Democratic groundbreaker former Gov. Phil Hoff dies

Philip Hoff was the Democratic candidate for Vermont governor in 1962 when he called his father in Massachusetts with an invitation to dinner on election night.

“I don’t know,” Hoff would remember his father saying. “Are you going to win?”

“Dad, they’ve never elected a Democrat by popular vote in the history of the state,” the candidate replied. “I can’t promise you that. But I think I’ve got a shot.”

Americans today know Vermont as the home of Bernie Sanders and Ben & Jerry’s. But back before the Interstate and the internet, the state was the only one in the nation to have supported the top of every Republican ticket — Richard Nixon included — since the Grand Old Party’s founding in 1854.

Read more: https://vtdigger.org/2018/04/27/democratic-groundbreaker-former-gov-phil-hoff-dies-93/