John Rodgers scored the biggest upset of Vermont’s election on Tuesday by defeating incumbent Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman. Rodgers secured 46.2 percent of the vote to Zuckerman’s 44.6 percent, unofficial totals say.
Another candidate, Ian Diamondstone of the Peace and Justice Party, earned 3.7 percent of the vote.
Rodgers served several years in the Vermont Senate as a Democrat. But the farmer from West Glover ran as a Republican against on his former colleague, Zuckerman, a Progressive/Democrat farmer from Hinesburg.
Rodgers stressed that his victory wouldn’t be official until the election was certified, but he was nevertheless confident his lead of nearly 6,000 votes, or 1.6 percent, would hold.
“It’s not going to be overcome with a recount,” Rodgers said. “I fully expect to be the next lieutenant governor.”
Rodger said he looks forward to taking office, getting to know legislators and getting to work on policies that help the regular Vermonters who supported him. He said he won because those voters “wanted a lieutenant governor that could work with Gov. [Phil] Scott to address the crisis of affordability.”
“It’s really hard for a Democrat to endorse a person with an ‘R’ beside their name,” he said.
Zuckerman would not concede defeat on Wednesday, saying he only had two hours of sleep and needed “time to absorb the information.” He acknowledged that Scott and Republicans had done a good job of capitalizing on people’s affordability concerns.
“There is a lot to be said for rhetoric that appeals to people’s frustrations,” Zuckerman said.
He said he did his best to counter the narrative that the legislature was driving up costs, but he felt lawmakers didn’t do a good enough job of defending their policies.
The increase in education spending and resulting average 14 percent property tax hike, for example, often left Democratic lawmakers justifying the increases and explaining a complex tax system while Republicans zeroed in on the impact on people’s pocketbooks.
“It’s tough. If you’re not fighting for people’s economic well-being, it’s going to come back to haunt you,” he said.
Now, however, Scott will no longer be able to blame the legislature for all the state’s ills and will have to propose real solutions, Zuckerman said.
“With eight years under his belt, it’s time for the governor to step up with an idea if he’s really going to solve these challenges,” he said.
The role of the lieutenant governor is largely ceremonial, with little influence on legislation. The officeholder presides over the Senate and steps in if the governor can no longer serve.
Yet the race had become something of a referendum on the affordability challenges in Vermont, with each candidate supporting policies they argued would address the high cost of housing, energy and education. Zuckerman proposed supporting working people by raising taxes on the rich and second-home owners, while Rodgers argued that cost cutting and other measures such as administrative consolidation and reducing red tape should be pursued first.
“Regular Vermonters like me that are out there doing a trade or working as a nurse or a teacher, they’re opening their tax bill and going, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’” Rodgers recently told Seven Days.
In many ways, the two candidates are very similar. They are both married, middle-aged white farmers and longtime Democratic politicians with similar stances on several issues. But their campaigns worked hard to draw sharp distinctions between them, often in highly personal terms.
Rodgers painted Zuckerman as a dishonest career politician whose wealth made him less sympathetic to the hardships that higher fees and taxes have created for average Vermonters. Zuckerman questioned whether Rodgers had any real policy solutions and sought to tie him to the “toxic male” politics and policies of the national GOP leaders.
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This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2024.
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