One could say that Phillip Hoff was Vermont even before Vermont.
The “Green Mountain State” is a liberal bastion today. It’s three electoral votes are routinely the first to go into a Democratic Presidential nominees column on Election Night, often by record margins.
Had Hoff accomplished little else in his eight year tenure, he would already have made history. The Burlington resident would be the first Democratic Governor elected from the Green Mountain State in 108 years. That would be since October of 1854, when John Robinson left office. A Whig, Stephen Boyce, had actually held the office more recently than a Democrat. But even in a state that had yet to elect a Democrat to the Senate, Hoff would be ahead of his time. He’d be the first Governor in he nation to break with President Johnson over the Vietnam War and he’d form a panel with John Lindsey to investigate race-relations.
Vermont Democrats had been seriously plotting their path for a return to the Governorship for a decade but, as 1962 began, it appeared that their chances of success were little better than in the past. And Phil Hoff, whose only political experience was the single term in the Legislature that he was currently serving, hardly seemed like the man to give them their breakthrough. But Hoff was also an attorney, and one follower would later say the only thing he likes better than law is politics. That combo would be lethal on the trail.
Hoff was born in Massachusetts but attended William and Mary and Cornell. He moved to Burlington in 1951 and says he can “remember driving through Burlington thinking, “this is where I want to raise my kids.”
The single party dominance theme resonated more powerfully than anyone had expected. He spoke of missed opportunities due to “stagnant-one party control of the state government,” and said incumbent Ray Keyser was practicing “sterile, uninspired approach to Vermont’s problems that is incapable of providing the new job opportunities so desperately needed.” To back up his point, Hoff noted that Vermonters under 18 were leaving. Hoff suggested recreational development authority, which Keyser claimed as his own, enacted plan.
Keyser was not without accomplishments, particularly the expansion of the University of Vermont and his support of the Champlain-cut off, a water-link between Montreal and the state. But Hoff waged an energetic door-to-door campaign, often with his wife. Their youth brought comparisons to the Kennedy’s, who were then occupying the White House.
Republicans were hoping the re-election bid of venerable Senator George Aiken would bring out their faithful and help Keyser. In the end, it almost did. But Hoff ousted Keyser by 1,315 votes out of 122,000 cast. “One hundred years of bondage – broken,” Hoff said to jubilant Election Night supporters. Only the votes he received on the Independence Line, created by disenchanted Republicans who felt voters might more carefully weigh their choice were it outside the line, enabled him to eke past the incumbent. “The crowd did not entirely understand it yet, but Vermont had just swung onto a dramatically new course — one the state would follow all the way into a new century.”
But others understood it exactly. WCAX-TV, Stuart T. “Red” Martin, a lifelong Republican and ardent Hoff opponent, was said to have been so surprised and angered by the election results that through clenched teeth he bit off half of the ever-present cigar in his mouth.”
Overall, however, the jubilance extended far outside Vermont.
In “Philip Hoff: How Red Turned Blue in the Green Mountain State, authors Samuel B. Hand, Anthony Marro, and Stephen C. Terry
wrote “A Connecticut resident sent Hoff
“congratulations on the most dramatic
political victory of the 20th century,”
and the Vermont election was a front
page story in a Seattle newspaper. The
Turner Falls, Massachusetts, high
school from which Hoff had graduated
gave students a period off to celebrate
Bernie Sanders, in an 80th birthday tribute to Hoff on the House floor, said, With energy, vision and a great personal warmth that touched voters deeply, Phil Hoff boldly took a simple message to Vermont’s citizens: It was time for a change. And people listened, and agreed.”
In his inaugural address, Hoff proclaimed, “the people of Vermont have clearly said that they don’t want to continue with the old ways, and if we fail to respond to forces at work in our society, we face a bleak future.” So he began what Vermont Today would call “six hyperactive years”.
Hoff would start by trying to maintain that image for the state. With Vermont having grown from 300,000 to well over 450,000 in 30 years, Hoff’s first priority was to propose a “development plan,” which involved consolidation. “It probably wasn’t very good, but no one had ever done it before” he said. But he paved the way for future Governor’s to bring it to the forefront.
Hoff had more success with redistricting which he, along with lawmakers from both parties, had advocated during his brief tenure in the Legislature.
To that point, the Legislature operated under a one-town, one vote representation. Which meant that Burlington had the same representation as Vermont’s small towns and villages. Reformers tried to change that but the Legislature, solidly Republican, had no inclination to do so. and, when it reached the Supreme Court, they agreed. The result was that the legislature went from 245 to 150 seats. The state college system was expanded as was welfare and urban projects.
And the voters loved it. In 1964, Hoff captured a second term by 50,000, sweeping in the entire Democratic ticket. The road often proved frustrating. Hoff said he sometimes “feels like the only Democrat in my administration.”
Eventually, Hoff’s emphasis on race would proved a big initiative. One wouldn’t think such evident racism would be evident in Vermont but Huff was called a “n— lover” by some. But he did get the poll tax abolished in 1966.On the war, he turned against Johnson and backed Kennedy. After his death, he went for McCarthy. By then, Hoff was a lame-duck. His popularity was falling and he decided not to seek re-election in 1968.
But by 1970, Hoff wanted back in. He would challenge incumbent Senator Winston Prouty. But Prouty had been around a long time. And Huff was hurt by opposing the war, and for acknowledging that he had previously battled alcoholism. In early fall, observers were giving Hoff a chance but he lost soundly, 58-42%. There would be an encore, however. After chairing the Democratic Party and serving as Chairperson of the Vermont Advisory Commission on Civil Rights, Hoff returned to government: the Legislature. He served six years and upon retiring, the Newport Daily Express called him, “a leading defender of
human-services initiatives and . . . a forceful proponent of property tax
reform” who had become “his party’s spiritual leader in the Senate. He may be gone from the political scene, but we expect he will not soon be forgotten.”
Joe Sherman put it in “Fast Lane on a Dirt Road,” “Vermonters seemed willing, at least for a while, to go with the irresistible tug of the American century. They were just climbing on board 60 years late.”
And Hoff, now 89, is proud of his record. “To this day, Vermont is a more progressive state than New Hampshire and Maine. Those years were the turning point,” he said.