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Vermont Moved from Ignored Backwater to Envied Attraction in 20th Century (cont.)

Now, in 1965, under order from federal judges, lawmakers prepared to vote on a plan to create a 150-member House whose membership would be apportioned according to population.

Hutchins wept on the floor of the House as he condemned the outsiders in the Legislature who "come into our parlors and try to change things." He was not alone in his emotional response: His colleague from Pownal, James Lounsbury, called it "symbolic that freedom and Jesus Christ both died at three o'clock on a Friday afternoon."

Change was coming.

Philip Henderson Hoff stood on the front seat of the open convertible, grinning ear to ear. He reached out to the cheering crowd, the roar echoing off the mills that made up the heavily Democratic city. People filled the streets of Winooski even though it was so late at night that it was actually morning. Hoff responded to the roars; his arms stretched out each side of the car as he reached to connect with those who had that night put him over the top in the 1962 race for governor.

Vermont, the most Republican state in the nation, had elected its first Democratic governor in more than a century.

Change was coming.

A century of change. Dramatic and traumatic change. Unending change. Change that took so many forms and came in so many areas it is nearly impossible to tally. Construction of the interstates, reapportionment of the House and the rise of the Democrats were just part of the story. Women rose as a political power with Edna Beard winning election to the Vermont House in 1920, the year women got the right to vote; Consuelo Northrup Bailey following in her footsteps in the 1950s to become speaker of the House and the nation's first female lieutenant governor; and Madeleine Kunin becoming in the 1980s the first female governor.

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