Phil Scott wins a record sixth term as Vermont governor
The Vermont State House in Montpelier. Photo: King of Hearts, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Republican Gov. Phil Scott won a sixth term on Tuesday, defeating Democrat and Progressive Amanda Janoo and passing Howard Dean’s record for the most gubernatorial wins in Vermont history.
Janoo conceded around 10:50 p.m. at her Burlington election-night gathering. As of midnight, the Associated Press showed Scott at about 52 percent to Janoo’s 46 percent, with nearly all votes counted. If that margin holds, it is Scott’s narrowest victory since he first won in 2016. Two years ago he took 73 percent.
“Forty-eight hours ago the political pundits were writing my obituary,” Scott told supporters at the Associated General Contractors of Vermont building in Montpelier.
Scott, 68, lives in Berlin and formerly ran a construction business. Janoo, an economist from Burlington, was running her first campaign and entered the year with almost no name recognition.
A closer race than the last one
Polling before Election Day showed Scott’s favorability down, especially among Democrats who had backed him in earlier cycles. He has said education reform and the order sending state employees back to in-person work cost him support. Janoo outraised him in the campaign’s final two months and drew larger crowds than recent Democratic nominees.
Scott’s answer on the trail was experience: the COVID response and the floods of 2023 and 2024. He also reminded Democratic-leaning voters that he has broken with President Donald Trump when he thought federal moves would hurt the state.
Outside money mattered. The Republican Governors Association had put about $950,000 into a Vermont-based super PAC that ran ads for Scott and against Janoo in the closing weeks, according to campaign finance reports cited by VTDigger.
In her concession, Janoo congratulated Scott and said she believes he wants a steady hand in Montpelier, then told supporters to keep holding him accountable. “We went from zero name recognition to, like, being pretty close,” she said.
What comes next in the Statehouse
Democrats appear headed for supermajorities in both chambers again. Scott told the Montpelier crowd it had been a hard night for Republicans nationally and that Vermont was not spared. He invited legislative leaders to work with him on the economy, arguing the state needs more taxpayers rather than more taxes and that spending cannot outrun what Vermonters can pay.
On the campaign trail he pitched tax cuts or credits, health-care deregulation and a continued push toward larger regional school districts. How much of that agenda survives a Democratic Legislature is the open question of the next biennium.
Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, a Democrat, ousted Republican John Rodgers on the same ballot, setting up a split executive ticket for Scott’s sixth term.
Scott’s sixth term also overlaps with unfinished flood recovery and a school-governance fight that already cost him allies in the Democratic base. The math he keeps citing — spend within what taxpayers can carry — will collide with repair bills and district consolidation costs that do not shrink because the election is over. How he uses the veto pen against a supermajority Legislature will define whether this term looks like the collaborative years or the standoffs.
Scott has now been elected governor more times than anyone in Vermont history. The record comes with a smaller mandate than he carried in 2024 and a Legislature that can override him when the votes are there. The next two years will test whether personal popularity still converts into policy when the margins are this thin.
Janoo’s campaign proved a first-time candidate can force a sitting governor under 55 percent. That fact will hang over both parties. Democrats have a template for a closer race next time. Scott has a warning that personal brand alone no longer delivers landslides in a state where housing costs and school fights dominate kitchen-table talk.
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