When Vermont’s U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy is asked how he decided to retire when his current term concludes in 2023, he jokes that he “wasn’t supposed to be in the Senate in the first place.”
At only 33 years old during his first campaign in 1974, in a state that had never elected a Democrat or a Catholic to the Senate, his election was considered unlikely. When he speaks of that time now, he says he expected to serve only one term, and decided he’d just do the best job he could in those six years.
It’s almost ridiculous to think about now, as Leahy, who’s 81, closes in on eight terms and nearly 50 years in the Senate, where he is among its highest-ranking and longest-serving members.
He chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee in the aftermath of 9/11, presided over the impeachment trial of then-President Donald Trump and has chaired the Appropriations Committee as the federal government distributes the largest sums of recovery dollars Americans have seen since the Great Depression.
In an interview with VTDigger, Leahy said it was in the quiet moments at home on his farm in Middlesex that he came to his decision to retire. Isolated from other people during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, he said he and his wife, Marcelle Leahy, would walk their property and just talk. They’d talk about what he accomplished, what he didn’t, and what more they want in life. And that was ultimately more time with each other, their family and their friends in Vermont.
He said he still feels at the top of his game, and looking at the poll numbers, he knows he could easily win a ninth term. But that’s exactly when he wanted to bow out — on his own terms.
The landscape of the country’s politics has become almost unrecognizable from the way it was when Leahy was sworn in nearly 47 years ago. Social media and the 24-hour news cycle have changed the game, and he said the increased polarization in Congress and in the American public is “discouraging.”
He came onto the scene in the immediate aftermath of President Richard Nixon’s resignation, filed just before he’d be impeached, and the waning of the Vietnam War (Leahy began his tenure by casting the tie-breaking vote to end the war). At that time, Leahy said he looked around at his colleagues much older than he and saw that the Senate was truly “the conscience of the nation.” Even on the most controversial issues, he said, both Republican and Democratic senators voted in the best interest of the country.
Leahy said he gets choked up thinking about a 2011 helicopter ride he took to survey the damage left behind by Tropical Storm Irene. When he landed, he said, he had two voicemails from Republican colleagues, who assured him that whatever aid Vermont needed to recover, they would cosponsor.
“We’ve got to go back to that,” he said. “We’re doomed if we don’t.”
On his laundry list of legislative achievements, one legacy Leahy said is most important to him is his dedication to bipartisanship and compromise. He said he makes it a point to invite colleagues from both sides of the aisle to cosponsor legislation, join his legislative outreach trips, or visit his office overlooking the National Mall just to chat.
“If I can leave enough people with a sense of knowing that we have to do better, then it’s been worthwhile,” he said. “I’ll leave in place the thing that I’ve been most passionate about.”
Leahy considers himself an optimist. (“If I wasn’t an optimist, I wouldn’t have stayed this long.”) But that doesn’t mean he isn’t worried.
He looks at the advent of “alternative facts,” of edited videos on social media depicting violence between members of Congress, and is sullen with the knowledge that such things wouldn’t have happened a generation ago. With the temperature so hot in Washington, he worries about that division seeping into the American public and breaking down the fabric of the nation.
“Every House member has a right to their own opinions, but they also have a responsibility,” he said. “What kind of example do you set for the country?”
Most harrowing for him was on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol with the intent to overthrow the election of President Joe Biden and physically harm members of Congress. That day “really made me question my optimism,” he said.
Still, he hopes for the best. He talks to his colleagues who “at least privately” agree that the tone needs to change.
“I hope I’m right. I hope I can be, because if I’m not, we are leaving a disaster to the next generations,” he said. “I look at my children and they have children of their own now. I want them to feel comfortable in the sense that they can be optimistic for the future.”
He describes a recent trip back home, where he was on Lake Champlain with his children and grandchildren. On the lake, surrounded by his family, he was at peace.
“We were all saying the same thing, that we hope there can be this kind of a world in the future.”
