Party switching nothing new in Vt.
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By DANIEL BARLOW Vermont Press Bureau - Published: September 13, 2009
MONTPELIER – In the mid-1980s, a young Republican lawmaker named Bob Stannard spent a weekend in the woods to look for deer and do some serious thinking about his political career.
Stannard, who was elected to the House for two terms, emerged from the woods with a decision to change his allegiance to the Democratic Party.
"Vermont Republicans at the time were the party of no," Stannard remembered late last week. "I didn't see eye to eye with leadership … and it was really clear to me that their message was 'play ball or get out of the way.'"
Stannard's party jump, which came during his second term at the Statehouse (he lost his bid for a third term), wasn't just a momentous decision for himself and his constituents. It also shifted the balance of power in the Vermont House, giving the Democrats the slimmest of majorities – a single person.
"You really learn who your real friends are on a day like that," said Stannard, who now works as a lobbyist.
Vermonters are known for having an independent streak, so it is no surprise that the landscape is littered with politicians who have ditched their political party for another, or simply became an independent.
State Auditor Tom Salmon Jr. became the latest as he announced last week that he would leave the Democratic Party – the party his father belonged to when he was governor of the state in the 1970s – to join the Republican Party.
"The Democratic Party left me," Salmon told reporters at his news conference, surrounded by a who's who of grinning Republicans.
But it wasn't too long ago that Vermont Republicans were grimacing at their own high-profile defector as Democrats smiled.
In May 2001, just four months after President George W. Bush took office, U.S. Sen. James Jeffords, who had won elections in Vermont since the late 1960s as a Republican, made the startling announcement that he would leave the GOP and become an independent.
Like the Stannard switch in the Vermont Legislature more than a decade earlier, Jeffords' move altered the power structure in the U.S. Senate. Before his switch, it was divided with 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, a formula that resulted in GOP control of the chamber, because Republican Vice President Dick Cheney would act as tiebreaker.
Jeffords' defection made the tally 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans and one independent, giving the Democrats control of the chamber at a key time during the start of the Bush administration. (The party lost control just over a year later during the 2002 midterm elections.)
Jeffords cited Republicans' refusal to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a 1975 federal law that assists local school districts in helping educate students with learning disabilities.
"Increasingly, I find myself in disagreement with my party," Jeffords famously said eight years ago. "I understand that many people are more conservative than I am and they form the Republican Party. Given the changing nature of the national party, it has become a struggle for their leaders to deal with me and for me to deal with them."
That sounds strikingly similar to what Salmon said last week.
"In many ways I'm not leaving the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me and tens of thousands of other people in a reunion with the Progressive Party and their values, which are valid values, they just are not my values," Salmon said.
National and state Republicans gnashed their teeth when Jeffords left the party. Some members labeled him a traitor. Party activists asked for campaign contributions back. The Vermont Republican Party issued an "open letter to James Jeffords" accusing him of being "ethically and morally dishonest."
"You have betrayed countless Vermonters who have supported you for more than 30 years," read the letter, signed by three top members of the state party.
The response last week from Vermont Republicans to Salmon's switch couldn't be more different.
"We welcome Auditor Salmon with whole-hearted enthusiasm and commend him for having the courage of his convictions," said Rob Roper, the chairman of the Vermont Republican Party.
Lots of party crashers
The tradition of switching parties is an old one in Vermont. According to State Archivist Gregory Sanford, politicians moved freely between political parties from the 1830s to the 1850s, an era that included parties such as the Whigs, Free Soil Democrats, Know-Nothings and Anti-Masons.
"It could be argued that, in the case of Whigs who became Republicans, the party left them as it disappeared with the emergence of the Republican Party," Sanford said.
In fact, the formation of the Republican Party in Vermont – which was then considered a progressive movement – came directly from politicians defecting from some of these other political groups that time has forgotten.
Republicans formed their own party in Vermont in 1854 and quickly became the most popular political group in the state for several decades, according to the book "Early History of Vermont" by La Fayette Wilbur. The next four governors elected were from that party.
Once the Civil War began, several Vermont Democrats joined the Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln, explained Sanford. One of them was Paul Dillingham, a leader in the Democratic Party, who went on to become lieutenant governor and then governor.
In the early 1900s, several Republicans left their party for the Bull Moose Party, which would later become Vermont's Progressive Party, Sanford said.
These politicians included Ernest W. Gibson Sr. and Edward Aiken (the father of Republican U.S. Sen. George Aiken). For some that move was short-lived, as the switch was mainly to support Teddy Roosevelt over William Howard Taft in that year's presidential election.
Not taking sides
Party jumping continues today on the lower levels of Vermont's political ladder.
Earlier this year, Rep. Paul Poirier of Barre left the Democratic Party and became an independent, a move that was considerably less acrimonious than the departures by Jeffords and Salmon.
Poirier, who was the Democrats' majority leader in the 1980s, has always had an independent streak and still votes with his old party on many issues. But he said last week that he felt restricted by party politics, especially on key issues for him such as social justice and labor.
"My decision was based on the evaluation that I could not pursue the issues I cared about as a member of a political party," Poirier explained. "I didn't want to sit in the caucus and feel compelled to vote a certain way because leadership told me to do so."
Poirier said he can understand what Salmon was thinking when he changed parties — to a point. He said he never considered becoming a Republican because doing so would have been a "slap in the face to many of my Democratic friends."
When Stannard ran as a Republican for his second term, he also received the Democratic nomination for his seat (Stannard did lose re-election by a slim margin after his party change), and he noted that Salmon, too, in his re-election bid in 2008, received the party nod from both the Democrats and the Republicans.
"When I went door to door for my re-election campaign, many people told me they didn't care what party I was from," Stannard said. "I think that's how a lot of Vermonters feel … they don't care what is after your name on the ballot. They care about how you vote on the issues."
Daniel.Barlow@timesargus.com
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