Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political analyst.
Ah, let us savor the joys of some weeks or perhaps even months free of politics. The elections were less than 70 days ago. The next ones of any significance are more than 280 days away. Here in Vermont, the governor and other statewide officials and all members of the General Assembly were just sworn in. A perfect time for reflection, contemplation, and even relaxation unbothered by partisan rancor and electoral strategizing.
In your dreams.
It’s only the end of the second week of the 2019 legislative session, and politics is in the air, in the Statehouse corridors, and in the minds of both Democrats and Republicans. Both sides started the week with preemptive political strikes, while in the background officials, lawmakers, lobbyists and assorted hangers-on were already wondering whether Gov. Phil Scott will run again in 2020.
The Democratic preemptive strike – with bipartisan cover from Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning, R-Lyndonville – was the proposal by Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Burlington, to get rid of Chittenden County’s peculiar state Senate district, in which all six seats are chosen countywide.
Chittenden is heavily Democratic, so the making the whole county one Senate district is a great deal for Democrats, all but guaranteeing them six of the 30 senators. As Ashe said, changing it “is not in the interests” of Democrats, “the only people who would be upset.”
So why would Democrats move to change it?
Perhaps because with Democrats all over the country challenging Republican partisan gerrymandering, Chittenden’s unique six-member district might be embarrassing, if not open to a court challenge.
Strictly speaking, that district is not gerrymandering, the imaginative and often bizarre drawing of district lines to help one party or the other. Quite the opposite; the district respects the boundaries of the county. But it is the only legislative district in the country in which voters choose more than three representatives, and it clearly benefits one party.
Ashe said he did not propose to change to a system in which no one district had more than three senators in order to stave off Republican criticism, and perhaps a court challenge. But he didn’t argue that the current system would provide Republicans with some potentially potent talking points.
Altogether a smart move by Ashe and Sen. Michael Sirotkin, D-Burlington, who is co-sponsoring the bill. It makes the Democrats look like magnanimous devotees of good government. And at little risk. There are now six Republicans in the Vermont Senate. Democrats would hardly be less dominant if there were eight or nine in the minority party.
The other preemptive strike was Scott’s, in cooperation with his Republican counterpart across the Connecticut River, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. The two met Wednesday at a business just on the New Hampshire side of the river to announce a “joint vision” for what they called a “Twin-State Voluntary Leave Plan,” a public-private arrangement designed to provide up to six weeks of partially paid time off for new parents or for workers who have a “spouse, child, or parent who has a serious health condition.”
Possibly a great idea. Certainly a ploy trying to head off mandatory family leave plans both of their legislatures are likely to pass.
Scott and Sununu were both re-elected last November. But both houses of Sununu’s legislature flipped from Republican to Democratic majorities and both houses of Scott’s got even more Democratic than they were, possibly Democratic enough to override a veto.
Scott vetoed a mandatory family medical leave bill last year. He’d rather not have to do it again. Sununu didn’t have to last year when his party ran the Legislature. This year the Democratic Legislature might send such a bill to his desk. He’d rather not veto one, either.
That’s because family and medical leave systems are very popular. Voters may disagree about the details, but huge majorities think a woman who has a baby or a man whose mother is dying should get a few weeks off with pay. Nearly every other capitalist democracy in the world requires such time off by law. So do New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and California. A 2018 study about the California law, in the peer-reviewed Journal of Public Policy and Administration, showed that the program “reduced nursing home usage,” which over time could cut down on Medicaid spending.
Even if it doesn’t, voters like the idea. The problem for Scott and Sununu is that most small businesspeople do not, and small businesspeople are part of the core of political support for both Republican governors. So if they can come up with a plausible alternative to mandatory family and medical leave, they’ll embrace it.
So much for the preemptive ploys. As to those corridor political confabs, they need not be taken too seriously because it really is early and they will continue for the next millennium or two. But for what it is worth, the current state of the gossip is that even Republicans are not at all sure that Scott will seek a third term in 2020.
He won by 15 percentage points. But he beat a rookie candidate who was outspent and in the words of one gossiper (and a Democrat) “had no message.” And as another noted, several of those 15 points were “liberal old ladies who wanted to thank him for signing the gun bill but disagree with him about everything else” and are not likely to vote for him again.
Democrats did so well in the legislative contests because so many people who rarely vote in the mid-terms came out just to vote against President Donald Trump.
“If you think that was bad,” said one Republican, “wait until you see the turnout in 2020,” when more voters will participate, many prepared to cast their ballots for any sentient Democrat.
As even the (notably smaller) Republican contingent in the Statehouse acknowledged, it looks like a tough two years for their party.
