Five days before Democrats in the Vermont House of Representatives plan to officially decide on the caucus’s nomination for speaker of the House and other leadership positions, the team that will guide the lower chamber for the next two years seems to be set.
While Democratic Majority Leader Jill Krowinski of Burlington has been the presumptive next speaker of the House for the past 10 days, Rep. Emily Long of Newfane now looks poised to become the next majority leader for the 92-member caucus.
With the lower chamber’s leadership team taking shape, a clearer picture is emerging of what the Statehouse hierarchy will look like for the next two years.
Last week, the Vermont Senate named an all-female leadership team, unanimously nominating Sen. Becca Balint of Windham to be the upper chamber’s next pro tempore and picking Sen. Alison Clarkson of Windsor as the new majority leader.
The Democrats hold an overwhelming majority in the House, with more than 90 of the 150 seats in the chamber. The Republican caucus has 46 members while there are seven Progressives and five independents.
As of Monday, Long was the only Democrat who had told the caucus she was running to be majority leader. The three lawmakers making bids for her leadership team are also running unopposed.
Rep. Michael McCarthy of St. Albans is the lone member who has put his name forward as majority whip, while Reps. Martin LaLonde of South Burlington and Marybeth Redmond of Essex are the only Democrats to announce they are seeking the other two assistant majority leader positions.
“I have not heard of any other members of our caucus seeking any of these positions, but it’s possible that someone may raise their hand between now and Saturday,” Krowinski said Monday.
Krowinski is also heading into Saturday unopposed in her bid to become the Democratic caucus’s nominee for speaker.
Outgoing Rep. Cynthia Browning of Arlington, who lost her reelection bid this month but had informed House members that she was mulling a run for speaker, told VTDigger Monday that she has decided against moving ahead with her candidacy.
Browning is a former Democrat who ran for reelection in 2020 as an independent. However, despite her loss, House rules do not ban candidates from outside the Legislature from running for speaker.
“I’m not seeing the support for my candidacy that I would need to go forward,” Browning said. “A lot of people just want to go with Rep. Krowinski as a known quantity.”
When it comes to Long and the others vying for Democratic leadership positions, Rep. Charlie Kimbell of Woodstock, who had been seeking the nomination for speaker before dropping out to support Krowinski, said Monday that he is confident that there will be little controversy when the caucus votes Saturday.
“It will be pretty much the caucus moving to close the slate of candidates and casting one vote,” Kimbell said.
Long, a Vermont native who was first elected to the Vermont House of Representatives in 2014, has served on the leadership teams in the past two bienniums — once as a deputy assistant majority leader and most recently as whip.
“My main reason for making the decision to put my name in is actually the relationships that I’ve built over these years and especially over the last couple of years being in the whip position,” Long said. “You get to know everybody really well.
“I’m a team player and I believe everybody working together is how we get things done,” she added. “This work we do is hard because it’s all about compromise.”
LaLonde said he had been encouraging Long to run for majority leader and then heard about the leadership group she was beginning to assemble.
“I understood who she was getting on there and it just seemed like a great team and I was honored to get a chance to put my hat in the ring to join the team,” LaLonde said about his reasons to run for the assistant position.
In addition to formally deciding on its nomination for speaker of the House and its leadership team, House Democrats will select their third member of the House Rules Committee. Rep. John Bartholomew of Hartland is running unopposed to return to the position.
