In the six years he’s covered the Vermont Statehouse, Seven Days staff writer Kevin McCallum has often ventured beyond the building in search of related stories. He’s tagged along with bear hunters, evaluated aging dams and fired guns at the state’s first indoor shooting range. Earlier this month he got to ride shotgun in a snowplow. The driver? Vermont’s new lieutenant governor, John Rodgers.
Last November, the 59-year-old native Vermonter beat incumbent Progressive/Democrat David Zuckerman — the first time in 209 years that a challenger unseated the sitting LG in a general election.
While reporting the profile of Rodgers that appears in this issue, Kevin planned to shadow him doing chores on his Glover farm. They made a date to meet up, but when Kevin and photographer Jeb Wallace-Brodeur arrived, after a snowstorm, Rodgers had driveways to plow.
“He cleared a bunch of junk off the seat of the cab, and we jumped in and drove off,” Kevin said. His account of their bumpy drive begins this week’s cover story, “Man at Work.”
In addition to providing snowplow services, the lieutenant governor also works as a stonemason and grows cannabis. A former Democratic lawmaker, he won his first statewide general election as a Republican. Rodgers is one of a couple dozen Rs who triumphed in November, as Vermont voters shifted to the right.
You could argue that Rodgers and President Donald Trump were swept into office on the same wave of electoral dissatisfaction. But Vermont sent a more complex message: The same body of voters that preferred Democratic candidate Kamala Harris over Trump by a nearly two-to-one margin handed Rodgers a victory. That means plenty of liberals split their tickets to vote for him.
Like the new Republican president, the lieutenant governor bills himself as a champion of the working class, though Rodgers did not support Trump — and actually embodies the rural, blue-collar values he promotes. Hunting and fishing trophies adorn the walls of his new Statehouse office.
I’d never met Rodgers, but I ran into him at the Burlington International Airport 10 days after the election, while boarding a plane to Philly. It was 5:50 a.m., and I was groggy, but I spotted a lanky mustachioed dude in jeans and a J.S. Rodgers Masonry hoodie sweatshirt ahead of me on the jet bridge — I later learned he was headed to Arizona for a quick trip to see close family friends. He definitely didn’t look like someone who’d just won a historic statewide election.
I said hello and congratulated him on his win, then lost sight of him as I hunted for space in the overhead bins.
A few minutes later, a friend texted to say she was on board, too. I told her about Rodgers. “He should shake my hand,” she texted back. “I voted for him!”
Like me, she’s a middle-aged lesbian mom who lives and works in Chittenden County. She’s a leftie with multiple degrees and a badass butch haircut — a likely Zuckerman voter, in other words.
Later, when I asked why she voted for Rodgers, she said, “He seems like a moderate who works for a living and has for a long time. Maybe he’s just blowing smoke, but I thought, Finally, there’s a Republican that I would vote for.”
Like Rodgers, she’s a native Vermonter who’s bothered by the fact that people she grew up with are being priced out of the state. “The narrative on voting is that people are so entrenched in party politics and nothing can break through,” she told me.
“I’m not sure that’s true.”
PS: Publisher Paula Routly returns next week.
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2025.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
