More than any source of date I wish state historical legislative data was more available.
Hmm my source on VT was a NYTimes article from 1987 that said they had “last fall” won the VT Senate and reelected a rat house speaker “despite a GOP majoirty in the chamber”.
A blurb in their archives (need to pay to read the whole article) mentions the VT senate as going rat in 1986, doesn’t mention the house.
An article from 2000 claims the GOP majoirty in the house was the “first outright majority in 14 years”.
“They didn’t get it back until 2000 (due to the unpopularity of Dean)”
Because of civil unions right? In liberal Vermont. The GOP guv candidate should have done better than a 50-38 loss. She must have been weak.
“and lost control in 2004.”
Yeah, but they only won a plurality in 2002. I remember Doug Racine was expected to win and rats worried a GOP edge in the legislature would elect Douglas. Instead Douglas won and the GOP lost in the legislative giving rats the edge with their increased state senate majority.
Hee he. Illinois would have over 600 state senators if each seat has the population of a Vermont district.
World Almanacs actually listed the legislative numbers in many editions. I did recall that the Dems had a Speaker at one point when they were in the minority, but couldn’t recall when.
Apparently the Republicans did retain a majority in the VT House in the 1984 elections, but it didn’t prevent the Dems joining with RINOs to elect a Speaker. These were the numbers in the three given sessions (from the Almanacs):
1984 - 65D-84R
1985 - 72D-77R
1987 - 76D-74R
Whoops, forgot to answer the latter part. I did not expect Racine to win, actually, in ‘02. I did think Douglas would pick it up for us, and he did. The drastic decline of our numbers in the State Senate was pretty surprising, though.
Yeah, the Civil Unions issues was one that propelled us to more seats, but there was another burning issue at the time, I remember the novelist John Irving getting all up in arms about it, Act 60.