Two days after he was sworn in as Vermont’s new lieutenant governor, John Rodgers traded his jacket and tie for a flannel shirt and Carhartt hoodie, then went to work at one of his three other jobs.
Rodgers, who is 59, slid behind the wheel of his rusty Ford 550 diesel dump truck and pulled onto the snowy dirt road that bears his family’s name. He was headed off into the frigid morning to plow driveways around West Glover — one way he augments the seasonal income from his primary trade, stonemasonry, and from sales of the hemp and marijuana he grows.
For several hours that Saturday, Rodgers navigated his powerful rig up long, steep driveways. With his right hand on the wheel and his left on the switch controlling the height and angle of the plow blade, he pushed snow into huge mounds with a combination of brute force and finesse.
Over the years, he has built a list of about 30 plowing clients, a workload that sometimes forced him to start his days at 3 a.m. in order to make it in time to Montpelier, where he served in the legislature.
It’s the kind of work, along with farming and trades, that fewer and fewer lawmakers do anymore — a change Rodgers thinks has created a divide between a legislature controlled by liberal Democrats and the people back home.
“There’s a lot of blue-collar Vermonters out there, and they don’t feel like they are being represented in Montpelier,” Rodgers said.
A former conservative Democrat who had served in both the state House and Senate, Rodgers emerged from three years in political exile last year to run for lieutenant governor — as a Republican. His record of fighting for working-class Vermonters and his plainspoken, libertarian-tinged politics helped him tap into welling taxpayer anger to pull off one of the biggest political upsets in recent state history. He denied Progressive/Democrat incumbent lieutenant governor David Zuckerman a fourth term.
Rodgers’ November win exemplifies voters’ shift toward a more conservative politics focused on affordability, also evidenced by big Republican gains in the General Assembly. No incumbent lieutenant governor has been ousted in Vermont since 1815, a fact that Rodgers highlighted in his acceptance speech.
“If 209 years of history is any measure, I believe that my election proves that Vermonters from both parties want all of us to work together,” he said in the Senate chamber he now presides over. “We need to hush the noise from the left and the right and govern from the middle for the benefit of all Vermonters.”
But does a wisecracking, mustachioed snowplow driver with a safe full of guns and a freezer full of pot really represent the new middle of Vermont politics? Or was Rodgers’ victory a fluke, attributable more to an infusion of cash from wealthy Republican donors, the vocal support of a popular governor, and voters’ weariness with Zuckerman and progressive policies he’s long championed?
The answers to those questions could determine not only whether Rodgers will be a successful lieutenant governor but also whether he is on track to add yet another job to his résumé: governor.
Farmer Boy
Rodgers grew up on a 400-acre dairy farm where his French Canadian ancestors settled in 1838. His family didn’t have much money, but they were self-sufficient. They cut firewood, raised food, and hunted and fished. They were part of a tight-knit community where people looked out for one another, he said.
Rodgers’ willingness to stand up for rural Vermonters has endeared him to his Northeast Kingdom constituents, according to Rep. Leanne Harple (D-Glover), who considers him a friend.
“We’re all very proud of John,” Harple said. “A lot of people feel like rural Vermont has been left behind a little bit, without a lot of people to speak up for us. John is that voice, and it resonates with people from both parties.”
Rodgers’ pride in being a fifth-generation Vermonter runs deep. But his attitude toward newer residents of the state has at times struck people as nativist.
During his campaign against Zuckerman, for example, Rodgers stressed that while he was born and raised in the Green Mountain State, his opponent, the son of a surgeon, grew up in a wealthy suburb of Boston. Rodgers also paints animal rights activists and gun control advocates as recent arrivals who are trying to undermine the state’s long-held hunting and trapping traditions.
“I’m not a nativist, but I’m going to stick up for my culture,” he said.
Rodgers said he was taught early on to respect people from a wide range of backgrounds. His grandmother Ruth ran a bed-and-breakfast in the family home and hosted thousands of people from all over the world.
“I’d like you to find one of them that would tell you they were treated any way other than as family,” he said earlier this month, in the same room where those guests dined decades ago.
Yet even as he is welcoming to visitors and new residents, he can be dismissive, even harsh, when he speaks about people whose values clash with his. Exhibit A is Brenna Galdenzi, president and cofounder of Protect Our Wildlife. She moved from Connecticut to Stowe in 2010 and has advocated relentlessly for more humane hunting and trapping laws, making her the target of Rodgers’ most withering criticisms.
