Nationally, pundits are describing this year’s election as a red wave, following wins by President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans going into a wide swath of federal and state-elected offices.
Though results aren’t official, the Vermont GOP is in on the celebration. John Rodgers appears to have won the lieutenant governor’s race, and the GOP picked up more seats in the Legislature than they have in more than a decade.
Though Democrats still control both chambers, they can no longer unilaterally override Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s vetoes, which could dramatically change how business is done in Montpelier next year.
For more on that, and how Republicans approached this election cycle, Vermont Public's Mary Williams Engisch sat down with Vermont GOP Chair Paul Dame.This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Mary Williams Engisch: To start, in a Vermont Public interview from last July, you mentioned President-elect Trump was complicating your party's recruitment of down-ballot candidates, and in the past, you've also suggested Republicans would need to move on from Trump to make gains in Vermont. But you also acknowledged in that July interview that the Vermont GOP picked up legislative seats in 2020 with Trump at the top of the ticket.
Last night, was obviously great news for Republicans in the Legislature, and Trump actually built on that support here compared to 2020. How are you squaring all those feelings that you've had about the direction of the party in recent years, and what are your key takeaways from this election?
Paul Dame: I think one of the things that really was a counter-balance during the recruitment phase was property taxes.
People's attention in Vermont, we felt like, moved away from the national scene and became very, very local. And that continued to be the focus of the campaign moving forward for our House and Senate candidates, obviously, with Gov. Scott at the top of the ticket. We really experienced an incredible and unprecedented amount of unity around Gov. Scott and that affordability message, and I think that was the key to our success this year.
Mary Williams Engisch: Has Vermont's GOP finally figured out how to create that, that big tent where MAGA Trump supporters and Scott Republicans can coexist despite ideological differences?
Paul Dame: Yeah, I think the way that we do that is we focus on the local level. The same way that, at our town select board level and our school board level, the temperature on the partisanship gets dialed down at those most local levels when we focus on the things in our neighborhoods, on our streets, that really impact us all in a very meaningful way.
Vermont Republicans are doing the same thing. Saying, "If we bring that focus from the national level, where Vermont doesn't have a huge influence, and we make it on the state level, we can really do a lot more."
And we're looking for the same kinds of things, whether it's flood recovery, whether it's public safety, affordability, those are things that every Republican is coming together with. Obviously, we saw a lot of Democrats voting for Gov. Scott and for some of our candidates as well.
Mary Williams Engisch: Tell me more. How did the party get there?
Paul Dame: I think part of it came from, really, the rock bottom point where we were at after the 2022 election. It really caused everyone to put aside some, whatever your personal preference was, whatever you wished other Republicans were doing, A lot of that sort of melted away, and everyone coalesced around the governor and the affordability focus. I think we saw that kind of going into the recruiting phase and then even through the campaign phase.
The focus being on Vermont is what kept Vermont Republicans together.
Mary Williams Engisch: How do you maintain that coexistence going forward?
Paul Dame: Yeah, a lot of it is going to come from from the governor. He's taken a much more active role in this campaign, getting much more involved with endorsements and doing several public appearances with our candidates. We're expecting him to maintain that strong leadership position for the caucus; we're going to have a lot of new members. And so there's a real opportunity for Gov. Scott to set that agenda early and clearly up front.
Mary Williams Engisch: Well, we were just mentioning Republican Gov. Phil Scott — re-elected to a fifth term. He's been adamant about the need for a more fiscally conservative Legislature. That's after Vermonters expressed a lot of consternation, as you mentioned, property taxes, cost of living, during this campaign season. To help with that goal, Scott campaigned harder for down-ballot candidates. How much do you think that did impact Republican legislative candidates' success this year?
Paul Dame: I think it was a key and critical component. It's often said that success has many fathers, and failure is an orphan. And I think that this year, there was a number of things: Gov. Scott getting more involved. Voters just really being at a point where they wanted to see things different, working differently. I think that the Republican Party at our town and county levels was more active and engaged than years past.
We also had a very competitive lieutenant governor's race with John Rodgers, and having that in the mix, I think, brought more attention to the state. Gave every Republican, even if they were in districts where they felt like, "Maybe my House rep. or my Senate candidate doesn't really have a shot. This lieutenant governor's race is interesting, and I'm going to go and vote for that." And it helps all the other Republicans on the rest of the ticket.
So I think there's a lot of different factors that were involved there, but certainly to me, Gov. Scott's involvement was something that I think, without it, it's hard to imagine us repeating the kind of success we had last night.
Mary Williams Engisch: One more question for you, Paul, with your party soon holding more control in the Legislature, how will the governor and GOP lawmakers approach the upcoming session?
Paul Dame: I think the first step is for us to get everyone on the same page. Like I mentioned, we're gonna have a lot of brand new people.
Then, also being able to come together as a caucus and talk about what everyone else heard as they were on the campaign trail. I think it's something that I heard on another one of your programs earlier today, voters in other states were feeling like Democrats haven't been listening. And I think that's certainly true here in Vermont, not just at the national level.
In March, voters spoke clearly: We want changes in property tax, and Democrats didn't really listen. The Clean Heat Standard came out, we had record amounts of voters contacting their legislators — something we haven't seen in almost 20 years.
The first thing that Republicans have to do, we've been given this opportunity, and maybe for a limited time, is to do exactly what we know caused the Democrats' failure, and to go back and listen to the people who sent us there. And get ready to spend the next two years working together with the governor and with the majority — right? The Democrats are still going to control the House and the Senate. We've got a little more influence than we did two years ago. We can't be completely sidelined, but at the end of the day, we're still going to end up with with Democrats in the majority. So, we've got to make that work, as well.
But, what I think this does is bring everyone back to the table in a way that they weren't two years ago. There was kind of this stalemate. After the 2022 election, the governor says, "I've got a mandate." The Democrats are saying, "We've got a mandate because we've got a supermajority."
Then last night, voters in Vermont made it very clear we're giving the mandate to the governor and to the people who want to work with the governor, not the people who are trying to undermine him at every step.
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