Then Again: How Vermont politics’ Mountain Rule crumbled

Mortimer Proctor took an audacious step in 1940: he introduced he would run for lieutenant governor. It wasn’t a lot his resolution to run that shocked political insiders. It was his timing.

Proctor got here from what was then arguably Vermont’s main political household — his father, grandfather and uncle every served as Vermont governor, Republicans all. He himself had served as speaker of the Vermont Home, and simply the yr earlier than had turn out to be president professional tempore of the Vermont Senate.

Proctor was clearly a professional candidate. However the factor was, it wasn’t his flip to run. In truth, it wasn’t the flip for anybody from the West facet of Vermont to hunt the workplace, which included Proctor who was from the city of Proctor in Rutland County. By operating, Proctor was breaking the age-old, although unwritten, “Mountain Rule,” a power-sharing settlement designed to foster occasion cohesion.

Though Republicans had thrived by using the Mountain Rule starting within the mid-1850s, the apply may be traced again to Vermont’s founding, lengthy earlier than there was a Republican Celebration. The rule known as for the East and West sides of the state to alternate who would maintain statewide places of work.

In 1778, Vermont’s first elections yielded a governor from the West facet and a lieutenant governor from the East. Elections would respect that precedent, with Western Vermont claiming the highest job and the East contenting itself with electing the understudy, till 1826. Starting that yr, nonetheless, the 2 sides would take turns holding the places of work. It was all very gentlemanly, or as we speak some would say “outdated boys’ membership”-y.

The Mountain Rule prolonged to different places of work as effectively. It determined all the pieces from who might be Speaker of the Home to who might be a U.S. senator. Between 1791 and the mid-1900s, Vermont gave certainly one of its U.S. Senate seats to an East-sider and the opposite to a West-sider. The one exception was throughout the early 1850s, when the fractious sectional politics of the years main as much as the Civil Conflict briefly broke the sample.

Initially, the state Legislature even alternated on which facet of the Inexperienced Mountains it held its classes. Then in 1805, it ended its nomadic methods by inserting the capitol in Montpelier, a location that was equally inconvenient to each side.

This East-West division was the fault of mountains, waterways, and politics.

By a quirk of historical past, the early settlers on the East facet of the state owed the titles to their land, and due to this fact their loyalty, to the colony of New York, whereas these on the West facet of the state have been equally tied to New Hampshire. The explanation for this unusual scenario is that the 2 colonies have been vying for the correct to regulate the territory between them, which is as we speak’s Vermont. Every colony sought to maximise its measurement by claiming land farthest from its personal established border.

The Inexperienced Mountains, which divide Vermont vertically, solely bolstered these political divisions. So did varied waterways. The Connecticut River and its tributaries made East-siders really feel extra linked with New Hampshire, Massachusetts and the remainder of Southern New England. Lake Champlain, which flows north, made West-siders look to Canada for commerce. And starting in 1823, when the Champlain Canal opened to attach the lake with the Hudson River, Western Vermonters might additionally look to New York.

The Mountain Rule solely actually labored when one occasion dominated Vermont politics, however that has been true for a lot of the state’s historical past. Starting within the 1840s, the Whigs rotated their gubernatorial nominees to stop anyone individual from dominating the occasion. Governors would serve two one-year phrases earlier than stepping apart for somebody from the opposite facet of the Inexperienced Mountains.

When the Republican Celebration shaped in 1854, with the assistance of many Whigs, it operated below the identical Mountain Rule. The apply helped the occasion keep away from nasty inner fights over who would acquire the nomination. It additionally bolstered the energy of occasion insiders by squelching the efforts of mavericks, in line with Sam Hand, the late professor of historical past from the College of Vermont who wrote extensively on the subject. 

For greater than a century, the Mountain Rule basically dictated who would maintain statewide workplace. For many of that interval, the Republicans have been so dominant in Vermont that to be nominated by the occasion was nearly as good as getting elected.

Not often did a politician dare to violate the unwritten rule. In these few instances, politicians discovered an excuse for doing so. The primary incident occurred within the run-up to the election of 1872. The state structure had lately been amended to vary the size of the governor’s time period from one yr to 2. The modification raised the query of whether or not the Mountain Rule known as for a rotation of energy after two phrases or two years. 

Like all unwritten guidelines, this one was open to interpretation. The sitting governor, John Stewart of Middlebury, who was ending the primary two-year time period ever served by a Vermont governor, apparently appreciated his job. He interpreted the Mountain Rule to permit a governor to serve two phrases, not years.

The Republican institution felt in another way. Celebration leaders wished an East-sider. After a lot debate, Julius Converse of Woodstock prevailed on the occasion conference over fellow Woodstock resident Frederick Billings, who must wait 4 years, till 1876, for it to be an East-sider’s flip once more.

Within the late Twenties, a Republican managed to interrupt the Mountain Rule. John Weeks was

serving his first two-year time period as governor when a flood devastated Vermont in 1927. Newspapers editorialized that it could be time to bend the principles and provides a governor a second time period.  

Weeks seized the chance and introduced that he was “able to assume the duties and stick with it the work.” His assertion got here the day after Vermonters discovered that the state had obtained federal flood aid. The timing of Weeks’ announcement was hardly coincidental. Republicans agreed to re-nominate Weeks and he gained the overall election with 74 % of the vote. 

Weeks’ transfer settled the query that Stewart had raised. Republican governors, in the event that they wished, might now serve for 4 years in a row. By rewriting one a part of the Mountain Rule, Weeks had made the entire concept appear antiquated. In an editorial supporting Weeks’ second time period, the Burlington Free Press known as the rule among the many worst of “effete political traditions.”

For many years, the Mountain Rule had served Republicans effectively, lessening intra-party

tensions and calming sectional rivalries. However by 1940, the rule appeared so outdated that Mortimer Proctor felt free to disregard it by operating for lieutenant governor when it was an East-sider’s flip. 

Proctor gained the election, and two years later was re-elected. Then he jumped the road once more in 1944 when he ran for governor. By profitable that election too and profitable it simply, he proved as soon as and for all that the Mountain Rule was certainly a factor of the previous.