WOODSTOCK — Alison Clarkson and Mike Marcotte started in the Vermont Legislature the same year, after winning election in 2004. Beyond that, they would seem at first not to have much in common.

Marcotte, a Republican, grew up in Newport, Vt., near the Canadian border, while Clarkson, a Democrat, grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., in a politically active family, went to Harvard and then produced theater in New York City before moving to Vermont in the 1990s. They’re from opposing parties at a time of growing partisanship, and it’s safe to say that where Marcotte is a steady, no-nonsense Vermonter, Clarkson is more outspoken, a live wire, even.

“Alison’s flamboyant, to say the least, but her heart is in the same place mine is,” Marcotte said in a phone interview. She wants to help the people of Vermont and “when you’re working on the subjects that we’re working on, there’s no political divide there,” he said.

And so as chairman of the Vermont House Commerce and Economic Development Committee, Marcotte, R-Coventry, has worked closely with Clarkson, D-Woodstock, who chairs the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs.

For example, together with their committees, they developed the state’s new Office of Workforce Strategy and Development, an administrative agency overseen by the governor’s office.

But now after serving in the House for six terms and five terms in the Senate, this term will be Clarkson’s last. She will leave Montpelier after 22 years with a reputation for working doggedly for her constituents and for bridging a previous generation of lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, and a new, younger corps who are picking up the baton.

State Sen. Alison Clarkson, second from right, sings with the Statehouse Singers as the devotional to open the floor meeting of the House in Montpelier, Vt., on Thursday, May 7, 2026. JAMES M. PATTERSON / Valley News

“Building trust and building relationships, that’s how you get things done,” Clarkson said. “You’ve got to take time to get to know each other.”

Marcotte, who also has decided not to seek a new term, has seen this belief, and Clarkson’s work ethic, in action.

“I just think that she’s done the job that she was elected to do, over and above what the expectations were,” Marcotte said.

A varied career

Vermont State Sen. Alison Clarkson watches the bustle of West Windsor Town Meeting as voters cast ballots to decide on a local option tax at Story Memorial Hall in Brownsville, Vt., on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. Clarkson announced on Feb. 28, that she will not seek another term after serving 22 years in the state legislature. JAMES M. PATTERSON / Valley News

Clarkson first ran for the Vermont House seat representing Woodstock and Plymouth in 2004. She was 49 at the time and had two children in school. Her eldest, Ward Goodenough, was in boarding school, and William was at Woodstock Elementary, age 10.

To put the length of her career in the Legislature into perspective, both of her boys got married last summer. Ward is Windsor County State’s Attorney and Will works for Indeed, the job search website, in New York City.

Her career in the Statehouse has been varied, which has kept her going. “There is no same-old, same-old” in the Legislature, she said.

She served on the Judiciary Committee and on Ways and Means, which writes tax policy, in the House, and served two terms as majority leader in the Senate.

State Sen. Alison Clarkson, chair of the Economic Development Committee, right, listens to testimony with, from left, Sen. Thomas Chittenden, Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, and Ted Barnett, of the Joint Legislative Fiscal Office, during debate over a proposed amendment to a bill setting guidelines for the state’s Community and Housing Infrastructure Program at the Vermont State House in Montpelier, Vt., on Thursday, May 7, 2026. After serving two terms as majority leader of the Senate, Clarkson was unseated by Ram Hinsdale in 2024. JAMES M. PATTERSON / Valley News

The Legislature’s achievements during her tenure were groundbreaking, including the 2009 passage of the state’s gay marriage law, and expanding a patient’s choices at the end of life, the so-called “death with dignity” law, which passed in 2013. The state also has tightened gun safety laws.

And much of this work was completed with women leading the Legislature. At one point, all four top legislative positions were held by women, Clarkson noted. She called it “the golden age of women in leadership,” in Vermont.

In recent years, Clarkson has been in the forefront of efforts to pass consumer protection laws, and to improve opportunities for working Vermonters through economic development, by virtue of her committee chairwomanship.

“I love the range of it,” she said of leading the Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs Committee. The “general affairs” part of the title includes regulating alcohol and cannabis, labor issues and consumer protection, including data protection.

