This commentary is by Lucie Lehmann of South Burlington, former finance director for Barbara A. Mikulski’s historic 1986 Senate campaign. She also served on Sen. Mikulski’s Senate staff, including as her state director.
As a new Vermonter, I hold myself back from weighing in on most local issues. I’m in observe-and-learn mode and will be for a while.
But when it comes to the question of whether Sen. Patrick Leahy should run again next year, I believe I have something relevant to say. I was a longtime adviser and state director to Leahy’s erstwhile colleague and friend, former U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., and I took part in deliberations with her over whether, on the cusp of turning 80, she should run for a sixth term in 2016.
In the end, she made the decision not to do so, and I hope and believe that Sen. Leahy will do the same.
Like Leahy, my former boss was revered for her progressive policies, legislative prowess and unparalleled ability to steer home billions of federal dollars. Maryland is also a small state geographically, albeit with more than 10 times the population of Vermont, and Mikulski, the first woman to chair the Senate Committee on Appropriations, made sure that Maryland punched far above its weight.
To his great credit, Sen. Leahy has done the same for Vermont.
As speculation heated up about whether Mikulski should run again, all of the same arguments being evinced now in Vermont about Leahy’s decision floated around Maryland. No one had her political stature, experience or influence; the seat might go to a Republican and jeopardize Democratic standing; and our small state would lose out financially without her seniority.
In her inner circle, most of the people advised her to run again. She was a political icon: the first Democratic woman elected in her own right to the U.S. Senate and the longest serving woman in congressional history. The stakes were high and, like Leahy, had she chosen to run, Mikulski would easily have been reelected. She was, in many eyes, irreplaceable.
I was one of the people who argued the minority view: Despite her accomplishments, it was time for a new generation of leaders, just as it had been when she (and Leahy) took advantage of the retirement of a senior statesman to run for the U.S. Senate. And Mikulski, a trailblazer of epic proportions, had an opportunity to lead once again, not by staying but by leaving, with her faculties and reputation intact, demonstrating her faith in our system of democracy, where change is not only desirable, but intrinsic to its foundational integrity.
Vermont has a talented next generation of leaders waiting in the wings, just as Maryland did. But Vermont, unlike Maryland, has never sent a woman to Washington. That fact alone should weigh heavily in Leahy’s deliberations. There are several young, qualified and accomplished Vermont women who would be worthy successors to Leahy, and it is no disrespect to him to note that it is long overdue for a woman to represent Vermont on Capitol Hill (Sen. Sanders, I hope you’re reading this, too) and increase the number of women in the still overwhelmingly white, and old, Senate chamber.
Maryland has fared well in Mikulski’s absence, even if I had hoped for a woman to succeed her. Sen. Chris van Hollen, D-Md., younger by a generation, has built on her legacy but put his own impressive mark on a wide range of issues, all the while steering federal dollars back to the state. And unlike Mikulski and Leahy, who grew up in the shadow of the Depression and World War II, Van Hollen’s more recent historic reference points are better suited to addressing today’s challenges of climate change, systemic racism, equal pay and equal rights, and access to affordable day care and education, just to name a few.
When President George Washington announced his retirement in his 1796 Farewell Address, he wrote his decision was “influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future interest, no deficiency of grateful respect for your past kindness, but … supported by a full conviction that the step is compatible with both.”
His words ring as true today as they did centuries ago, and it is with great respect that I urge Sen. Leahy to heed them, as I think he will. In acceding to generational change, he can retire, as my boss did, with a tremendous legacy on which others now can build.
