By Guy Page
Tuesday’s huge gains in both Senate and House and in the lieutenant governor’s chair probably wouldn’t have happened without a perfect storm of about 12 events, GOP State Chairman Paul Dame explained on VDC-TV yesterday, November 7.
Often made a scapegoat for past GOP losses statewide, Dame traveled to VDC-TV’s new studio at 802 Scoop in Barre to be interviewed by Social Media Director Paul Bean.
First and foremost, the “Democrat supermajority abused its power and stopped listening to people,” Dame said.
Instead of working with the nation’s most popular governor, “they tried things they would never have tried under a Democratic governor” – passing legislation that no sitting Democrat governor would have allowed to come to him for signature. Steep school spending hikes and draconian carbon reduction measures topped Dame’s list of Supermajority acts of brinksmanship.
Democrats paid the price at the polls for deafness to citizen concerns about the Clean Heat Standard. “We saw the Clean Heat Standard, where you had more voters reaching out to their legislators any time in 20 years, and they were getting ignored,” Dame said. “You had Senate Pro Temp Baruth basically telling his Senators to ignore the people that are writing to them, ignore the press, and stick to the plan.”
Voters responded with a record turnout: more than 4,000 votes surpassing the 2020 record of 370,000. While the presidential election clearly played a role, Dame’s analysis of early mailed-in ballot returns showed a high rate of return for independent and swing voters – indicating statewide voter unrest. Also – crucially – many of the GOP candidates who were swept to victory in what VPR reporter Peter Hirschfeld called ‘a red Tsunami’ were recruited after the State mailed out the first tax bills reflecting the huge property tax increase.
Property taxes. “Obviously,” Dame said of the August Surprise 14% statewide increase. “Democrats approached the issue of property taxes with a shrug, like, ‘What can you do, everybody already voted on their budget.’ There was no sense that Democrats communicated to to the public that, yes, this is a problem and we’re going to do something about it.”
Town Meeting voters who once, twice, even three times voted down their school budgets were unhappy in the extreme when they got their tax bill. And Democrats did little to nothing to assuage them, Dame said.
“They were completely silent on those two things [property taxes, Clean Heat Standard]. They weren’t willing to admit that it was a problem that needed to be addressed,” Dame said.
Other contributing factors to the Vermont red wave include:
- Retirements in the Senate. Two of the five departed senators may have sought re-election “if [Senate Pro Tem] Phil Baruth had not been so arrogant,” Dame said – naming specifically Sen. Jane Kitchel in Caledonia County and Brian Campion in Bennington County. The GOP picked up Caledonia and ran a strong but unsuccessful challenge in Bennington.
- Unprecedented campaign cooperation between Gov. Phil Scott, state, county and town committees, and legislative candidates.
For the full list of about a dozen reasons why Democrats lost their supermajority, and for insights into how Republicans hope to consolidate their gains and add more seats in 2026, see the entire interview on YouTube (above).