When lawmakers are sworn into office in January, the partisan divide in the Vermont Senate will be closer than it has been since the year 2000.
Democrats and Progressives lost six seats in the 30-member chamber in last week’s election, moving the left-leaning bloc from a supermajority of 23-7 — with which it was relatively easy to override Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s vetoes — to a much closer 17-13 split.
In the Senate, the lieutenant governor casts a vote when there’s a tie. Because Republican John Rodgers defeated Progressive/Democratic Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman last week, the GOP will also hold that tie-breaking vote. That means Democrats and Progressives will be able to spare just one member on party-line issues — though few issues break cleanly along partisan lines in the Senate.
The balance of power hasn’t been this even in nearly a quarter-century, according to a VTDigger analysis of data compiled by historian Michael Dubin and from the Secretary of State’s Office and the Vermont Legislature.
Since Democrats took control of the chamber in 1996, the fewest seats it’s held at any one time was 16, following the 2000 election. That year, the Take Back Vermont movement — a response to the legalization of same-sex civil unions — cost the seats of a number of incumbent lawmakers.
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Since 2009, Democrats and Progressives — and hybrids, such as Democrat/Progressives and Progressive/Democrats — have tended to caucus together in the Senate, so for the purposes of this analysis, they have been grouped together.
Democrats also lost big in the Vermont House, where they will similarly no longer wield a supermajority. They began the last biennium with 104 seats in the 150-member chamber and, after one seat moved from Progressive to Democratic control, ended it with 105. In January, they’ll return with just 87 members — a net loss of 18.
Republicans, meanwhile, picked up a net 19 seats last week. They started the last biennium with 38 seats and, after one member became a Libertarian, ended it with 37. They’ll return in January with 56. (Progressives, meanwhile, will continue to hold four seats and independents three.)
In at least the past three decades, no party has lost as many House seats in a single election cycle as Democrats did last week, though the party has held fewer seats in recent years than the 87 it will have in January. After the 2014 election, Democrats controlled just 85 seats and, two years later, 83.
The final tally in the House could continue to fluctuate, following a call by Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas for a revote in a Pownal district narrowly won last week by a Democrat.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Partisan divide of the Vermont Senate to be tighter than in almost a quarter-century.