When Montpelier journalist Chris Graff wrote his 2006 memoir, “Dateline Vermont,” he recounted the rise of such 20th-century politicians as the state’s first woman governor, Madeleine Kunin; its chief executive who died in office, Richard Snelling; and its physician turned presidential candidate, Howard Dean.
Then came a secondary yet central character Graff identified as the longest-serving and “most powerful speaker in the history of the state”: the former House Rep. Ralph Wright.
“The silver-haired Wright was originally from Massachusetts, an Irish-Catholic whose passion for the little guy was palpable, with an us-versus-them mentality that reflected the Marine he had been,” Graff wrote of the charismatic yet cutthroat Bennington Democrat, who wielded the gavel with polarizing precision from 1985 to 1994. “The state had never seen anything like him before, and it may never again.”
That’s a belief many friends and foes are echoing upon news of Wright’s death Wednesday at his home in Lady Lake, Florida, just a week after he celebrated his 91st birthday June 10, his family confirmed.
“He was completely alert and oriented all the way to the very end,” his daughter Cathy Gonsalves told VTDigger.
In his unprecedented five terms as speaker, Wright transformed the position from one of maintaining order to one of amassing power and keeping score.
“He professionalized legislative politics and the leadership role,” the late Rutgers University political scientist Alan Rosenthal once observed. “When he left it, Vermont’s legislature had become, because of him, somewhat more like other legislatures around the country and somewhat less like the politically low-key place it used to be.”
Wright confirmed that in his 1996 autobiography, “All Politics Is Personal.”
“As long as it wasn’t against the law, didn’t require that I go to confession, or wouldn’t break up my marriage, I did it,” he wrote. “I never, ever, literally twisted anyone’s arm. Did I ever do what amounts to the same? You bet your life I did.”
Such a philosophy helped Wright win legislative approval for big bills championed by three successive governors, starting with fellow Democrat Kunin’s 1987 education financing reform push and 1988 environmental planning law known as Act 200.
“This caricature of a Boston-Irish politician from Somerville gloried in following a tough political script,” Kunin wrote of Wright in her 1994 book, “Living a Political Life.” “With equal relish, he loved to depart from it, if only to surprise his enemies.”
Take when Wright and Kunin’s successor, Snelling, faced a state budget crisis at the start of the 1991 legislative session. The Democratic speaker and Republican governor hammered out a bipartisan package of spending cuts and tax increases.
“That collaboration turned out to demand more of Wright than he could anticipate,” Graff recalled in his memoir.
The House vote on the bill ended in a tie — forcing the speaker to cast a ballot in favor of an unpopular yet unavoidable plan.
Dean, the Democrat who followed Snelling, worked with Wright on 1992 legislation for a state healthcare study that preceded a larger and less successful debate on a single-payer system.
“Governor, what are we going to do with the health care plan in the Senate?” Wright, in his book, remembered asking Dean of the latter proposal.
“Nothing, it’s dead,” the physician turned politician reportedly replied.
The speaker was incredulous. He wasn’t one to give up a fight.
“Members knew that I was capable of being a bastard,” Wright said in a 2023 VTDigger column. “Disloyalty or deception guaranteed retribution. I didn’t have to use this weapon often, but I never hesitated when it was called for.”
‘More powerful than the governor’
Wright, born in 1935, earned a master’s degree in education in his home state of Massachusetts before moving to Bennington in 1968 to work for an alternative school program. First elected to the Vermont House in 1978, he became the chamber’s Democratic leader in 1983 and upset a divided Republican majority to win the speakership in 1985.
Wright quickly sparked press attention for shifting the leader’s role from polite parliamentarian to aggressive agenda-setter.
“Some people say that, for several months of the year at least, he is more powerful than the governor,” former journalist Kevin Goddard wrote of Wright in 1989. “No one who enters the Statehouse takes him lightly. He can be the most charming presence in Vermont or the most miserable s-o-b who ever banged a gavel or berated a reporter. Or both, in the same day.”
