'The Progressive Realignment of Vermont, 1969 - 2006'

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'The Progressive Realignment of Vermont, 1969 - 2006' will be the first contemporary history of Vermont's realignment away from the Republican Party. While known as the homeland of Senator Bernie Sanders, Sanders was just one facet of an electoral revolution waged in north-eastern municipalities that upended the political landscape of New England - before serving as the foundation for a national progressive resurgence. Fundamentally, my research will ask why Vermont, once among the most conservative states, underwent a progressive realignment, and why this is important for understanding American left-wing politics nationally. Beginning in the 1970s with what Vermonters dubbed the 'hippy invasion', an influx of predominantly young, white, out-of-state migrants previously involved in counterculture movements, before proceeding through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, my research will consider the hippy invasion's role in Vermont's political transformation. I will use the political ascensions of future Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean as case studies. While both have been transformative figures in Vermont and the Democratic Party, they symbolise differing ideals of Vermont's realignment. Sanders, the independent socialist, and Dean, the establishment liberal governor. Using the multi-decade format, my research will document the political landscape that facilitated the duo's unlikely rise to national prominence, connecting with the existing historiography of matters like the Culture Wars, 'a wrangle over whether the social changes of the 1960s had benefited or harmed America' (Hartmann, 2019, pg. 102). My research will conclude in 2006, following Dean's unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign and election as Chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2005, alongside Sanders' election to the Senate in 2006, the culmination of the nationalisation of Vermont's realignment.