Updated at 10:44 p.m.
Dean Corren, a Burlington inventor and cofounder of the Vermont Progressive Party, died Tuesday following an apparent cardiac event, according to Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman. He was 67 years old.
Corren dedicated decades of his life to political activism — both inside and outside the halls of power. First appointed to the Burlington Electric Commission in 1988, he would go on to work for then-U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and serve four terms in the Vermont House.
In 2014, Corren reemerged on the political scene to run a publicly financed campaign for lieutenant governor. Despite his long association with the Progressive Party, he won the Democratic nomination for the state’s No. 2 job — promising to use the statewide perch to advocate for single-payer health care and fight climate change. He lost to then-Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican.
Corren wasn’t merely a politician. “He was a brilliant inventor and scientist,” said Terry Bouricius, a lifelong friend and former state representative.
Corren invented an early user interface for computer-aided design that resembled a digitized pen, according to Bouricius. He patented an underwater turbine to harness the power of rivers and tides — and eventually went to work for a company, Verdant Power, that deployed the technology in New York City’s East River.
“He was kind of a renaissance-type spirit,” said Chris Pearson, a friend and neighbor who served in the House and Senate.
Corren was particularly focused on combating climate change through energy efficiency and renewable generation — in both his professional and political roles.
Born in New York City in 1955, Corren was raised in suburban Katonah, New York. He majored in philosophy at Middlebury College and earned a master’s degree in energy science from New York University. After working as a research scientist in New York, he moved to Burlington in 1988.
During his time on the Burlington Electric Commission, according to a Seven Days campaign profile, he “oversaw a $1.3 million investment in energy conservation, and negotiated Burlington’s phase-out of power purchases from the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.”
Corren played a leading role in converting the progressive coalition that had formed around Sanders’ Burlington mayoral campaigns into a capital-P Progressive Party, according to Bouricius. Zuckerman called him “a vanguard of the Vermont Progressive movement.” And though Corren ran his first two House campaigns as an independent — an unsuccessful bid in 1990 and a successful one in 1992 — he would become the third member of the party to serve in the Legislature.
There, he emerged as a leading voice for liberal causes that were years ahead of their time: among them single-payer health care, medical aid-in-dying and marriage equality. When the Legislature voted to create civil unions for same-sex couples in 2000, he introduced an unsuccessful amendment to fully legalize gay marriage. It would take another nine years — long after Corren had left the House — for such a measure to become law.
“A lot of the issues that Dean was advocating for at the time, which gave people the impression that he was this adamant, hard-core Progressive unwilling to compromise, are now issues that are broadly accepted by Vermonters,” former state senator Anthony Pollina told Seven Days in 2014.
Perhaps Corren’s greatest success in the Legislature, according to Bouricius and Pearson, was his work to prevent the deregulation of Vermont’s electric utilities — a concept that swept through the nation in the 1990s, often with poor results for consumers.
“He helped me understand the idea of trying to push the envelope and broaden the conversation of what’s possible for politics and society,” Zuckerman said.
It was Corren, according to Zuckerman, who first recruited him to run for the House in 1994. Corren similarly mentored other up-and-coming Progressives. “I really looked up to him quite a bit,” Zuckerman said.
Corren’s friends and colleagues say that it was his kindness and modesty that stood out most.
“I remember just being struck by what an incredibly decent guy he always was,” Pearson said. “He wasn’t trumpeting all his impacts, but when you dig through the records, he had quite an impact. And that’s because he was a trustworthy, smart guy.”
Corren grappled with heart problems for decades, Bouricius said, but his death nevertheless came as a shock — just two weeks before his 68th birthday.
“He’ll be missed,” Bouricius said.
Corren is survived by his wife, Cindy Wolkin; his son, Sidney Corren; and three stepdaughters.