“There is a long history with John Rodgers being antagonistic and hostile toward people who are challenging the status quo,” Galdenzi said.
She is appalled that Rodgers won the lieutenant governor’s race. She is also disappointed that Gov. Phil Scott, despite calling for more civil and collaborative political discourse, supported someone she sees as so divisive.
She pointed to Rodgers’ scathing 2024 testimony against a bill designed to add some diversity to the state’s Fish and Wildlife Board, which has long been controlled by men who fish and hunt. Rodgers alleged that the bill was “founded in bigotry, classism and discrimination.” He likened the idea of installing people who don’t hunt on the board to putting a “white supremacist or a neo-Nazi on the social justice committee.”
Driving the hyperbole home, Rodgers concluded by saying the bill “would be one more step toward the cultural genocide of my people.” The bill didn’t pass.
Last week, Rodgers hung in his new Statehouse office the skull and antlers of a buck he shot on his property and a 31-inch lake trout he caught in Glover’s Shadow Lake, where he has a camp. Galdenzi believes this was a deliberate attempt to antagonize wildlife advocates. Informed of her outrage, Rodgers responded as he often does when an opponent takes offense at something he has said: He howled with laughter.
Rodgers said he has received many messages from people who appreciate the new décor and the message it sends. If Galdenzi doesn’t like it, too damn bad.
“That is part of my culture,” he said. “I am blunt and honest. I will own that. A lot of people can’t handle honesty, and she’s one of them.”
Mr. Rodgers Goes to Montpelier
Rodgers graduated from Sacred Heart Catholic High School in Newport. Because his family couldn’t afford to send him to college, he attended a two-year trade school in New Hampshire. He returned home, started his stonemasonry business with a $750 rusty Chevy Blazer and some hand tools, and, by all accounts, worked his ass off. He married Brenda Brown, a nurse, and they built a modest home a mile and a half from the Rodgers family farm on 110 acres overlooking Daniels Pond. They raised their two boys there.
His first elected post, in the 1990s, was Glover’s collector of delinquent taxes, a role he pursued because he worried too many people were getting behind on their taxes and the town budget was suffering.
Even then, he said, he was concerned that property taxes were rising faster than wages and realized he’d need to be in Montpelier to address that. In 2000, he made his first bid for the House of Representatives, running as a Democrat, the party of his father and grandfather. He lost, which he attributes in part to a strong showing by rural Republicans who vowed to “Take Back Vermont” following the legislature’s historic vote to allow civil unions of same-sex couples. He won on his next try, in 2002.
In the House, he served on the Committee on Institutions and Corrections for his entire tenure, while focusing on legislation he felt would improve the lives of his rural constituents. Bills he sponsored in his final term sought to change the definition of all-terrain vehicles, address the loss of hunting land and ban the use of lead fishing weights.
The legislation he’s proudest of includes sponsorship of a 2007 bill that allows beer with alcohol content higher than 8 percent to be sold in grocery stores. Vermont had restricted those sales to state liquor stores, limiting their distribution.
Rodgers worked on the legislation with Shaun Hill, owner of Hill Farmstead Brewery in North Greensboro. Deregulating sales of high-alcohol beers, such as robust-flavored stouts and ales aged in bourbon barrels, has been crucial to the brewery’s growth into a craft beer mecca. It fueled the rise of breweries such as the Alchemist, maker of the famed Heady Topper double IPA.
Another area of interest has been preventing the spread of invasive aquatic species such as Eurasian watermilfoil, an effort Rodgers says the state has not taken seriously enough. Shadow Lake property owners have worked for years to control milfoil with measures such as boat-washing stations. The efforts have been largely successful, though the species has reached water bodies around the state, including Lake Champlain.
Rodgers also was proud to vote for the state’s landmark 2009 bill allowing same-sex marriage, but that came with a price. He lost his seat in the next election, in part because of opposition in his conservative, two-seat district. And, he said, he was too busy to campaign. He lost by one vote to Sam Young, a Democrat he endorsed.
He dusted himself off and in 2012 was elected to the Essex/Orleans Senate seat that had long been held by Vince Illuzzi, who stepped down to run for auditor.
His Senate tenure was noteworthy more for what he opposed than what he got passed, though he cast a crucial yes vote in the narrow passage of the 2013 aid-in-dying bill.
