In a less partisan era, Lieutenant Governor John Rodgers might be just the kind of character who would waltz to reelection in Vermont, a ticket-splitting state that has simultaneously sent a Brooklyn-born democratic socialist to the Senate and a racecar-driving Republican to the governor’s office.
Long before it became legal in Vermont, Rodgers was growing marijuana in the Northeast Kingdom town of Glover. Now he does it professionally on a 379-acre farm his family has owned for nearly two centuries.
A bareknuckle brawler with a reputation for letting it fly — the “Yosemite Sam” of Glover, as his campaign chairman calls him — Rodgers has the quirky portfolio (pro-gun, pro-gay rights, anti-wind power) and homespun character that rural states such as Vermont used to specialize in: A “hipneck,” as Erica Heilman, a radio producer for Vermont Public, calls him — “about 35 percent hippie and 65 percent redneck.”
But despite seeming almost a party of one, Rodgers runs as a Republican, and that, combined with his incumbent status, is proving to be a lead weight in a state where the vibe seems to be tilting left.
Rodgers, 61, is widely seen as the most vulnerable statewide candidate on the ballot this fall, with polls showing him behind his Democratic challenger, Molly Gray, by anywhere from 8 to 19 points. And with President Trump’s approval rating at just 26 percent in Vermont, Rodgers may soon be felled by the very party politics he has spent decades eschewing.
“Donald Trump’s an anchor,” he said of the Republican standard-bearer.
Two years ago, Rodgers pulled off the seemingly impossible: a longtime conservative Democrat, he defected to the Republican Party and, for the first time since 1853, ousted an incumbent lieutenant governor in a general election. He did it by harnessing voter outrage over soaring property taxes — and by presenting a down-to-earth alternative to a scandal-tinged incumbent.
But this time around, Rodgers’s fortunes appear to have turned.
He’s hardly the only member of his party facing fierce political headwinds. Governor Phil Scott, a fellow Republican, is engaged in his toughest race in a decade, at the hands of an erstwhile unknown Democratic challenger, Amanda Janoo. (In Vermont, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor do not run as a ticket.)
Unlike Scott, who has built his brand as Vermont’s “Mr. Nice Guy,” Rodgers is a no-holds-barred type who’s running an unusually negative campaign by Vermont’s staid standards. He’s repeatedly attacked members of Gray’s family over labor violations on the farm they own, questioned her commitment to human rights, and cast doubt on her rural bona fides.
“He’s a little more irascible than Phil Scott, a little more cantankerous,” said Bert Johnson, a professor of political science at Middlebury College. “People don’t see him as sunny and positive as they do Phil Scott.”
That may be an understatement. While serving in the state Senate, Rodgers called a critic of a bill he wrote a “clueless [expletive],” and referred to an openly gay colleague as a “snippy little [expletive].”
“John is John,” said Matt Birong, a Democratic state representative who chairs Rogers’s campaign. “He’s very direct with his words sometimes.”
A stonemason by trade, Rodgers juggles a number of jobs while serving as lieutenant governor, a part-time job in Vermont. In winter, he’s up early plowing snow-covered driveways; inside the Capitol, he cuts a a distinctive figure, with a droopy mustache, cowboy boots and ever-present maroon jacket — a look that calls to mind the character Ron Burgundy from “Anchorman.”
Rodgers’s political history is full of ups and downs. First elected to the Vermont House in 2002, he was defeated eight years later after voting to legalize same-sex marriage. In 2018, he led opposition to gun-control measures Scott proposed following an attempted school shooting, and ultimately challenged Scott that year in a half-hearted write-in campaign for governor.
Heilman, the radio producer, said “he has more guns than anyone I’ve ever met.” Rodgers said he isn’t quite sure how many firearms he owns because he’s “never counted them,” but it’s enough to fill two gun safes.
