It was no surprise that most voters in Vermont rejected Donald J. Trump on Election Day, favoring Vice President Kamala Harris by a margin of more than 30 points.
But lower down the ballot, in a sweeping show of dissatisfaction, voters cast out more than two dozen Democratic state lawmakers. The outcome eliminated Democratic supermajorities in the Vermont Legislature and put the small, rural state at the leading edge of the anti-incumbent wave that swept the country this election.
More Democrats lost seats in Vermont than in any other state. The results stunned lawmakers, set off soul-searching and left even some stalwart Democratic voters elated.
“It was a revolution,” said John McCormick, 81, of Bristol, who helped a Republican candidate campaign for, and win, a seat in Vermont’s State Senate. “I’m a full-blown Democrat and environmentalist, and I didn’t just vote for him — I did everything I could to get him elected.”
To be sure, the election did not come close to ending the Democratic majorities in either chamber of the State Legislature. In the 150-member House, Republicans will now hold 56 seats instead of 37; in the 30-member Senate, their numbers increased from 13 to 17. But the shift is expected to change the dynamics at the State House, motivating Democrats who may have once ignored the minority’s views to engage in more discussion and consider more compromise.
That could allow for progress on the top priorities of Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican who won re-election: overhauling the school funding system, with a goal of reining in tax increases and streamlining Vermont’s strict rules for building new housing amid surging demand.
“The goal is to get them to come to the table,” Jason Maulucci, Mr. Scott’s policy director, said of Democratic lawmakers, “and to get enough support to work toward more affordability.”
Vermont’s political landscape is more complex than it may appear to outsiders, to whom Senator Bernie Sanders, the liberal icon, is its best-known politician. Its population of 647,000 makes it the second-smallest state in the country, and it has long been a destination for left-leaning transplants.
Yet, outside of Burlington and several smaller liberal cities, a strong conservative tradition endures. Mr. Scott is among the most popular governors in the country; last month, he won 71 percent of the vote against a little-known Democratic opponent.
To many rural voters, the state’s delicate balance of ideologies appeared to drift off kilter over the last few years, as legislative goals skewed further left and Mr. Scott found his authority limited by the Democrats’ supermajorities. Of the eight bills he vetoed between April and June — including a property tax increase that averaged 14 percent statewide, an expansion of the state’s restorative justice program and the creation of an “overdose prevention center” in Burlington — six were passed after legislators overrode his vetoes.
Many voters questioned why the Democrats, despite their unchecked power, could not come together to address the housing crisis, revamp school funding or curb tax increases, instead of undertaking efforts to ban vapes and force the board that sets rules for hunters to add members who don’t hunt.
But many Democratic lawmakers appear to have misjudged the depth and reach of the exasperation — and the willingness to shake up a State House where voters felt their concerns about affordability had not been made a priority.
“Voters have been telling us for years that they’re sick of rising costs, rising rents, rising property taxes and grocery bills, and they feel like they can’t get ahead,” said Lachlan Francis, a pollster and consultant who analyzed the state’s election results. “They have felt that way for a long time, as the Legislature followed an agenda that was perceived as inflationary, and there was a price to pay for that.”
In Addison County, where dairy farms blanket the landscape east of Lake Champlain, Christopher Bray felt the rumblings of discontent. A Democratic legislator who served two terms in the Vermont House of Representatives before his election to the State Senate in 2013, Mr. Bray said he had sensed voters’ unhappiness as he campaigned before the state primary in August.
The mood had only grown more ominous by the time he stood out greeting voters on Election Day. “I’ve never had more people look away from me and not meet my gaze,” he recalled in an interview.
Mr. Bray, 69, lost his race to a Republican newcomer, Steven Heffernan, who said he had grown weary of just talking about the Legislature’s failures. Mr. Heffernan, too, could feel frustration in the air. “I knew it wasn’t a long shot,” he said of his candidacy in an interview, “because of the atmosphere.”
He soon heard from Mr. McCormick, the longtime Democratic voter in his district. A former environmental lobbyist, Mr. McCormick said he had previously voted for Mr. Bray, the incumbent and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. But Mr. McCormick had lately grown incensed by Mr. Bray’s pursuit of climate and clean energy legislation that Mr. McCormick believed would drive up home heating costs for lower-income residents.
“I needed a legislator to represent me,” Mr. McCormick said. “These Democrats are arrogant, telling people, ‘I know more than you do — trust me.’”
Governor Scott vetoed the contentious energy legislation, known as the Affordable Heat Act, last year, but the Democratic supermajority overrode the veto. The legislation, which set ambitious goals for the state to transition from fossil fuels to cleaner options, was envisioned as a long-term path to lower heating bills by Mr. Bray and other Democrats. But critics, including Mr. Scott, focused on the bill’s upfront costs to the government and consumers.
Campaigning for Mr. Bray’s seat this fall, Mr. Heffernan said the law was a top concern cited by voters. He intends to vote against the measure when it is taken up again by the newly reconfigured Legislature after it convenes next month.
“What I heard people saying was that they did not feel heard,” said Mr. Heffernan, 59, a longtime member of the Vermont Air National Guard who owns an excavation company, a car repair business and several scrapyards. He defeated Mr. Bray by about 650 votes.
Governor Scott campaigned twice with Mr. Heffernan and stepped up his activity in support of Republican candidates across the state. In TV ads, he appealed to voters to “elect more common-sense legislators who will work with me to make Vermont more affordable.” Given the governor’s immense popularity, his active engagement played a key role in the statewide outcome, Mr. Francis said.
“Phil is Mr. Vermont — he exudes that — and when you have state reps who lack that authenticity, there can be a lack of connection,” he said. “How many state reps have had a Budweiser at the American Legion?”
The governor’s endorsements of lesser-known Republicans provided a “permission slip” for Trump-averse Democrats and independents inclined to vote for change, but wary of electing MAGA candidates, Mr. Maulucci said.
No fan of the president-elect, Mr. Scott has acknowledged that he voted for Ms. Harris.
The governor is hopeful, Mr. Maulucci said, that in the year ahead, newly chastened Democrats will come to the table and negotiate.
“It’s an opportunity for them, and for us,” Mr. Maulucci said, “to deliver on the message sent by voters.”
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