By Guy Page

Senate Pro Tem Phil Baruth announced on the floor today that he will not be seeking re-election and will retire from the Senate after this year.

Baruth also serves as Clerk of the Committee on Appropriations and as a member of the Senate Committee on Judiciary.

Elected to the Senate originally in 2010, the Burlington resident representing the Chittenden Central District has since served on the Education, Economic Development, Judiciary, and Agriculture Committees and served four years as Senate Majority Leader.

Baruth is known as a longtime advocate of gun-control legislation.

According to his Senate bio on the Legislature’s website, he has been teaching in the English Department at the University of Vermont since 1993, where he specializes in Creative Writing, Postmodern American Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British Literature, and Vermont Literature.

Prior to 2010, Phil spent a dozen years as an award-winning commentator for Vermont Public Radio; he has spent the last twenty years writing novels as well. The X President, a darkly comic take on the life and legacy of Bill Clinton, became a New York Times Notable Book in 2003. The Brothers Boswell, his most recent novel, was listed as one of the Best Books of 2009 by the Washington Post.