Much of his energy, however, was spent trying to block bills that most of his Democratic colleagues were pushing. His fierce opposition to any restrictions on firearms often put him at odds not only with his party but also with Gov. Scott. He was so outraged by a suite of gun control measures Scott signed into law in 2018 that he threatened to run against him.
The gun bills were drafted and signed in response to the arrest of an 18-year-old who had detailed plans to shoot up his former high school in Fair Haven. Two of the bills enabled police to seize guns from dangerous people. A third required background checks for private firearms sales, restricted sales of high-capacity magazines, banned bump stocks and increased the age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21.
Rodgers argued that the bills would restrict the rights of law-abiding Vermonters and were unconstitutional restrictions on the right to bear arms. During a press conference, Rodgers blamed new residents for attacking Vermont’s culture.
“When I was young, it seemed like the people … moved here because they loved it here and they embraced our values and our heritage and our traditions,” he said. “But it seems now that we’ve been overpopulated with folks who came here for different reasons and aim to take much of that away.”
He made good on his threat to challenge Scott but now says his half-hearted write-in campaign in 2018 was “not serious.” He received less than half of 1 percent of the vote.
He’s shown his support for guns in other ways, too.
During the pandemic, Rogers became disillusioned with the legislative process and was struggling financially. He appeared in a Senate committee session via teleconference wearing a T-shirt and dark shades. Propped against the wall behind him was an AR15-style rifle, complete with scope and a high-capacity magazine.
Rodgers said he doesn’t remember that meeting and guessed he probably had just left the rifle there because he’d recently been using it.
“Those are things I use when I have pests around,” he said.
Rodgers has never chaired a legislative committee. Getting such a role, he said, would have required him to be a “yes man” who followed leaders’ directives.
“I was elected to be a leader, not a blind sheep following the shepherd,” he said.
Patti Komline, a former Republican minority leader who worked closely with Rodgers for years, said he voted his conscience, not the party line.
“He’s not a party player,” she said.
Faux Enviro?
Rodgers espouses a strong conservationist ethic. He manages parts of his sprawling property as wildlife habitat, including grassland favored by the bobolink, a species of bird in decline in Vermont due to habitat loss.
He heats his home primarily with wood harvested from his land. If he were to subdivide his property for development, he said, he could retire tomorrow. But he hopes never to do so.
Rodgers has long spoken up about the state’s poor track record on water pollution and the foolishness of allowing more development in areas with sewage systems that routinely are overwhelmed by heavy rains, allowing untreated waste to flow into waterways.
But some question whether he can really call himself an environmentalist. Rodgers opposed efforts to protect sensitive habitats in last year’s reforms to Act 250, the state’s signature land-use law. He argued that the changes would unfairly restrict development in rural areas while streamlining it for urban developers.
And while he says he supports “responsible renewable energy,” he claims that is not what has been developed in the state in recent decades.
Industrial-scale wind projects perched on mountaintops harm delicate ecosystems and headwaters, according to Rodgers. He also contends that their manufacture and installation lead to the release of more carbon than they prevent over their lifespans. The massive turbine blades are rarely recycled, he said.
His home and camp lie between the Sheffield Wind Farm to the east and Kingdom Community Wind to the west. He can see turbines from both of his properties.
Rodgers feels the same way about big solar. Covering fields or replacing swaths of forest with unrecyclable solar panels manufactured in China is equally irresponsible and more about corporate profits than concern for the environment, he argues.
He blames large-scale wind and solar projects for higher power costs, which he likens to a regressive tax that hurts low-income people more than the wealthy.
Providing incentives for drivers to switch to electric vehicles is also problematic, Rodgers added. They run on batteries produced with rare earth minerals mined in exploitative conditions overseas, which strikes him as creating the impression of environmental progress here at the expense of poor people elsewhere.
“The politics of perception do not satisfy me,” he said.
Such skepticism puts Rodgers well outside the orthodoxy of the modern environmental movement. The state’s leading environmental groups take a dim view of his legislative record.
In 2020, the last year he served, Vermont Conservation Voters gave Rodgers a lifetime ranking of 44 out of 100. This was in part because he opposed a provision of the Global Warming Solutions Act that allows people to sue the state if it fails to hit aggressive emission-reduction requirements. He also opposed a bill that requires corporations responsible for pollution to pay for the medical monitoring expenses of those exposed to toxic chemicals.
