Having outperformed even their sunniest of down-ballot forecasts on Election Day, Vermont’s Republican leaders are now starting to contemplate how they’ll utilize their newfound political power when they return to the Statehouse in January.
“I haven’t even thought about that yet,” House Minority Leader Pattie McCoy, R-Poultney, said Wednesday afternoon. “We’re less than 24 hours out. I still can’t believe it. Every once in a while, I look at the numbers. I double check: ‘Am I sure we won these seats? This is correct, right?’”
Vermont Republicans — boosted by GOP Gov. Phil Scott’s emphatic support on the campaign trail this year — shattered Democrats’ more than two-thirds supermajority in both the House and Senate on Tuesday.
The results were decisive: In the House, Republicans picked up a net 17 seats out of 150, boosting their minority caucus from 38 members to 55. In the Senate, Republicans flipped six seats — unseating two longtime incumbents, Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison, and Sen. Mark MacDonald, D-Orange — and bringing their caucus to 13 in the 30-seat chamber.
To be clear, Democrats and their allies in the Progressive party will still control the agenda in both chambers.
“Democrats still have a majority,” McCoy said. “I’m not fooling myself.”
Seventeen Democrats and Progressives will occupy the Senate in January, and there will be 91 in the House. Three independents make up the remainder of the seats in the latter chamber.
But Tuesday marked the end of an era during which Democrats held more than two-thirds of all seats in both chambers — so-called supermajorities that surpassed the number of votes necessary to override Scott’s frequent vetoes on Democratic priorities.
As a result, Democrats will no longer be able to push through legislation despite the governor’s opposition, as they did with six successful veto overrides in 2023 and another six in 2024.
‘We feel like we haven’t been heard.’
According to David Glidden, chair of the Vermont Democratic Party, Scott and his fellow down-ballot Republicans this year banged the drum of affordability in their campaign messaging — with much success.
“What I see pretty clearly is an incredible amount of economic anxiety,” Glidden said of Tuesday’s results.
On the campaign trail, Republicans pointed to policies like the clean heat standard and rising taxes and fees — laying the blame on Democrats for the strain on Vermonters’ finances. McCoy hypothesized that the “tipping point” for many voters “was when the people got their property tax bills.”
From their defensive position, Glidden said, Democrats didn’t have a strong message on affordability to counter the Republicans’.
“Fundamentally, I think some of that vote that we saw for Republican legislative candidates was sort of a protest vote — that they weren’t hearing Democrats say, ‘We understand and we’re going through the same affordability issues,’” Glidden said. “I think some of that will be really important — that rather than seeming defensive when it comes to affordability, both articulating our plans, but also just articulating some really clear empathy.”
Both House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, and Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D-Chittenden Central, declined VTDigger’s requests for interviews after the election.
In written statements, they both said there were lessons for Democrats to glean not just from Vermont’s down-ballot results, but a red wave that hit the rest of the country, too.
“Voters spoke loudly across the state, and we Senate Democrats will need to carefully consider the results and then chart a new course accordingly,” Baruth wrote.
And even more than simply flipping competitive seats from blue to red, Krowinski noted that Vermonters this week unseated numerous incumbents at the polls — including some longtime members and powerful committee chairs. Glidden conceded that the party “may have weighted incumbency more than we should have, and assuming someone has name recognition or voter loyalty.”
The key election takeaway for all legislators, according to McCoy, is “to be laser-focused on just a few basic things” — affordability chief among them.
“I’m hoping that they’re going to start listening to their constituents, and also listen to the people that are around the table and the committees who are serving those constituents,” McCoy said of her Democratic counterparts. “We impart information as a caucus, and we feel like we haven’t been heard.”
According to Senate Minority Leader Randy Brock, R-Franklin, the lesson learned from Tuesday’s election results was “moderation,” which “in the last session, got lost.”
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“I think that one of the prevailing voices was the voice of moderation — that people have to talk with each other and come up with solutions that just simply aren’t their own solutions, and ignore what the other people have to say,” Brock said.
In the past two years in Montpelier, Brock said, “there has not been the moderation, the discussion, the consensus that makes good policy.”
“When you have one group that simply shoves down the throat of the other their policies and prescriptions, that’s not healthy,” he concluded.
‘Success is now everyone’s responsibility.’
How Republicans plan to rise to the occasion and bring their own solutions to the table, though, remains to be seen.
Both Brock and McCoy said Wednesday that they need time to strategize with their newly bolstered caucuses to come up with policy plans.
Asked, for instance, how Republicans plan to address Vermont’s rising education costs and property taxes — an issue on which Republicans campaigned hard this year — Brock answered, “I don’t want to be premature and give you all the answers on day one.”
“One of the ways that we’re going to get to all those answers is by having discussions with the new members of our caucus,” Brock said. “Many of them had strong things to say during the course of the election, and I want to give them a chance to have the discussions with us before we have the discussions with everybody else, and certainly before we publicize.”
One thing is clear, though: In order to advance legislation, Democrats will need to listen to Republicans in Montpelier — including Scott, who will regain the full power of his veto pen in January.
Given that, Krowinski and Baruth in both their statements made sure to put the ball back in Scott’s court, when it comes to developing policy solutions next session.
“The Governor must set a thorough policy agenda that is supported by solutions that thoughtfully address crucial issues such as reducing property taxes, controlling health care costs, and protecting Vermonters from the climate-related challenges that have significantly impacted our state over the past two years,” Krowinski wrote. “I have, and remain, committed to working with all Vermonters to get the hard work done.”
With the end of Democrats’ supermajority, Baruth said, so comes the end of Republicans’ “superminority.”
“My hope is that Governor Scott and his party also chart a new course, and that they begin to participate in the thorny policy discussions now underway,” he said. “The voters have given us something closer to the balance the Governor demanded, and success is now everyone’s responsibility.”
Scott’s campaign manager, Jason Maulucci, said the governor hopes that Democratic leaders come to the table to negotiate with their Republican counterparts and the Governor’s Office before legislation hits Scott’s desk.
From Tuesday’s election results, Maulucci said that “it’s clear that the governor’s priorities are Vermonters’ priorities, and the legislature is going to have to respond to them.”
“That’s affordability, housing and public safety,” he said. “We’re going to need to work together. We’re going to need to find common ground. These solutions are going to have to be bipartisan in nature. It’s going to mean difficult decisions are made that have difficult trade-offs.”
Asked what the governor’s specific policy priorities will be next session beyond the general topics of affordability, housing and public safety, Maulucci said those would be workshopped “in the coming weeks, as we go through the budget development process and the policy development process.”
“It’s clear we’re going to need to tackle education finance. We’re going to need to move forward with real solutions that will make a dent in the housing crisis. We’re going to need to do our part to shore up our infrastructure and combat climate change. There’s health care,” Maulucci said. “There’s a whole host of issues, but certainly, voters are expecting us to focus on property taxes, education finance, housing and public safety.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Emboldened by unexpectedly strong results, Vermont Republicans will share more power — and responsibility.