He eventually lost his Senate seat, but in early 2024 foresaw a growing backlash to the Democratic supermajority that controlled the legislature at the time. He led a pair of State House rallies dubbed “Tap trees, not Vermonters,” that captured voter anger over rising property taxes and various cultural issues, and soon rode a Republican wave to the lieutenant governor’s office.
But now his decision to switch parties may come back to haunt him.
In a blue wave year, it may not be enough that Rodgers has distanced himself from Trump, asserting that, like Scott, he has never voted for the president.
“What I think is a particular vulnerability for Republicans in Vermont is that they don’t have anybody to turn out their people,” said Lachlan Francis, chair of the Vermont Democratic Party. “If you’ve put together a room of 100 Trump supporters in Vermont, a lot of them disapprove of Phil Scott’s job performance.”
His opponent, meanwhile, enjoys higher name recognition and favorability ratings, in part from her previous stint as lieutenant governor, according to a University of New Hampshire poll. A polished, mainstream Democrat, she easily defeated a fellow former staffer to Senator Peter Welch in this year’s primary.
And to the degree that Rodgers has distinguished himself in office, it hasn’t always been positive.
He has battled officials in his hometown of Glover for years over ownership a dirt road named for his ancestors, suing the town and tussling with members of its road crew. He faced criticism for using his position as lieutenant governor to lobby for a bill that would have helped his cannabis operation. And most recently, he was fined by state regulators for growing more than 100 pot plants in a greenhouse without permission.
Rodgers dismisses the last of these as a minor “compliance issue,” and uses it to make a case against what he sees as an overzealous state government.
“Our regulators use punishment instead of helping people to comply and succeed, and that’s what any state worker should be doing: helping businesses succeed,” he said.
But to Gray, there’s a theme to Rodgers’s actions: “It’s a pattern and practice of a sitting lieutenant governor putting himself first, using his office for financial gain, and being willing to mow down anyone in his path to get what he wants,” she said.
Gray, 42, an attorney and former executive director of the Vermont Afghan Alliance, has been willing to tussle with Rodgers, but he has levied far more aggressive — and personal — attacks against her.
Citing a failed run for Congress when she last served as lieutenant governor, Rodgers describes Gray as overly ambitious and uninterested in doing the job. And though she grew up on a farm in Newbury, he characterizes her as a member of the Burlington elite cosplaying as a rural Vermonter.
“I actually worked on a farm,” Rodgers said. “She shows up for pictures in front of the cows with her nicely pressed L.L.Bean flannel on.”
Perhaps his toughest hit came when Rodgers unearthed documentation that Gray’s family farm, now run by a brother, faced safety and sanitation investigations by the state into migrant worker housing.
“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 after springing the allegations on her during a debate.
That led to “a barrage of threats” from MAGA Republicans, she told the Globe, threatening the safety of her family. “Why would a sitting lieutenant governor come after his own constituents, putting them in harm’s way, when I’ve had nothing to do with the operations of their farm?”
Over pancakes, bacon, and maple syrup at a fire department fund-raiser in Ferrisburgh, Rodgers explained to a tie-dye-clad voter why he had come out of political retirement to run for lieutenant governor.
“There’s a lot of important issues, but nothing else matters if you can’t afford to live here,” he said, rattling off a list of tax increases advanced by the Vermont legislature.
Tim Vincent and Sue Burdick, who dined with Rodgers inside the firehouse, credited him and Scott with pushing back against the Democratic legislature. Asked what attribute of Rodgers they most valued, they answered simultaneously: “common sense.”
But John Stroup, a Democratic candidate for a local House seat who was also campaigning at the pancake breakfast, said he thought Rodgers had hurt his own chances by attacking Gray’s family “in a way that was, you know, a little beneath him.”
And Stroup said there was little Rodgers could do to overcome immense anger over high fuel prices and grocery bills, which voters squarely blame on Trump and fellow Republicans.
“Those things are real,” Stroup said. “People are very, very pissed about that.”
Paul Heintz can be reached at paul.heintz@globe.com. Follow him on X @paulheintz.