Editor’s note: Inside the Golden Bubble is an occasional column about the Legislature.
In the first half of the legislative biennium, the newly elected Democratic governor held sway in the General Assembly on nearly every issue.
After all, the majority of lawmakers, now predominantly Democrats, had spent the previous eight years in a long-running battle with Republican Gov. James Douglas over the budget, taxes, gay marriage, health care reforms and renewable energy.
When Gov. Peter Shumlin was elected in November 2010, the Democrats for the first time since the Howard Dean era held control of both bodies in the Legislature — the House and Senate — and the governor’s office.
The euphoria among Dems was palpable, and with few exceptions lawmakers were loath to cross their man on the Fifth Floor of the Pavilion Building.
This year, however, the honeymoon appeared to be a little less starry-eyed. While House Speaker Shap Smith and Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell were largely amenable to the governor’s budget and key pieces of legislation, including the health care reform bill and a move to make the commissioner of education a member of the Cabinet, they asserted their power and attempted to block certain provisions the Shumlin administration pressed for.
It was Smith, however, who won out time and time again, largely because of his personal discipline and the command-and-control structure of his caucus. The Speaker and his committee chairs got what they wanted on issue after issue, beating out the Senate in conference committee standoffs (most notably the prescription drug monitoring and immunization issues) and in last minute maneuvering (Smith wouldn’t accept a pig crate provision the Senate tacked onto H.774, the agricultural housekeeping bill, and so the legislation died).
Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College, says Smith is the “dominant political figure in the Legislature” and he doesn’t expect that to change as long as the Morristown Democrat is Speaker.
“Because of Shap Smith’s personal style and the trust he’s held in by his members, he is extremely highly regarded by own members and by the Senate and by lobbyists,” Davis said.
Smith is, as one longtime lobbyist put it, “in charge of the building” and has even given his old friend, the governor, a hard time on a number of issues, not the least of which was his intractability on the prescription drug monitoring question. Smith wants police to get warrants before they examine personal records; Shumlin wants law enforcement to have access to information from the database. (Campbell agrees with the governor.)
Smith got his way on other issues, too, including the number of state hospital beds that would be built (he got 25, Campbell and Shumlin wanted 16), the main location of the state office complex (Waterbury, not Montpelier as Campbell and Shumlin wished). Smith supported Rep. Janet Ancel in her insistence on a one-year moratorium on the cloud computing sales tax instead of the outright ban sought by Shumlin and some in the Senate. His caucus also successfully championed parental choice on childhood vaccinations. Smith blocked a bill that would have decriminalized marijuana by publicly declaring he wouldn’t take it up in the House (the legislation languished in the Senate).
Perhaps the most difficult stance Smith took was on adjournment. By setting an early date — April 27 — at the beginning of the session, the Speaker, in effect, controlled the end date for both the Senate and the House. And it was Smith who granted the extension to May 5.
In a speech to the House on the day of adjournment, Smith, with characteristic modesty, gave all the credit for the House’s newfound authority to his leadership team. As he put it: “I really don’t have any power, all the power resides in the committee chairs … it’s because of the work they’ve done that we look so good.”
Andrew MacLean, a principal in the lobbying firm MacLean, Meehan and Rice, gave Smith kudos for his leadership style. “I think Shap was a large winner in the session,” MacLean said. “The way in which he was able to keep his caucus together and focused on issues was remarkable.”
Meanwhile, Campbell scored just a few victories this session: He managed to scuttle both H.97, the child-care provider unionization bill, and the Death with Dignity legislation, both on personal grounds.
Lobbyists and lawmakers say Campbell, who is well-liked, had difficulty controlling the Senate calendar. Instead of marching through the day’s orders, no one knew what legislation he was actually going to take up on a given day. They say he came across as too eager to please, disorganized and willing to change his position on a whim. Still others said he could have spent more time quietly working with individual senators to persuade them to his side and then count up their votes on a given issue in advance.
The critics also cut Campbell a lot of slack. The Pro Tem struggled to maintain control over the strong personalities in the Green Room, many of whom are newbies and didn’t appear to understand some of the written (and unwritten) protocols of the Senate — the first of which is the Golden Rule. A number of Statehouse observers said even Shumlin would have had a tough go with the current cast of characters in the Senate.
