckerman said. “I respect my colleague who took responsibility for speaking out of turn in a moment of exhaustion.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: At VTDigger debate, lieutenant gubernatorial candidates highlight differences in personality more than politics.