U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., is officially running for reelection.
In an email to supporters on Monday, Balint campaign manager Natalie Silver wrote, “we are doing this thing again!” She continued, “I’m guessing this isn’t coming as a surprise, but Becca is officially running for re-election.”
The campaign plans to host a launch party in Balint’s hometown of Brattleboro on March 27, Silver said in the email.
Through a spokesperson, Balint declined to speak with VTDigger about her reelection plans on Wednesday.
It’s unclear whether Balint will face competition as she seeks a second two-year term in the House. The deadline to file as a major-party candidate is in late May. The Democratic primary election is in August and the general election in November.
Balint won a hotly contested race for the House in 2022, making history as the first woman and openly LGBTQ+ person elected to Congress in Vermont. The state was the last in the nation to send a woman to Washington.
The former middle school teacher cut her teeth in politics in the Vermont Senate, winning her first election in 2014 and rising through the ranks to become the chamber’s president pro tempore in 2021.
Her time in Washington began on a tumultuous note, when her own swearing-in was delayed for days by Republican infighting over the House speakership. The victor in that race, California Republican Kevin McCarthy, was ousted later that year.
In the months since Balint’s inauguration, House GOP leaders have struggled to get the party’s priorities across the finish line, often thwarted by its warring factions and narrow majority, as well as by the Democratic Senate. High-stakes deals to fund the government or to avoid default on its debts have been struck only at the 11th hour.
It’s a working environment that Balint, a self-proclaimed peacemaker, has frequently bemoaned as an impediment to working across the aisle and passing bills into law.
“The issues that were not dealt with on January 6, and in the days that followed, are now coming to a head,” Balint told VTDigger upon McCarthy’s ouster, referring to the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. “This is a civil war within the Republican Party, and the extremists have been in charge and have owned this speaker, Kevin McCarthy, from the time when he got enough votes to be speaker.”
Last year, she stepped into the national fray, introducing a resolution to “excise the cancer” by seeking to censure U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. She told VTDigger at the time, “I really see her actions as part of this drive of the extremists within the Republican Party for Americans to hate each other and fear each other.” She then abruptly withdrew the resolution hours before a scheduled floor vote.
Balint is not Vermont’s sole federal delegate up for reelection this year. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ six-year term is also set to expire next January, and the independent has yet to announce whether he will run again this year. Last time he was up for reelection, in 2018, he did not announce his plans until May.
Sanders’ campaign could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.
Given the uncertainty over Sanders’ plans, it is possible that there could be a rare opening in Vermont’s Senate delegation. Asked at a debate alongside her primary opponents in 2022 whether she would run for the U.S. Senate in 2024 if the opportunity presented itself, Balint left the door open.
“I always say, you never know what’s around the corner, so I’m not going to say,” she said at the time. “I’m just trying to get this incredibly audacious thing done, which is trying to get to the House. That’s what I’m focused on.”