The state’s crises

Kate Miller of Woodstock gets a hug after serving Vermont Rep. Alison Clarkson of Woodstock a plate of Gazpacho during a community dinner on the Woodstock green Thursday, September 1, 2011. Volunteers and community members affected by Sunday’s flooding were fed at the dinner usually held weekly at the town’s Unitarian church. JAMES M. PATTERSON / Valley News File

But the list of issues that have resisted solution over the past two decades is long and consequential, topped by the cost of health care, the state’s fragmented education landscape, and the affordability crisis that has priced many young and working people out of the state, despite a desperate need for workers.

The difficulty of addressing these issues stems in part from Vermont’s small size up against global economic forces, Clarkson said. Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, has run on affordability over the past decade and there hasn’t been much improvement.

“There’s what things cost, that we have little control over,” Clarkson said. “Then there’s what people are earning.” Vermont underpays, she said.

That means residents who work remotely from Vermont at jobs in larger markets out-earn their neighbors who are reliant on the local economy. And housing, in particular, is part of a global market. This, too, is not a new problem.

“People with New York and Boston incomes are coming here and buying homes, which is driving prices higher,” Clarkson told the Valley News in October 2004, during her first campaign for the House.

Now, she said, “I have a son who’s trying to buy a house in the town he grew up in and it’s brutal.” Woodstock could use 300 units of housing right away, “and it would all be full,” she said.

State Sen. Alison Clarkson, chair of the Economic Development Committee, right, listens to Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, middle, during debate over a proposed amendment to a bill setting guidelines for the state’s Community and Housing Infrastructure Program at the Vermont State House in Montpelier, Vt., on Thursday, May 7, 2026. After serving two terms as majority leader of the Senate, Clarkson was unseated by Ram Hinsdale in 2024. From left are Sen. Wendy Harrison, Sen. Thomas Chittenden, Committe Assistant Ciara Mead, back left, and Ted Barnett, of the Joint Legislative Fiscal Office, back right. JAMES M. PATTERSON / Valley News

Through her committee’s work, she has seen how time-consuming it is to encourage housing construction. A new housing law enacted last year, and measures under consideration this year, will take time to bear fruit.

Public education will likely have to undergo a form of regionalization at the middle and high school level, Clarkson said, and she suspects that some of the state’s small elementary schools will close or merge if they are no longer viable.

But she doesn’t see much appetite for a sweeping redrawing of school districts, either among the public or among lawmakers. There’s pressure to cut costs, but it’s also possible that, as high as the price tag may be, the state is spending what it should be spending on education, Clarkson said.

She was the first lawmaker to argue that the state shouldn’t be sending public education money to out-of-state private schools, a practice that was curtailed under Act 73, the sweeping education law enacted last year.

“My concern is that the Legislature could decide to spend less and rein in education spending to the point where it would be punitive,” Clarkson said. “I’m not sure we’ve found the sweet spot yet in the financial model,” she added.

Building trust

State Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Woodstock, right, passes a note by way of a page to another lawmaker on the floor of the Senate in Montpelier, Vt., on Thursday, May 7, 2026. After 22 years in the legislature, Clarkson is not seeking reelection. JAMES M. PATTERSON / Valley News

As much as she has tried to build relationships in Montpelier, she worries that there isn’t going to be enough trust built up among lawmakers to solve the state’s most pressing problems.

Since she started in the House, fewer lawmakers stay overnight in the capital, and there are fewer events where lawmakers get together, Clarkson said. It’s easier for people who get to know each other to work together and make deals.

“I would say the Legislature has not really made it a priority to build the relationships to move beyond partisanship,” Clarkson said.

Even so, the process still works pretty well, she said. Legislators have to meet in committee and get to know each other there. And everyone hears the same testimony, so they’re working from the same facts.

Being a legislator is a people-focused job, Clarkson said.

“If you aren’t genuinely interested in people and what their needs are, and how we solve the problems they face, you won’t last long in the Legislature,” she said.

While Clarkson is very much a joiner — her husband, law professor Oliver Goodenough, called her “naturally gregarious” — she can also come off as a forceful personality.

State Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Woodstock, congratulates her fellow Windsor County Senator Joe Major, D-White River Junction, right, after he spoke on the floor of the Senate in Montpelier, Vt., in support of a bill that would ban guns in bars in the state on Thursday, May 8, 2026. JAMES M. PATTERSON / Valley News

When she first met Clarkson, in 2016, state Sen. Becca White, D-Hartford, found her off-putting.