Consider the arrival of Barbara Snelling — widow of the governor who died in 1991 — after she won the post of lieutenant governor the following year. When Mr. Wright greeted the now late Mrs. Snelling, things went wrong.
“He announced I was ‘an aggressive woman,’” she told this reporter in an interview.
Snelling had her grandchildren make lapel pins declaring, “Aggressive woman at work.” The buttons soon appeared on not only lawmakers, but also the front page of newspapers statewide.
Wright filled his 264-page autobiography by finding the silver lining in such stories.
“The press, and many of my critics, never missed an opportunity to paint a ‘tough guy’ picture of me,” he recalled of that time. “Though I died a thousand deaths with this noose, it was now proving to be helpful. Nobody dared get after me as they might have gotten after others with a more genteel background.”
‘One of my proudest memories’
Wright channeled his power most historically with the 1992 introduction of an LGBTQ+ civil rights bill. Today the state prides itself as the first in the nation to adopt same-sex civil unions in 2000 and full marriage rights by a legislative vote in 2009. But three decades ago, the now late Rep. Ron Squires, D-Guilford, was the first and only Vermont legislator to publicly identify as gay.
Wright was accosted in Bennington and Montpelier by Catholics and constituents who opposed the bill.
“The air of animosity could be cut with a knife,” he recalled in his 2005 book “Inside the Statehouse: Lessons from the Speaker.”
Wright usually let his party’s House leaders deal with the day-to-day push for a bill. Not this time.
“This was such a hot issue that the leaders were going to have their mettle tested as never before,” he wrote. “I would do what I very seldom had been forced to do in the past — go to my members, one by one, and personally and up close ask them to help me with this.”
The day of debate, opponent after opponent spoke out against the bill. Then Squires stood up.
“I can’t begin to tell you how I’ve felt as the rest of this body has debated whether or not I have the same rights and privileges as the other 149 members,” the sole openly LGBTQ+ representative said.
Nearly two dozen colleagues were absent during Squires’ speech. Wright, sensing most weren’t supporters, talked 11 of them into taking a walk before the vote, he recalled. When the ballots were counted, the bill passed 71-58.
“It stands as one of my proudest memories,” Wright wrote.
‘Doesn’t want to talk about any of it’
Wright used to say he served first and foremost for a mythical ordinary constituent he called “Mrs. Murphy.” But by 1994, his hometown voters in Bennington felt he was devoting too much time to state issues to the detriment of local ones. When Republican challenger Gerald Morrissey raised $13,000 to run for Wright’s House seat, the incumbent lost that November by 165 votes.
“I was sure my world had come to an end,” the five-term speaker recalled in his 2005 book.
Wright tried being a lobbyist (“I hated every moment of it,” he wrote) and then became a regional representative for the U.S. Department of Education. He stayed away from the Statehouse for 13 years before stopping by in 2007.
“You want to keep those memories,” the longtime legislator told Vermont journalist Susan Allen at the time, “and nothing is ever as glamorous and big and romantic as you once thought if you do go back.”
Retiring to Florida in 2000, Wright played golf with such visiting friends as former Rep. Bob Stannard, D-Manchester. In an interview, Stannard recalled being surprised on one course by an alligator. More shockingly, the former speaker confided he hadn’t shared his political past with any of his new neighbors.
“He said, ‘All these people I play with are Republicans — they have no idea, and that’s the way I want to keep it.’”
Stannard promptly turned to Wright’s golf group.
“Mr. Speaker,” he said, “I really want to thank you for inviting me.”
Wright most recently traded the links for swimming up to the length of six football fields a day while juggling several forms of cancer. Stannard laughed at his friend’s continual contrasts.
“I find it really amusing that he wrote two books about being the most powerful speaker in the history of the state and then goes to Florida and doesn’t want to talk about any of it,” Stannard said. “He was congenial, he was open — and he’d rip your lungs out. He was revered and feared, all at the same time.”
