[R]ep. Pattie McCoy and Sen. Joe Benning will lead Republican delegations in the House and Senate for the next two legislative sessions, following a vote of their respective caucuses earlier this week.
McCoy, who represents Poultney, replaces Don Turner, the longtime minority leader from Milton who made an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor this year. Benning, who won re-election in Caledonia County, served as the minority leader during the last biennium.
Both McCoy and Benning are facing depleted numbers following the election. Republicans lost 10 seats in the House, giving them 43 votes in the 150-seat body, and one seat in the Senate, leaving them with six votes in the 30-member upper chamber.
“And I attribute that to the Trump factor,” Benning said. “Very clearly, Vermonters do not like Mr. Trump and have expressed that loudly and clearly.”
In the Senate, the number of Republicans is lower than at any point since the Vermont Republican Party was founded in 1859, Benning said.
In the House, Republicans are once again susceptible to a Democratic supermajority overriding the governor’s veto, which erodes the party’s leverage in legislative negotiations.
On the vast majority of bills, where most disagreements are ironed out in committees, this will have little impact on the role of Republicans in the legislative process, Benning said.
But on divisive bills like raising the minimum wage to $15, creating a paid family leave program and funding clean water initiatives, the GOP will need to find allies across the aisle in order to influence the outcome.
“Is it gonna go our way all the time? No,” Benning said. “Will there be times where we can bring enough Democrats and independents into the picture to say there’s more conversation here that needs to be had? I think that’s where we will find our measure of success.”
Turner said in an interview earlier this month that Republicans, facing a supermajority in the House, “don’t even need to show up in a lot of cases.”
McCoy said Thursday that she didn’t agree. “We’ve been elected by our constituency to do a difficult job,” she said, explaining that her priority would remain growing the economy, blocking tax increases and protecting the most vulnerable.
She said that she expected Speaker of the House Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, to engage Republicans throughout the legislative process. And she said the weakening of Scott’s veto threat wouldn’t have a significant impact on how the GOP operates in the House.
“I always looked at it as the governor’s leverage not ours, so I don’t think that’s going to play much into how we handle our day-to-day in our committee work,” she said.
During her two terms working with Turner as minority leader, McCoy said she came to respect his ability to stay calm and get a diverse — and highly opinionated — bunch of legislators moving in the same direction.
“He was always willing to listen to everyone and I would hope that I can continue in that same trajectory that he had,” she said.