“She was such a starkly different political figure than anyone I had ever met,” White said in a phone interview. Clarkson is a “loud, in-charge type of person,” as White is herself, she acknowledged.

White, then a Hartford Selectboard member barely of legal drinking age, was interested in running for a vacant Windsor District Senate seat. Clarkson invited her up to the Statehouse for lunch.

White was the lunch, pretty much. Clarkson told her, ” ‘I’m going to go out there and I’m going to win it,’ ” White recalled. “I chose, at that point, not to run for Senate.”

She did later run successfully for the House, and for Senate in 2022. For White, and for Sen. Joe Major, who was elected in 2024, Clarkson has been a transitional figure.

Sen. Alison Clarkson, in green, debates language changes to H. 687, a bill that would make changes to Act 250, with then Sen. Mark MacDonald, left, during a joint meeting of the Senate Economic Development and Natural Resources and Energy committees in Montpelier, Vt., on Friday, May 10, 2024. JAMES M. PATTERSON / Valley News File

When she reached the Senate in 2017, Clarkson’s colleagues in the Windsor District delegation were Dick McCormack, who retired last year, and Alice Nitka, two veteran Democrats. Both had been around long enough to cast votes for Act 60, the state’s landmark education finance law, in 1997, shortly before White turned 3.

“Alison is one of my most formative mentors,” White said.

And they’re good friends. Clarkson’s outsize personality makes it easier for White to be “a more authentic version of myself,” she said.

It helps, too, that Clarkson knows everyone in and around the Statehouse.

“She knows exactly who she is, and she works extremely hard,” White said.

With lawmakers like Clarkson, 71, and her collaborator Marcotte, 67, leaving the Statehouse, another generational shift is underway.

“I do see a lot of folks who are exhausted,” White said, particularly in the House.

The biggest change in her 22 years as a legislator, Clarkson said, was the volume of email. Sifting through and responding to it has made the job harder, the days longer.

Looking ahead

Steve Aikenhead, left, gets an enthusiastic greeting from Windsor County Senators Becca White, D-Hartford, second left, and Alison Clarkson, D-Woodstock, second right, and candidate for state representative Mark Yuengling, D-Weathersfield, right, as he arrives to vote and volunteer at the Weathersfield, Vt., polls on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024. JAMES M. PATTERSON / Valley News File

Clarkson realized in 2024 that she was facing her last term in Montpelier.

“I got to the end of the campaign and I just knew I didn’t want to have to campaign again, for myself,” she said in an interview at her Woodstock home.

Those last two words are important. While she’s leaving the Legislature after this term, Clarkson plans to stay engaged in politics and public life. She’ll help with other campaigns and stay involved in issues where she feels she has something to offer.

“The gift of this building,” she said in a phone interview from the Statehouse lounge, where she works until 11 or 11:30 most nights, “is you see all the opportunities and all the needs.”

State Sen. Joe Major, D-White River Junction, wears a sticker for “Alison In Action Day,” honoring his fellow Windsor County Senator Alison Clarkson during proceedings at the state house in Montpelier, Vt., on Thursday, May 7, 2026. After 22 years in the legislature, Clarkson is not seeking reelection. JAMES M. PATTERSON / Valley News

Post-Legislature, Clarkson plans to take on one opportunity, establishing a new culinary school in Vermont, and one need, becoming a guardian ad litem.

Vermont is a farm-to-table state, Clarkson said, and has struggled to train people for its vibrant restaurant scene since the closure of the for-profit New England Culinary Institute in 2021.

“When NECI closed, we lost a very important workforce development pipeline,” she said. The school also brought students into the state.

Clarkson first learned of the guardian ad litem, or GAL, program when she was on the House Judiciary Committee. A GAL is a trained volunteer who represents children in court, particularly in cases of abuse or neglect.

Vermont currently has 278 GALs, but needs around 400.

“I think I could be helpful,” she said.

State Sen. Becca White, left, photographs Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Woodstock, middle, with Tina Miller, of Woodstock, right, at the state house in Montpelier, Vt., on Thursday, May 7, 2026. Miller hosted Clarkson’s first campaign launch event at her home in 2004. JAMES M. PATTERSON / Valley News