Sen. Becca Balint, D-Windham, is poised to become the next leader of the Vermont Senate. If successful, she would be the first woman and first openly gay person to hold the position of president pro tempore.
Balint is running unopposed in her county’s Democratic primary and no other candidates have filed to run in the general election. Assuming she is reelected, Balint said Wednesday she intends to seek the support of her colleagues for the Senate leader position. The current pro tem, Sen. Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, is running for lieutenant governor.
“I feel like I’m the right leader for this moment,” Balint said in an interview. She is currently the Senate majority leader.
“As a woman, as a child of an immigrant, as a member of the LGTBQ community, as a person who didn’t come from money or who didn’t have any political mentors or connections, I feel like I represent the everyday people in our communities, and I really want our Legislature to reflect the needs and the interest of a diverse population,” Balint added.
Balint, who has been majority leader since the start of her second term in Jan. 2017, already has widespread support among the Senate’s 24 Democrat and Progressive members. There are only six Republicans in the 30-seat chamber.
Sen. Anthony Pollina, P/D-Washington, who is the chair of Vermont’s Progressive Party, said Balint has done a good job in her current role and that she has “kept the caucus together” throughout her tenure.
“I think that she’s a logical person to consider for that role,” Pollina said.
Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, said the Republicans in the chamber have “very little to say” about who will become the next pro tem. He stopped short of endorsing a member of the opposing party without knowing if someone else is running.
“Becca is certainly capable,” Benning said.
There was speculation that Sen. Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden, was considering a potential run for the pro tem position, but he said that he had spoken with Balint and wholeheartedly supported her.
“Becca Balint has indicated she wants to go forward and she and I have had a number of discussions, and I think she would be great,” Baruth said in June.
Balint succeeded Baruth as majority leader in 2017 and he endorsed her then as well.
Balint said Wednesday that she has heard from five other senators who have urged her to run, and she has reached out to others she thought might be interested in running who all said they supported her.
Since Balint, 52, was elected to the Vermont Senate in 2014, she has worked to highlight social justice and equity measures — including affordable housing and child care.
As the state addresses the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic fallout, Balint said the Senate and the Legislature will face difficult decisions in the coming years.
“We are going to have to do all this work to hold families together, to keep businesses afloat, but we can’t lose sight of the continued work on equity because it is the thing that will make us better positioned to deal with these emergencies long term,” Balint said.
“We are now seeing so many of the cracks around child care, around the fact that we don’t have a real system for family medical leave — all those things that we felt like were important now feel like an imperative,” she added.
Whoever holds the pro tem position shapes the legislative work the Senate will conduct during the biennium, and in past years the chamber has taken on a bit of the personality of the person who is leading it.
The pro tem is also third in line in the succession to the governor’s office — behind the lieutenant governor and the Speaker of the House. The pro tem presides over the Senate when the lieutenant governor is absent, and serves on the Committee on Committees, which picks which members will head up policy panels.
Former Senate leaders include Rep. Peter Welch, former Gov. Peter Shumlin, and John Campbell, the executive director of the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs.