Lauren Hierl was executive director of Vermont Conservation Voters last year when Rodgers sat for an interview seeking the group’s endorsement. She said he brought up various concerns about the transition to renewable energy, including the exploitation of miners of rare earth metals for batteries.
The environmental and human damage caused by such mining is a valid issue and needs to be addressed, she said. But the impacts need to be balanced against the urgent danger to the climate of maintaining the status quo.
“All energy is a choice, and if you don’t move toward renewables, then you are choosing fossil fuels,” Hierl said.
Rodgers counters that he supports renewable energy projects that are properly sized and sited, result in actual net environmental benefits over their lifetime, and don’t cost significantly more. Using solar panels made in the U.S. and technologies such as geothermal heating and cooling are examples of beneficial alternative energy, he said.
Others who have watched Rodgers in action over the years have no doubt about his environmental bona fides.
When former Agency of Natural Resources environmental regulator John Brabant blew the whistle on the Chittenden Solid Waste District for improperly disposing of ground-up glass instead of recycling it, most Democrats on the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy were too timid to take district leaders to task, Brabant said.
“They just sat there,” said Brabant, the director of regulatory affairs for Vermonters for a
Clean Environment. “John Rodgers asked the hard questions.”
The district eventually reached a $400,000 settlement with the Vermont Attorney General’s Office.
Going to Pot
The 2020 pandemic was personally and financially stressful for Rodgers.
When the legislature went remote, Rodgers struggled to fully participate because of slow internet speeds in Glover. In addition, he and Brenda had taken out a large loan in 2019 to buy the family farm from his uncle, with plans to reopen it as a bed-and-breakfast. COVID-19 travel restrictions killed that business plan, leaving them with significant debt.
To pay the bills, Rodgers spent less time on legislative duties and more hours hustling to complete construction projects for clients. He was also tending his growing hemp business with his son John. The pressure was intense.
“In his last term, he wasn’t happy at all,” former senator Bobby Starr recalled.
That January, Rodgers called a critic of his bill to ban teens from using cellphones a “clueless fuck” in an email. Rodgers argued that cellphones were the top killer of teens, for their role in fatal car crashes — though that turned out to be wrong.
In June 2020, after then-senator Chris Bray observed that Rodgers had not been attending committee meetings, Rodgers suggested in an email to colleagues that “any snippy little bitch” who wanted to criticize him should try to walk a mile in his shoes. The language drew a sharp rebuke from Senate leaders and Rodgers apologized. He denied, however, that the “ill-sounding” email was directed at any specific senator or was meant to be homophobic, as some suggested.
Then, as if to add insult to self-inflicted injury, Rodgers missed the filing deadline for the August Democratic primary for his Senate seat. He ran as an independent in the general election but came in fifth in the two-person district.
Rodgers has also struggled to transition his hemp business to the potentially more lucrative marijuana trade. He acknowledges dabbling in growing marijuana as a young man.
His state cannabis permit allows him to cultivate up to 1,250 plants outdoors and would also let him grow 1,000 square feet of plants indoors. But he doesn’t have the money to invest in an indoor grow, and the market for weed grown outdoors has been depressed by intense competition and the preference of “bud snobs” for pristine indoor-grown weed, he said.
He turns some of his crop into joints he markets under his Farmers Underground label but sells most in bulk to retailers and manufacturers to make their own products.
In the barn that once housed his family’s 50 dairy cows, Rodgers now dries and processes his cannabis crop, which is proving to be more labor intensive than he anticipated. On a recent visit, dozens of the pungent plants hung from the rafters above an antique John Deere tractor, a log splitter, a snowmobile, a makeshift bar and a foosball table.
The combination of excessive regulations and depressed prices has made the marijuana business lackluster to date, he said.
“It’s a valuable part of the farm operation,” he said, “but it’s not enough to live on.”
Out of Exile
After losing reelection in 2020, Rodgers focused on his businesses and keeping his head above water. At one point, he and his wife briefly put the Daniels Pond house on the market as a way to make ends meet.
He stayed connected with friends and supporters in the Statehouse and advocated for issues he cared about, including the rollout of the regulated cannabis market and hunting and trapping rights. Supporters told him they missed his advocacy for rural Vermont in the Statehouse and invited him to speak at rallies.
“It all kind of mushroomed from there,” he said.
