The two Vermont Senate seats representing Bennington County and a slice of Windham County are open for the first time in over three decades, following the death of longtime Sen. Dick Sears and the pending retirement of Sen. Brian Campion, both Democrats.
Six candidates are on the ballot in next week’s general election. Rob Plunkett of Bennington and Rep. Seth Bongartz of Manchester won Democratic nominations for the seats. Joe Gervais of Arlington is the lone Republican in the race. Three independents are also running, including former Arlington Rep. Cynthia Browning, Steve Berry of Manchester and Lawrence “Spike” Whitmire of Shaftsbury.
The two victors will be replacing senators with long legacies. Sears served for decades as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was a key member of the influential Senate Appropriations Committee, which writes the state budget. The 53-year-old Campion, who is retiring after a decade in the chamber, chaired the Senate Education Committee and previously served two terms in the House.
Bongartz is in his third stint in the Legislature. He previously served two terms in the House and one in the Senate in the 1980s. Campion asked him to run in his place alongside Sears, but the race changed dramatically when Sears died June 1.
“I don’t think Dick realized how sick he was,” Bongartz said. “I know I didn’t.”
Now, Bongartz is once again looking to jump from the House to the Senate.
“I was enjoying the House and loved my committee. I felt like I was being effective there, but I can be effective in the Senate, too,” Bongartz said. “It would be very frustrating to be a member in the House and have our county not have the kind of representation that I think we need in the Senate.”
Bongartz’s number one priority is property tax reform and the way Vermont funds its school system.
“We’re in a crisis situation here,” he said. “People can’t afford to pay their property tax bills and, you know, this is the year where we really, really have to start over and be willing to think differently and start from scratch.”
Bongartz said he is interested in a new education funding system using block grants to fund local needs. He said the Legislature would determine how much funding each district receives, but districts would have the authority to determine how to spend it.
Plunkett, the other Democratic nominee, is a prosecutor in the Bennington County State’s Attorney’s Office and a former school board member. If elected, he hopes to join the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he said his legal experience would be an asset.
“I want to be able to be there where a practitioner of criminal law is in that discussion right away,” he said.
In addition to criminal justice, Plunkett said Bennington County also faces challenges with health care, including substance use, homelessness and mental health. He described the situation as a “public health crisis” that he encounters daily, noting that addiction and poverty struggles are intertwined and frequently lead to homelessness.
Republican candidate Joe Gervais is similarly concerned about property taxes. The owner of a custom lumber milling company, Gervais said his background is in sales, administration and product development for technology companies and nonprofit organizations. If elected, he said, he wants to implement caps on property taxes.
“If we don’t change something with our tax and spend, I’m not going to be able to stay here, and I got many friends and neighbors who’re in the same position,” Gervais said.
He said he entered the race because he disagrees with state spending decisions, particularly criticizing the funding allocated to education.
“We got the second highest per-pupil spending in the country, and we’re in the bottom half of pupil performance in the country,” Gervais said.
Whitmire, a construction contractor who serves as the board president of Grace Christian School in Bennington, has aligned his campaign with Gervais. He described himself as a right-leaning independent.
Whitmire said he wants to make school funding more sustainable by streamlining administrative staff, especially within supervisory unions. He said Vermont has a higher ratio of administrative staff per-pupil compared to other states, and reducing some positions could help lower costs for taxpayers without compromising education quality.
Browning previously served in the House as a Democrat from 2007 to 2020 and has worked in banking, taught economics and served for many years as executive director of the Batten Kill Watershed Alliance.
During her previous tenure in the Legislature, Browning was stripped of her committee assignment in March 2020 when, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, she forced the House speaker to call her colleagues back to the Statehouse for a vote on emergency Covid legislation. She did not respond to multiple calls seeking comment.
Berry was elected to the House as a Democrat for one term in 2014 before losing his reelection bid. He served as a pastor of the Congregational Church of Rupert in recent years. He did not respond to several calls for comment.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated how many times Seth Bongartz served in the Legislature.
