The final vote was 94-52 late this afternoon as the House passed S.115. Three legislators were absent, two of them yes votes from last night: Ira Trombley of Grand isle, and Frank Geier of South Burlington. Republican Pat O’Donnell of Vernon was absent again today.
Republican Richard Westman, who was absent last night, today voted YES, bringing to six the number of Republicans who supported marriage equality.
It’s a great day for Vermont, even if we did lag behind Iowa. We’re achieving a legislative equality without a court order. The margin was huge, even though it didn’t quite reach the fail-safe two-thirds threshold.
Advocates are optimistic both that the Senate will act quickly on the slightly amended House version, and that the override vote in both chambers will be successful. Toward that end, they’re recruiting volunteers.
In the ideal scenario, we now have:
95 “Yes” votes from the second reading
2 Democratic “No” votes who will vote to override
1 New Republican Yes vote today.
1 vote from Speaker Shap Smith.
We are ONE away people. ONE rep needs to vote to sustain. There’s got to be someone who can recognize that Douglas cannot override the legislature on this issue.
Could he be the vote that flips? Let’s hope so.
BD
One District, Winooski-Burlington, controls the override vote. If the two legislators, Atkins and Bissonnette, from that district vote to override the override will pass.
The other very interesting piece of this puzzle is the Governor’s statement about putting no pressure on Republicans to vote no on the override. Given that the leader of the minority, Patti Komline, vote for the bill, we have to assume that there is no Republican leadership pushing for a no vote on override. So:
Could it be that the Governor has once again outfoxed the Democrats. He vetos the bill, takes no action to prevent an override, thus to some degree supporting an override and then blames it all on the Democrats. In five months anyone who really cares about gay marriage has forgotten how it all came down. And, the opponents still love Douglas for his veto and hate the Democrats for passing the law. It is simply a very clever way to let the law pass without signing it!! Someone on the Douglas team is a master of creative and deceptive politics!
I understand why the dems in Northern Franklin county and Bennington county voted no. But whats going on with the chittenden county dems? why are so many voting no? I cant beleive they are under constituent pressure to vote no. I think these are the dems we have to work on to stay home for the override vote or better yet to change thier vote. If we keep these dems at home we will win this thing. I am going to call Jeff Young in my district and tell him to stay home. Its important that we make phone calls and send emails especially to the dems in lib districts because they have the most to lose.