Lt. Gov. John Rodgers and former Lt. Gov. Molly Gray both promised Tuesday to bring down what Vermonters pay for health care, housing and property taxes. Whoever wins on Nov. 3 will be doing it from an office that breaks tie votes in the Senate and helps assign committees, but can’t pass a law on its own.
Rodgers, the Republican from Glover, and Gray, the Democrat from Burlington, debated Tuesday on Vermont Public. The full debate and transcript are here. They agreed the status quo isn’t working. They disagreed about what caused Vermont’s affordability problems and what a lieutenant governor can do about them.
What the office can do
The lieutenant governor presides over the Vermont Senate and votes only to break a tie. The lieutenant governor also holds one of three seats on the Committee on Committees, alongside the Senate president pro tempore and a senator elected by the Senate. That committee decides which senators serve on which Senate committees, under Senate rules.
The lieutenant governor acts as governor when the governor is out of state. If the governor dies or leaves office, the lieutenant governor becomes governor.
Beyond those formal duties, the office leaves considerable room for constituent service and policy advocacy. Gray held it from 2021 to 2023 and left after running unsuccessfully for Congress. Rodgers, a former Democratic legislator, switched parties and defeated David Zuckerman in 2024, taking office in January 2025.
The two candidates described two different versions of the office:
Rodgers described a constituent-service office. He said his office connects Vermonters with state departments when they can’t get a call back, and works on bills in the State House. He said Gray “used the office to run for Congress.”
Gray described a platform. She wants the office to push for universal primary care and housing, and to speak out about what she called unlawful federal action, drawing on her work resettling Afghan refugees.
Health care
Gray’s central argument is that health insurance premiums drive school costs, and school costs drive property taxes. She proposed universal primary care so people get basic care before they end up in an emergency room. To pay for it, she said the state should consider recouping the Trump tax cuts and raising the tax on luxury second homes, “not hunting camps, not workforce housing.”
Rodgers said Gray hasn’t said who pays or how much in a state that spends $6 billion to $8 billion a year on health care. He said Vermont is “too old” and “too expensive” to go it alone, though he believes the country should get to universal coverage.
Rodgers also said Vermont has the highest health insurance costs in the country. Vermont ranks highest on KFF’s marketplace benchmark measure. The benchmark plan for a 40-year-old cost $1,299 a month in Vermont in 2026, more than twice the national average of $625. That figure is before subsidies, and it covers marketplace plans, not every kind of health insurance.
School taxes, and Barre
The moderator asked each candidate what they would tell voters in Barre, where the school district’s budget has been rejected three times this year. A fourth vote is set for Election Day.
Rodgers said, “I really wish more towns would have voted their budgets down to send a message to the legislature.” He then said Barre voters “need to get a budget. It’s time.”
He blamed 20 years of Democratic control of the Legislature. He pointed to an amendment he said he offered when Act 46 passed: each town would get a set spending amount, and a town spending above it would raise the extra money locally, with half of every extra dollar going to help poorer schools. Lawmakers rejected it, he said.
Gray didn’t tell Barre voters how to vote. She told them they have a choice between the status quo, where taxes and premiums keep rising, and her plans to bring those costs down.
Housing and land use
Gray proposed a Vermont model code: a ready-made, simplified zoning code that a town could choose to adopt instead of writing its own. She also proposed a Vermont Housing Corps to pay incentives to young plumbers, electricians and carpenters.
Rodgers organized rallies against Act 181, the 2024 land use law the Legislature partly repealed this year. He said Vermont needs to “totally revamp” land use rules and environmental permitting before businesses will come.
Dairy
Half of Vermont’s dairy farms closed in the decade before 2025, leaving just under 450 that spring. Gray called for help keeping milk processing in the state and getting farmers a fair price. Rodgers blamed federal commodity pricing and state permitting costs, and said Vermont should match the farm incentives New York, Massachusetts and Maine offer.
Cannabis
Rodgers runs a licensed cannabis farm. He said the Legislature let large growers flood the market and the Cannabis Control Board buries small growers in paperwork.
Gray called for reassessing vertical integration, the rules on whether one business can grow, process and sell. She also wants more opportunities for growers to produce, process and bring cannabis to market. She said she recently met with growers in the Lake Champlain islands.
The moderator asked Rodgers about his own case. A state inspector found cannabis seedlings in a greenhouse about a mile from his licensed site in Glover, a building he had never reported to the state. On Tuesday, Rodgers called it a greenhouse he had failed to put on his site map and said the board should have helped him fix it. Gray said a lieutenant governor shouldn’t be growing “200 plants off the books.”
Rodgers said in September that he had agreed to pay $2,500 to settle the violation, half the original proposed fine. At the time of VTDigger’s September 14 report, the board had confirmed settlement discussions but had not released the terms. The plant count isn’t settled either: the board’s violation notice described approximately 200 seedlings, and Rodgers said there were 120, VTDigger reported.
Data centers
Gray asked Rodgers why he didn’t keep Republicans behind the data center bill after Gov. Phil Scott vetoed it. Rodgers said the Republicans he talked with chose to back the governor, and that he doesn’t believe a large data center will come to Vermont. The House sustained the veto in May.
The personal exchanges
Rodgers opened his first question by saying Gray’s family farm had “serious labor violations” involving H-2A workers, the seasonal foreign farmworkers hired on temporary visas. He asked whether she used her influence to direct the investigation. Gray called it “a new low” and said her family isn’t on the ballot. When the moderator pressed on whether she had used her influence, Gray said, “Of course not. No.”
The farm, 4 Corners Farm in Newbury, is owned by Gray’s parents. It was fined $3,457 by the Vermont Department of Labor in 2024 for unsanitary cooking conditions, VTDigger reported.
Rodgers also said Democratic Party leaders pressured Rep. Leanne Harple, D-Orleans, who has known him since she was a baby, to drop her support for him after she told Gray. Gray said their call was cordial and she couldn’t speak to what happened afterward.
Earlier, Rodgers had said Gray went to a $76,000-a-year private school while he did farm chores. Gray said a scholarship sent her to a ski academy and a full ride sent her to UVM.
Lightning round
Asked whether Vermont should legalize more gambling, Gray said it was “definitely not a top priority.” She added that she takes no corporate or corporate PAC money, including from the betting platform Kalshi. Rodgers said she has taken that kind of money in past campaigns. He opposes more gambling, saying it “takes money out of a lot of people’s pockets who can least afford it.”
The clearest split came on Prop 3, the constitutional amendment protecting the right to unionize and bargain collectively. Gray will vote yes. “My husband’s been a Teamster for 20 years, and I don’t know how you can support workers without supporting workers’ rights,” she said. Rodgers will vote no, though he said he’ll uphold it if voters pass it.