[A] Vermont Republican Party committee member sent an email to roughly 150 party members warning that moderate members of the party are planning a “revolt” against party leadership following a down-ballot drubbing in the midterms.
In the email, Rick Cochran, a member of the state party’s platform committee, said that Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, and others were plotting to oust the party’s chair, Deb Billado, and other leaders elected last year.
“They want us to distance ourselves and our Party from President Trump and to turn the Party leadership over to Phil Scott,” Cochran wrote, referring to the governor, a moderate who has aligned himself with the Democratic Legislature on a number of issues.
“Many of you have heard the same lecture from [Benning] for at least the last eight years about being centrist’s (sic). It is the same language and the same old play that hasn’t worked,” he wrote.
The email highlights a rift between pro-Scott and pro-Trump members of Vermont’s Republican Party that was exposed in April after a “Make Vermont Great Again” campaign mailer was sent out to supporters.
Benning has said the recent electoral defeats leave the party at its lowest point ever, at least numbers wise, a situation he and others have blamed on widespread distaste for President Donald Trump. With only 43 votes in the 150-seat House and six members in the 30-seat Senate, Republicans aren’t able to guarantee the one-third of votes needed to uphold Gov. Phil Scott’s vetoes.
Cochran said the party shouldn’t blame its losses on Trump, and criticized Scott for opposing the president on issues including the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“This is so embarrassing for Vermont and especially for the Vermont Republican Party. We must not be the laughing stock at the national level,” he wrote.
Billado declined to comment.
In an interview, Benning said he does want a change in state party leadership but isn’t actively organizing a “revolt” to make it happen.
He said that current leadership has failed to adequately fundraise or recruit candidates and called Cochran’s email an attempt to turn the party “hard right.”
“We are in need of a change of the coaching staff and those who believe otherwise are not counting the numbers,” he said. “They may be idealists wishing for something but they are not watching the dwindling numbers of legislators.”
He defended his moderate approach to leadership and said that stressed attempts to make the party more socially conservative will only continue to “disenfranchise” it.
“I am deeply concerned that a small portion of the Republican Party as it now exists are trying to dictate what Vermonters should be thinking,” Benning said. “And Vermonters have spoken out loudly and clearly in the 2018 election what they think about that.”
Cochran, who founded a mobile medical facility manufacturer, said in an interview Tuesday that he sent out the email in part to prevent any rushed attempts to make leadership changes at upcoming party meetings. A party budget meeting is scheduled for next week.
“All I’m suggesting to my peers is that this is not the time for somebody to start up a separate agenda,” he said. “If people are on their guard then they’ll kill the motion and it won’t fly.”
He said he hopes that the party can unite under current leadership and make updates to its platform. As a member of the party’s platform committee, he said he wants to make changes to the party’s stance on gun control and health care.
Many voters are upset decisions made by lawmakers and the governor in the last legislative session to restrict the state’s gun laws and introduce individual mandates for health insurance in Vermont after they were scrapped at the federal level, Cochran said.
In his email, he wrote that during a meeting of the platform committee in August, Benning and Pattie McCoy, the incoming House minority leader, “cut-off” debate because “they didn’t want anything to upset the election.”
The committee declined to make changes to the party’s platform, but that’s because members didn’t want to change it in the middle of an election season, when many candidates were running on the platform, McCoy said Tuesday.
“This thing should really be visited way before the election if changes need to be made,” she said.
McCoy said she’s heard “grumblings” about the desire to shake up party leadership, but that it’s not something that House Republican caucus has discussed.
She declined to comment on other sections of the letter.
“Mr. Cochran is certainly entitled to his opinion,” she said.
