Some Quick, Sleep-Deprived Observations on Yesterday’s Elections

Good!

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VERMONT

This was almost as good as it could possibly have gone for Vermont Republicans in 2024. Almost.

In the State Senate Republicans won all of the “big five” targeted races (Beck, Brennan, Douglass, Mattos, and Hart) Mattos and Brennan even more decisively than I thought they would, plus one of the wildcards in Steve Heffernan knocking off Chris Bray in Addison County. I did think they would grab one more of the wild cards with the open seats in Bennington and Windsor or in Chittenden Southeast where Bruce Roy looked like he was closing ground on Kesha Ram Hinsdale. But, as they say, wait ‘til next year (or two).  

In the House the Republicans did great, and congratulations to all those who won – and a special hearty thanks to those who put themselves on the line but came up short. I’m not at all surprised by the number of wins. I am disappointed in some of the losses, as I thought we’d pick up at least a couple of the Colchester seats and we came up just short in close contests in Springfield and Bennington-1. I thought for sure we’d pick up the seat in Cambridge. Again, wait til next time.

Pleasant surprise that Rob North knocked out Diane Lanpher, chair of the Appropriations Committee, and not the more junior Matt Birong in Addison-3 (though it would have been pleasanter if Joe Baker had been able to knock off Birong too.) Perhaps the most satisfying win of the night was Joe Luneau kicking smarmy Mike McCarthy into the gutter to give Franklin County 100% Republican representation.  

The best news was, of course, Bray’s defeat along with that of fellow carbon tax zealot and Natural Resources and Energy committee member Mark MacDonald (D-Orange) which signaled, I strongly suspect, the death of the Clean Heat Standard or, hopefully, anything like it. With the retirement of Dick McCormack, the five member committee that wrote that awful law has been deservedly gutted.

Lessons moving forward.

The big one, Republicans can win elections in Vermont if they have good candidates and a strong, loud message. It was critical that the VTGOP put out a positive agenda in January with GET REAL to set the stage for the ultimate campaigns, and Right 4 Vermont PAC flooded social media with memes showing how incumbent Democrats voted on key issues starting in June with the very simple message – Vote them out! Both of these efforts effectively defined what the election was all about.

Big helps: John Rodgers switching parties and running a statewide race based on the fact that Democrats had gone off the deep end, which gave Democrat voters an example and permission to abandon their party as well. Governor Scott deciding it was time to put some of his political capital (as well as some financial capital) into generating some coattails. And, of course, those Burlington business folks who made sure Republican Senate candidates were competitively funded. (Big question: will they be back two years from now?)

All that said, Republicans could have done better.

They picked up what looks to be eighteen House seats in a year when they still did not even run candidates in about a third of all the races they could have contested, and a lot of the candidates who did run – some successfully – got into the game late as write-ins or appointees. Now imagine if Republicans had run, say, a full slate of House early-committed candidates in southern Chittenden County where they ran practically none. Or in Bennington County where several slots went unfilled. A big reason I think Heffernan was able to pull out a victory in Addison is because there was a full slate of House Candidates running in the county helping to get out the vote, even if they didn’t win themselves, whereas a lack of house candidates in large swaths of Bennington County and Chittenden Southeast left Joe Gervais and Bruce Roy at a disadvantage.

Still, it was a good night to be sure. Champagne corks were popped.

NATIONAL

I confess I had two “I told you so” versions of this ready to go no matter the outcome.

During the primary I warned Republicans not to nominate Donald Trump. If he lost, I could have said “I told you so.” Why did I make this warning? Because there were only two Democrats he could defeat – Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I called it that Biden would be removed in the summer of 2024, and, so I said at the time, there was no way the Democrats after pulling off this brilliant, tactical bait-and-switch would then be so stupid as to replace him with the only candidate on their bench so clearly and measurably worse than the dottering dementia patient.

Yup. Mea culpa, I blew that last part.

I struggle for metaphors. It’s like Frodo Baggins making it all the way to the Cracks of Doom and then, instead of tossing the Ring into the fire for the victory or even claiming it for himself, giving it to Smeagol with a cheery, “What the hell, here you go. Let’s see what happens!”  

Anyway, thanks to whatever imbecilic, DEI-inspired, Kool-Aid drinker(s) made that decision so I can happily go with my, “Hey Dems, I told if you swapped out Biden for Harris you’d lose bigly,” post-election football spike. Nailed it!

Now, I hope Donald Trump will start this second chapter of his presidency by offering an olive branch to AOC, Chuck Schumer and the now-minority Senate Democrats by immediately moving forward with one of their stated priorities in a show of bipartisan grace: expanding the Supreme Court to thirteen seats. ;-)

• Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.

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