With Shumlin’s ascension to the governor’s office, came an enormous shift in the Senate. For 15 years the Senate President Pro Tem position had been held by two experienced Democratic leaders — Shumlin himself, who led the Green Room until 2010, and Peter Welch, now Vermont’s sole congressman. Other powerbrokers left the Senate at the same time, including Doug Racine, former pro tem and lieutenant governor, Susan Bartlett, head of appropriations, Phil Scott, who won the lieutenant governor’s seat in 2010. Ed Flanagan, former state auditor, also lost that year in Chittenden County.
Campbell became the new Senate President Pro Tem in January of 2011, and from the beginning, he has had a rough time managing some of the more voluble new senators — most notably Sen. Peter Galbraith, D-Windham, who of the 30 in the Green Room showed an unrivaled penchant for grandstanding, though even some of the old guard, including Sens. Dick McCormack, D-Windsor, and Mark MacDonald, D-Orange, at times also became difficult for Campbell to control.
Important bills got stuck in committee and then appeared as amendments to other bills that were eventually ruled germane, or not, depending. (Death with Dignity was attached to the tanning bed bill, for example; the CVPS ratepayer payback and child-care unionization bills were tacked on the Appropriations Bill.)
This led to long days of debate on the Senate floor because senators were concerned that bills hadn’t been fully vetted for prime time. Hallmarks of the debate included constant points of order, amendments to amendments and subamendments, and recesses at the sign of any conflict (sometimes as many as seven in a single session).
Sen. Randy Brock, the Republican candidate for governor, would have liked to have seen the process work more smoothly this session, and he chalked up the bruising debates to “a lot of strong personalities, divergent viewpoints and a lot of people who weren’t afraid to express their viewpoint.”
Davis says the size of the Senate makes it a much more difficult body to govern. Each individual has much more influence than in the House, which has 150 people vying for attention from the leadership.
“Because it’s small, when one or two strong-willed people aren’t afraid of making their views clear, you can have conflicts,” Davis says.
The Senate rules don’t give the leader as much power, and there is no mechanism for ending debate.
Some lawmakers and lobbyists believe this is a good thing, that this year’s series of knock-down fights on the Green Room floor were an indication that open debate — messy though it may be — is better than backroom dealmaking.
MacLean and others say the lack of cohesion among senators is a detriment.
“There needs to be more of a mutual respect between senators for each other and each other’s positions,” MacLean said. “Until that happens, anybody who’s going to run that body is going to have a difficult time.”
Campbell last week declared in no uncertain terms he will be running for the Senate and the Pro Tem position again, but a number of Statehouse mavens interviewed for this story said his leadership of the Senate could be challenged come next January. Another commonly held view is that if the Windsor County Democrat holds on to the Pro Tem post, there will be a reshuffling of his lieutenants.
The other names bandied about for the top job? Claire Ayer, Ann Cummings, Tim Ashe. Cummings, in an interview, said she was interested in the top job before and would be again. The others demurred.
MacLean said anyone who led the Senate at this juncture would have a difficult time.
“There’s obviously discontent among some in the Senate,” MacLean said. “I’m sure he’s going to be challenged, then you have to ask who in the body could do a better job — in the end he passed a series of important measures.”
Another insider who asked to speak off the record said Smith is a natural leader who embraces the role and spends a lot of time finding out what’s important to committee chairs and then he supports their stances. In this way, he builds mutual loyalty.
Campbell, on the other hand, the source said, is a good leader, but second-guesses himself instead of building consensus around issues. He also lacks support, especially from members of the old guard who are loyal to the governor.
The tenor of the next biennium depends in part on the coming election. In the Senate, there are three open seats — two in Franklin County (Sarah Kittell is retiring and Randy Brock is running for governor) and one in Chittenden County (Hinda Miller is retiring). So far, the House is losing 10 members. Shumlin, the Democratic incumbent, is widely expected to win another two-year term.
Shumlin’s challenger Randy Brock is already using the Dems’ ubiquity as a talking point this campaign season.
“When you have one party that has both governor’s office as well as both Houses of the Legislature, you don’t have a great deal of balance and don’t have as much restraint you might have otherwise,” Brock said.
Davis says on paper it may appear to be one party rule, but there is built-in conflict between the executive and legislative branches.
“Even Democratic governors and Legislatures have institutional conflicts as the Democratic majority is so big, it’s not a unified body,” Davis said. “Yes they’re all Ds, but there is a wide range of opinion.”
Correction: The Senate President Pro Tem position was held by Shumlin and Welch for 15 years — not 20 as previously reported. Many thanks to one of our alert readers who let us know through our Report an Error form.
