Normally sleepy and deep-blue Windsor County is home to what could be one of this year’s closest house races. In the Windsor-2 District, which contains the towns of Weathersfield, Cavendish, and Baltimore, incumbent John Arrison of Weathersfield is not seeking re-election after a handy victory in 2022 over R-leaning independent Stuart Lindberg of Cavendish. This year, the Democrats have nominated Mark Yuengling of Weathersfield to run against Republican V.L. Coffin of Cavendish.
Weathersfield, the district’s largest and bluest town, was the home of William Jarvis, an 19th century statesman and diplomat responsible for introducing the Merino sheep breed to the United States generally and Vermont in particular after smuggling a flock out of Spain. The introduction of the Merino to Vermont sparked a period of “Merino Mania,” during which sheep-raising became Vermont’s top agricultural industry. When the price of wool eventually fell in the 1840s, Vermont farmers, with their small plots and rocky land, were squeezed out of the sheeping business and took up dairy farming instead, a practice which remains predominant in the Vermont ag sector to this day.
Cavendish and its village of Proctorsville are the home of one of Vermont’s foremost bygone political dynasties: the eponymous Proctors. Family patriarch Redfield Proctor was born in the village that bears his family name in 1831 and practiced law there before moving west of the mountains to work for the Vermont Marble Company. Proctor eventually became president of the Marble Company and namesake of the Rutland County town of Proctor before serving as governor, Secretary of War, and U.S. Senator. His sons Fletcher and Redfield, Jr. and his grandson Mortimer eventually succeeded him as governor.
Baltimore, far and away the smallest town in this district, is one of the few towns in Vermont that has never had a U.S. post office. The town’s creation and unusual shape are owed to the fact that the valley in which it rests is cut off from Cavendish by the steep, angular slope of Hawks Mountain.
On the House level, this seat was very close in both 2016 and 2020, before Baltimore was added to the district. In both cases, the Democratic candidate won by less than one hundred votes. Further up the ticket, it’s a similar story. The 2022 Democratic State Senate slate won the district handily, but Baltimore was the only town in the district where Republicans got more votes than Democrats. In 2020, Joe Biden won the district by a similar margin, but again, Baltimore was red.
The glimmer of hope for the GOP in this district is Joe Benning’s 2022 performance, where he narrowly defeated David Zuckerman by just a handful of votes by flipping Cavendish and holding down the margin in Weathersfield. It’s reasonable to expect that Cavendish and Baltimore will vote for Coffin and Weathersfield will vote for Yuengling, so this one will all come down to margins. Moving that last hundred votes will difficult for the GOP, but Joe Benning showed that it’s possible in 2022, so this race is rated Lean Democratic in the Vibes-Based forecast.
This seat is the GOP’s best (and possibly only) shot of flipping a district south of 89 and east of the mountains, so it will no doubt receive a fair bit of attention from local Republican organizations. However, based on recent shenanigans in the Windsor County GOP, that might end up hurting Coffin more than it helps him. It also remains to be seen if the presence of Gerald “DEPLOY MALLOY” Malloy of Weathersfield on the top of the ticket will help out Coffin at all. Malloy didn’t come close to winning his recently adopted hometown or the district writ large in his 2022 run, but I figured his residence in the district was worth mentioning.
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