Former Lt. Gov. Molly Gray is getting her old job back.
The 42-year-old Burlington Democrat defeated Republican John Rodgers, the incumbent lieutenant governor, in Tuesday’s general election. It wasn’t close.
Rodgers conceded at 9:29 p.m. At that time, Gray had gathered 62.1% of the vote to Rodgers’ 37.6%, with 65% of votes counted, according to the Associated Press.
Incumbents very rarely lose their reelection bids in Vermont. Indeed, when Rodgers narrowly beat David Zuckerman, the incumbent at the time, in 2024, no lieutenant governor had failed to win reelection in nearly half a century.
But the 61-year-old Glover farmer and mason benefited from a wave election two years ago that saw Republicans make sweeping gains across Vermont. And this year, that wave receded — and then some — as rising anti-Trump sentiment energized the state’s left-leaning electorate.
“Serving as your Lieutenant Governor has been one of the greatest honors of my life,” Rodgers wrote in a concession statement. “As a fifth-generation Vermonter, a farmer, a small business owner, and someone who has spent much of his life in public service, I’ve always tried to bring a little common sense to Montpelier and give a voice to the folks who too often feel forgotten.”
Gray leaned heavily into the national dynamic, pledging to use the office as a bulwark against federal overreach. She recently served as the head of the Vermont Afghan Alliance, a Burlington-based nonprofit that helps recent immigrants, and Gray often repeated the line that witnessing the “cruelty and inhumanity of the Trump administration up close” had prompted her run.
Rodgers has repeatedly denounced Trump, including at a “No Kings” rally early in the president’s second term. But Gray has said that’s not enough.
She often criticized, for example, Rodgers’ tie-breaking vote to send former federal prosecutor Michael Drescher to the Vermont Supreme Court, despite controversy over Drescher’s role in certain high-profile immigration cases.
Rodgers, who had previously served as a Democrat in the state Legislature, sought to position himself as a moderate, bipartisan dealmaker aligned with Gov. Phil Scott, who endorsed him and appeared in a television ad for him. And he sought to push back against Gray’s accusations that he was unwilling to stand up to the president.
“I have spoken out against the Trump administration when I thought they were wrong, which has been plenty,” Rodgers said at a Vermont Public debate, noting he’d worked with the advocacy group Migrant Justice in the wake of farmworker raids.
Rodgers also tried to reframe the race around Vermont, its affordability concerns, and particularly its rural residents. He touted his office’s constituent services work, and his time championing the grassroots rural rebellion that successfully organized against a controversial land-use overhaul.
Gray previously served as lieutenant governor for one term, between 2021 and 2023, but left the office for an unsuccessful bid for Vermont’s lone seat in the U.S. House. Rodgers often said that while he used the lieutenant governor’s office “to help Vermonters” she’d used it to “run for Congress.”
Rodgers, who was seen as vulnerable in his reelection bid almost from the start, went relentlessly negative. Most notably, his office compiled hundreds of records on investigations into farmworker housing at the Newbury fruit and vegetable farm run by Gray’s parents and brother, and released them to the press while the two candidates were sitting down for a Vermont Public debate.
“Why did you not speak out against the mistreatment of migrant workers on your family farm, and did you use your influence to direct the investigation?” Rodgers asked Gray during their televised exchange.
Gray, in response, called Rodgers’ line of inquiry “a new low,” and at first refused to engage. When he doubled down and insisted she answer the question, she took her own shots.
She called him a “self-serving, self-interested bully,” and referenced his long-running legal feud with his hometown over whether or not a road that bypasses his property belongs to him, and a regulatory fine he recently paid to the Cannabis Control Board.
Rodgers’s attacks did not seem to land. Polling, including a survey commissioned by Vermont Public, consistently showed that the ticket-splitting Democrats that allowed Rodgers to eke out a victory in 2024 no longer appeared willing to vote for him a second time.
One such voter, 77-year-old Beverly Newton of Barre City, said Rodgers’ legal feud swayed her decision.
“He had this thing going about his road or something, and there was a big deal about it, and I said, ‘OK, I don’t think I like that.’ So, that’s what changed my mind,” she said.
The lieutenant governor can vote to break ties in the state Senate, and helps to choose which senators sit on — and chair — legislative committees. They’re also first in the line of succession if the sitting governor dies or is incapacitated. Otherwise, the post is largely ceremonial, and has few powers or day-to-day responsibilities.
Carly Berlin contributed reporting.
