Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth made waves in Montpelier today when he announced that this year would be his last in the chamber. Baruth, a UVM professor, was first elected to the Senate in 2010* after a stint on the Burlington School Board.
He served as the Senate Majority Leader and as Chair of Senate Education before becoming the Pro Tem in 2023 after Becca Balint’s election to Congress. One of his signature issues in the Senate has been gun safety. As a sprightly young activist in 2018, I appreciated his leadership in pushing for Vermont’s first-ever major gun safety legislation in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting.
Prior to his first election, Senator Baruth was also a leading light in Vermont’s left-of-center blogosphere as the author of the Vermont Daily Briefing. Come on back in, Senator, the water’s warm!
While it is unusual for a legislative leader to lame duck themselves this early in the year (without announcing a run for higher office, that is), I think in Baruth’s case this makes sense. He spent a lot of political capital to move the governor’s education reform plan forward last session, and this gives him free rein to maneuver on the ed issue for the rest of this session without worrying about his reelection prospects.
Perhaps of greater interest to Sugaring Off readers, though, are the two races that will be kicked into high gear by Senator Baruth’s announcement. Let’s start with the ultimate game of inside baseball: the race to be the next President Pro Tempore.
Far and away, the early frontrunner is Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale (D-Chittenden Southeast). Ram Hinsdale defeated her predecessor, Alison Clarkson (D-Windsor) in a narrow 9-7 vote in late 2024 to secure her present post. As the Senate’s #2 Democrat, she’s well positioned to move up into the #1 slot like Becca Balint and John Campbell before her. She’s also a solid fundraiser, having brought in a whopping $188,000 over her three previous campaigns for the Senate.
If Republicans manage to pick up another seat or two in the Senate in this year’s elections, they could try to install one of their own in the PPT’s chair. As the current Minority Leader, Scott Beck (R-Caledonia) seems like the most likely candidate. A potential that is unlikely but interesting to consider: Senator Richie Westman, a moderate Republican from Lamoille County, is the longest-tenured senator on the R side and is broadly respected on both sides of the aisle. Could there be a timeline where a narrowly divided Senate picks him as PPT? To my mind, the rest of the Republican caucus is either too new to the State House or too conservative to have a viable path to the presider’s chair.
On the Democratic side, the field is similarly narrow for similar reasons. There has been a great deal of turnover in the legislature over the last couple of cycles. More than half of the Democratic caucus was first elected in either 2022 or 2024. Only two of the Senate’s “Old Guard” are still in the chamber – Ginny Lyons of Chittenden Southeast and Ann Cummings of Washington. Ten years ago, I think either of them might have considered a run for PPT (Cummings mounted a bid for the top job in 2012), they seem content to preside over their POWERFUL (obligatory use of POWERFUL) committees until they retire.
Of the newer crop of senators, I’d keep an eye on Becca White of Windsor and Anne Watson of Washington. White is the current Democratic Whip and Watson chairs Senate Natural Resources. Both are definitely on the left flank of the Democratic caucus but they’re already seasoned legislators and good communicators who could be contenders for PPT, or, barring that, to move into Ram Hinsdale’s spot as majority leader.
(Quick sidebar before folks start writing in: this is not an exhaustive list of potential candidates because neither you nor I have time for me to go down the list of 30 senators and weigh their prospects individually. And yes, given my prediction track record, it’s now possible that none of these people will be the next PPT and the job will go to somebody different altogether. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.)
However, all this speculation is just an academic exercise because another, more exciting contest is happening in the here and now! Senator Baruth’s departure opens up a seat in the Chittenden-Central district, which, like its six-member predecessor, is shaping up to have a real clown car of a Democratic primary this year.
Baruth’s fellow incumbents, Martine Larocque Gulick and Tanya Vyhovsky, have not (as far as I know) announced their intentions for this year but I haven’t heard any rumblings suggesting that they plan to retire. Already joining them in the primary field are Elaine Haney, former executive director of Emerge Vermont, a program that trained dozens of Democratic women to run for office over the last decade, and Nikhil Goyal, a sociologist and former Bernie Sanders advisor. And rumors abound that they may be joined by veteran broadcaster (obligatory use of veteran broadcaster) Stewart Ledbetter, who lost a bid for this seat in 2024, and longtime Bernie Sanders associate Erhard Mahnke. Mahnke, a former Burlington city councilor, lost the third slot on the Democratic ticket in 2022 to Gulick by just four votes.
Yesterday, my money would have been on the three incumbents winning thanks to the challengers’ supporters splitting their votes. With an open seat, I think it could be anybody’s game – check back with me after the March 15th campaign finance reports come in for a more nuanced prediction. I’ll also be keen to see if the two incumbents decide to slate with one of the challengers or if any of the challengers band together to try to knock out one of the incumbents.
I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of these three-member districts (although they’re certainly preferable to the six-member monstrosity that Chittenden County had before 2022) but they certainly do lead to gripping contests for those of us in the election nerd community. Stay tuned, dear readers, the 2026 election season is getting underway!
*a previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Baruth was first elected to the Senate in 2014 – he was first elected in 2010. Oops.
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