Updated 5:54 p.m.
Phil Baruth, the leader of the Vermont Senate, says he won’t run for reelection this year, bringing an end to what will be a 16-year tenure in the chamber.
The Democrat/Progressive from the Chittenden Central district, which includes his hometown of Burlington, delivered the surprise news in remarks on the Senate floor Friday that he plans to retire following the end of this year’s legislative session.
Baruth was first elected to the Senate in 2010, and his colleagues chose him to be president pro tempore in 2022. Just as the speaker does in the Vermont House, the pro tem has significant power to dictate the Senate’s proceedings, including which bills get airtime — or don’t — and which legislators are assigned to lead which policy committees.
An author and University of Vermont English professor, Baruth made a name for himself before running for office as a political blogger and a radio commentator. He previously served as Senate majority leader and chair of the chamber’s Education Committee.
“When the next biennium begins this coming January, I will be turning 65 years old,” Baruth told his colleagues on Friday. “To my mind, at least, there’s only one good thing about turning 65. Only one good thing. And that is you don’t need any other reason to lay down some of your work, and some of your tools.”
Baruth said he is “absolutely ride or die” until his current term expires at the start of 2027, but at that point, he plans to return to teaching and writing. He will not be endorsing a replacement, he continued, either for his Senate seat or the pro tem role.
In the meantime, “we have many difficult decisions still ahead of us,” he said.
Top among those decisions will be whether legislators advance the sweeping education reform project laid out in last year’s Act 73, which they passed at Gov. Phil Scott’s urging. This year, the Republican governor has all but demanded legislators move ahead with that plan, which is centered on consolidating the state’s 52 supervisory unions and 119 school districts and creating a new formula to fund public education. If they don’t, Scott has threatened to hold up other key pieces of legislation this year.
Baruth has emerged as one of the Senate Democratic caucus’s strongest proponents of moving forward with plans for consolidation and a new funding formula. He has also proposed a plan, which the governor endorsed, that would cap school district spending in upcoming years before major funding changes fully take effect.
But not all Democrats support his proposed spending cap. And the pro tem’s support for moving Act 73 forward has put Baruth at odds with the leftmost flank of his caucus. Last month, the Vermont Progressive Party called for the law to be largely dismantled.
Meanwhile, Baruth’s counterpart, Burlington Democratic House Speaker Jill Krowinski, has also been bullish on advancing Act 73’s stipulations. The speaker, for her part, does plan to run for reelection this year, according to Conor Kennedy, her chief of staff.
During his tenure, Baruth has been one of the Legislature’s most ardent supporters of gun control legislation. He was central to the development of a 2018 law that established background checks for private gun sales, raised the minimum age for buying a gun to 21 and banned the sale or purchase of high-capacity magazines and bump stocks.
More recently, he’s thrown his political weight behind a proposed change to Burlington’s city charter that would ban guns from bars and other venues that serve alcohol. The proposal, S.131 — which was approved by local voters in 2025 but must get approval from the Legislature and Gov. Scott — has been languishing in the House since last spring.
Baruth also helped pass the landmark 2023 law that created a new payroll tax directing revenue, along with annual state earmarks, toward income-based child care subsidies. The legislation has significantly expanded the availability of affordable child care in Vermont in the years since, advocates and child care workers have said.
Baruth’s announcement comes as at least three candidates have said they are running in the three-seat Chittenden Central district so far this year, while a fourth is likely.
Incumbent Democratic Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick told VTDigger on Friday that she plans to seek reelection. The district’s other incumbent, Progressive/Democratic Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, told VTDigger she is likely to run again but has not finalized her plans.
Meanwhile, Nikhil Goyal, an adjunct assistant professor of sociology at UVM and former adviser to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., announced his bid for one of the district’s seats in January. And Elaine Haney, an Essex Junction city councilor and the former executive director of Emerge Vermont, threw her hat into the ring earlier this month.