He announced his candidacy for lieutenant governor in July, but with a big difference: He’d run as a Republican. Borrowing a line from party switchers in years past, he said he hadn’t left the Democratic Party, the party left him.
The LG’s primary role is to step in if something happens to the governor or he is out of state. Otherwise, the $94,000-a-year job is a largely ceremonial post that includes presiding over the Senate, breaking rare tie votes and having a say on committee assignments.
Rodgers says he wants to use the office to amplify the voices of people who don’t feel they’ve been heard, get more people interested in serving in the legislature, and help Scott and lawmakers find common ground.
His 2024 campaign was able to raise money from Democrats and Republicans alike, pulling in $218,000, just a bit less than his incumbent opponent. Three governors endorsed him: Republicans Scott and Jim Douglas and Democrat Peter Shumlin.
James Ehlers, a former gubernatorial candidate who served as an adviser to his campaign, said the real reason Rodgers won was because he was relatable and embodies the kind of bipartisanship people crave right now.
“He was the right guy at the right time,” Ehlers said. “The public was hungry for authenticity, someone they could identify with and trust, and John is that guy.”
Jim Dandeneau, the outgoing executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party, said he fully expects Rodgers to run for governor someday. But he attributed Rodgers’ win more to the infusion of cash from wealthy Republican donors and Scott’s strong campaign support than to any innate appeal Rodgers has with most voters.
“He did not offer solutions,” Dandeneau said. “He just said, ‘I’m mad at these guys, and you should be mad at them, too.'”
Dandeneau filed a complaint last week with Attorney General Charity Clark against Rodgers’ campaign. He noted that based on a December 16 financial filing, the campaign spent $67,000 more than it took in. A discrepancy that large suggests not just an error but “intentional obfuscation,” Dandeneau wrote in a press release.
“Vermonters deserve to know where that money originated,” he wrote.
Rodgers said his campaign team plans to get to the bottom of the problem with the Secretary of State’s Office this week and fix it, adding that the likely explanation is “nothing nefarious.”
“We want to make sure we get it right,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers says he’s been amazed by how many people have told him since the election that they think he should run for governor when Scott decides to step down.
While he’s ready now to step into the role if needed, he figures he’ll likely need at least two terms as LG to build support necessary for a successful run.
“I’d make a good governor,” he said. “I think I’d be good at it.”
Scott agreed, saying Rodgers has “all the attributes” to be the next governor, including a sensitivity to the struggles of rural residents that allows him to “feel what Vermonters are feeling.” He said Rodgers is “maturing and learning” since some of his previous outbursts, and he expected him to be “much more sensitive” to such concerns in the future.
For now, Rodgers says he’s focused on building bridges between the Scott administration and the legislature, where he still has strong ties.
After Rodgers’ inaugural speech, Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth (D/P-Chittenden-Central) warmly welcomed him back and Sen. Alison Clarkson (D-Windsor) gave him a hug and kissed his cheek. She was disappointed he changed parties, she said, but she doesn’t view him as turncoat. She expected to be able to work well with him.
“I enjoyed serving with John,” she said. “He often brings people together with humor. He is one of the funniest people I know.”
Rodgers regularly performed at the annual legislative talent show and even tried his hand at standup comedy for a charity event, he said. He referred to his sense of humor in his inaugural.
“We have a lot of serious issues to deal with and hard choices to make, but that does not mean that we cannot laugh a little and try to have some fun while we do it,” he said.
Zuckerman, a Progressive/Democrat, described Rodgers as a “very chummy guy” and “plenty affable,” but he predicted the promised bridge building will be hard to achieve.
“I don’t know how well he’ll get along with Democrats, because he’s certainly burned a lot of bridges there,” Zuckerman said.
Starr, who was an ally of Rodgers for years, said he was also sorry to see him switch parties but figured he did it for the “pickup truck full of cash” needed to run for statewide office.
However, the idea of Rodgers one day becoming governor struck him as a stretch. Popular potential Democratic candidates such as State Treasurer Mike Pieciak are waiting in the wings.
“I don’t think he could beat Pieciak,” Starr said. “But I didn’t think he could beat Zuckerman, either.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Man at Work | Blue-collar cred propelled John Rodgers to Vermont’s No. 2 office. Is he Gov. Scott’s heir apparent?”
Related Stories
Letters to the Editor (7/30/25)
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!
