It was a surprise this week when Independent Representative Laura Sibilia (I-Dover) announced with two weeks left to go before the November 5th election that she is challenging the incumbent Speaker of the House, Jill Krowinski (D-Burlington), for the gavel. So many questions! Why now? And why would Sibilia think for even a nanosecond that she could pull this off?
Back at the end of July I wrote a piece titled Speaker Krowinski Feeling the (Clean) Heat about how her agenda with its resulting property tax disaster, the Unaffordable Heat Act fiasco, rising crime, the housing crisis, etc. could not be sitting well with rank and file Democrats who now have to campaign on this record – and their votes to override the vetoes of these unpopular policies by the most popular Governor in the nation, Phil Scott. So now is it becoming clear behind the scenes that a lot of the drones who vote in mindless lockstep with Democrat party leadership are going to pay for that loyalty with their seats?
Let’s look at the calculation Sibilia has to be making here….
There is no way on God’s green earth that if Democrats maintain their overall supermajority in the House – or anything close to it — that a majority of Democrat Representatives would throw Krowinski over the side. She will have been vindicated by their very re-elections.
But a handful of disaffected survivors of November 5 could possibly be persuaded to break party ranks for personal or political reasons. For example, Representative Jay Hooper (D-Randolph) gave an interview on Vermont Daily Chronicle’s Creemee Cast revealing/complaining that under Krowinski’s leadership only about ten people are making meaningful decisions, and the rest of the caucus is not being allowed to participate. Similar sentiments were aired by Representative Caleb Elder (D-Starksboro) as reasons for his leaving the House and running in the primary (unsuccessfully) for a senate seat. But how many folks like this could Sibilia realistically pull away? A dozen? Twenty? Even that seems like a lot.
She would need a total of seventy-six votes to win the Speaker’s chair. Where might they come from? Republicans.
Sure, Republicans could probably be persuaded to jab a stick in the Democrats’ eye by helping to elect a non-Democrat speaker of the House. But currently, Republicans only hold thirty-seven seats in the 150-member chamber, which would mean Sibilia would have to convince all of them to vote for her, plus at least thirty-nine Democrats (there are a few Progressives and one incumbent independent other than Sibilia running for re-election, so conceivably maybe thirty-five-or-six Democrats). That gap is, in my humble opinion, a bridge way too far.
But every seat Republicans pick up closes that gap. And to get into Sibilia’s sweet spot of needing just twelve to twenty Dem defectors, that would mean Republicans would have to pick up somewhere in the neighborhood of nineteen (19) to twenty-seven (27) House seats. This begs the question, is what Sibilia and her co-conspirators (no doubt she has some) in Dem political circles are seeing unfold here?
I mean, as the old adage goes, if you’re going to strike at the king, you better (metaphorically speaking) kill the king. Sibilia has a pretty good gig thanks to Krowinski as vice chair of the Energy & Environment Committee, and, given her leading advocacy roles on several pieces of key legislation (including the Clean Heat Standard, Renewable Energy Standard, and Pupil Weighting bill, yeah, not the most inspiring resume!), Sibilia is no doubt one of the ten privileged people Jay Hooper referred to. Why risk giving that up? Because if Sibilia fails, Krowinski will — most definitely — “Carlo Rizzi” Sibilia (Godfather fans will get the reference).
Unless she sees a clear path to the Speaker’s podium today, why would Sibilia not wait until after the election to make this move? If the Democrats get blown out, announce your candidacy for Speaker, which is the usual time for such an announcement. If not, stay put and maintain your bridges unburned.
Maybe this is just a politically suicidal decision born of pure ego and blind ambition. Though Sibilia has a lot of both ego and ambition, she has shown in the past that she has slick political instincts for getting ahead despite a truly horrible policy track record. Often, this has involved an astutely wetted finger that allows her to move with and ahead of the political winds, which I’m guessing she sees switching from left to right, perhaps in a bigger way than most outside observers anticipate.
