After ‘tragic’ election night, Dems oust Clarkson from Senate majority leadership

By Sarah Mearhoff
©2024 VTDigger

MONTPELIER

Two and a half weeks after Vermont voters eviscerated their supermajority, Senate Democrats convened Saturday to reflect on their election losses and chart a new course ahead of the 2025 legislative session. They voted to retain one top leader — but jettisoned another.

Saturday’s caucus at the Statehouse was the first time Democratic senators-elect had gathered after what Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor of Hartford, called “an exceptionally difficult, tragic election night.”

Republican candidates flipped six Senate seats, ousting three incumbents, and established a new partisan breakdown in the chamber of 17-13 — the narrowest margin Democrats have held in nearly a quarter-century.

Seeing a need to change course, the caucus on Saturday voted out its incumbent majority leader, Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor of Woodstock, who has held the post for four years. In her place, they elected Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D/P-Chittenden Southeast.

All of the votes Saturday were conducted by secret ballot. Democrats elected Ram Hinsdale their new majority leader by a vote of 9-7, with one member abstaining.

In his nominating speech for Ram Hinsdale, Sen. Andrew Perchlik, D/P-Washington, echoed what had already become a common refrain in the room Saturday morning: that on the campaign trail, Vermont Democrats failed at messaging and communicating to voters and combatting criticism from their Republican challengers and Gov. Phil Scott, also a Republican.

Perchlik said of Ram Hinsdale, “I don’t think there is anybody in this room that’s better at communication and messaging.”

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Perchlik said he would also be “honest” about “the criticism that I heard of Sen. Ram Hinsdale, and one that I’ve had myself, and that is that she’s a bit of an overachiever, and she’s ambitious.”

“I think that maybe there’s positions where you don’t want those characteristics in a person,” Perchlik said. “But I think we’re talking about electing a political leader, for a political caucus, in a political body, working in politics, and we want somebody that is ambitious.”

With her new leadership position, Ram Hinsdale will most likely forfeit her current position as chair of the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs — a post from which she has been able to shape major policies in the chamber. That’s because of a longstanding tradition in the Senate, dating back to 1997, of caucus leaders not chairing policy committees to prevent them from accumulating too much power.

Ram Hinsdale tried to change that tradition on Saturday. In an unusual move, senators voted on a piece of internal guidance that would have allowed caucus leaders to serve as committee chairs, as well. Ram Hinsdale urged her colleagues to vote yes.

In a speech to her colleagues urging their ‘yes’ votes, Ram Hinsdale chalked up the question to “basic math” in the 30-member chamber.

“We have 17 members of our caucus. When you subtract our new members … you land with 14 members of our caucus, and you subtract the rest of the (leadership) positions … you’re left with 11. Eleven Democrats to distribute leadership roles in each position,” Ram Hinsdale said. “There are 11 committees.”

From a “simple mathematical perspective,” she concluded, upholding the 27-year-old tradition would be “putting colleagues from the other side of the aisle further in line for a leadership role overseeing our policy agenda, frankly.”

Clarkson, who made the initial push for the caucus to vote on the matter Saturday, said that, given the 17-13 makeup of the Senate, that’s fair. Already, Sen. Russ Ingalls, R-Essex, chairs the Senate Institutions Committee.

“This is nothing new, and nothing new with these numbers,” Clarkson said. “Given the number of Republicans that have been elected, it makes sense that there will be at least one — we’ve always had at least one Republican chair — and … my guess is there will be a second.”

What’s important to Clarkson, she said, is “empowering our caucus and empowering individual growth. I think it’s essential that we grow our leadership in this caucus.”

Ultimately, senators voted 9-6, with two abstentions, to defeat the proposed change to allow a caucus leader to also serve as a committee chair.

Democrats also opted not to make a change at the top of the Senate’s hierarchy.

Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, faced no challenger from within the caucus for his nomination to serve a second biennium leading the Senate. As the Democratic caucus’s nominee, Baruth will face a vote by all 30 members of the Senate on the first day of the 2025 legislative session in January.

But even within the caucus, his nomination was not unanimous. Fifteen senators voted ‘yes’ to renominate Baruth to the post, while two abstained. Following the vote, Baruth said that 15-2 is “a number that we should all have in our minds going forward, because if we vote 15-2 on the floor, we lose whatever bill is in front of us.”

With 13 Republicans in the chamber, Baruth noted that two Democrats splitting from the caucus would create a 15-15 tie on the floor. Republican Lt. Gov.-elect John Rodgers would then break such a tie.

“I understand I did not get a unanimous vote, that two people had their reasons,” Baruth said. “Every bill that comes to you, you may have reasons why you might not want to vote for it. But we’re in a situation where the good of the caucus and the bills that you want to pass out of your committee are going to need you to be a little more amenable to other people’s bills. You’re going to have to stretch sometimes.”

Also on Saturday, Democrats elected White the caucus’s new whip, with 14 voting in favor and three abstaining. Perchlik, who had previously held the post, did not seek it again.

Democrats also nominated Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, to serve as the third member of the powerful, three-member Committee on Committees.

That panel, which also includes the pro tem and lieutenant governor, draws up Senate committee assignments and chairmanships, playing a major role in choreographing the chamber’s policy direction. Sixteen Democratic senators-elect voted in favor of Lyons’ nomination, while one abstained. Lyons will also face a vote on the Senate floor in January before she can claim the title.

She would replace retiring Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, who held the position only briefly after the resignation last year of longtime Sen. Dick Mazza, D-Grand Isle.

After selecting caucus leaders, senators-elect then shared with one another their priorities for the upcoming legislative session. They each rattled off a familiar list of policy goals — chief among them, to reduce Vermonters’ property tax burden and reform the state’s education finance structure.

Baruth told his caucus that he sees the state’s property tax conundrum as a “de facto emergency” — and said he plans to treat it as such from the first day of session. He proposed to clear the agendas of the Senate’s education, finance and appropriations committees at the start of the session, and offer a full week of testimony to the Scott administration to hear solutions from the governor himself.

The idea, Baruth said, would be to reach an agreement between the Republican administration and Democratic majorities at the start of the session, rather than the end. No longer holding a supermajority, legislative Democrats won’t be able to reliably override a veto from Scott — and so “no one is going home without a Phil Scott-approved tax plan,” Baruth said.

“If there is a message in this election, I believe it was that the voters wanted the governor’s ideas moved to the top of the agenda,” Baruth said. “That is literally what I’m suggesting.”

The Chester Telegraph has republished this article with permission.