Peter Welch

Welch was the first Democrat to be Vermont's senate president, since Vermont was a bastion for the Whigs and then the Republicans for more than 100 years beginning in the 1830s.

Peter Francis Welch (born May 2, 1947) is an American lawyer and politician serving since 2023 as the junior United States senator from Vermont.

Welch was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1947.

He attended Cathedral High School (now Pope Francis Preparatory School).

Welch "worked with low-income people on Chicago's West Side in the late 1960s" as a community organizer.

He worked for an organization that was affiliated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and its activities included attendance at an SCLC national convention in Atlanta.

Participants there strategized and heard remarks from Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Welch worked for Lloyd Cutler, who later was White House Counsel during the administrations of presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, at a Washington law firm.

Welch was the first Democrat to represent Vermont in the House since 1961, and only the second since 1853 (though Sanders, an independent, caucused with the Democrats ).

In 1969, he graduated from the College of the Holy Cross with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), magna cum laude, in history.

Welch spent a year in Chicago as a fellow at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, then enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, earning his Juris Doctor (J.D.) in 1973.

After graduating from law school, Welch moved to Vermont in 1973.

He was a law clerk for Judge Henry Black of the Vermont Superior Court.

He worked for several years as a public defender for low-income clients in Windsor County and Orange County.

Welch was a partner for 30 years in the personal injury law firm Welch, Graham & Manby in White River Junction, Vermont.

In 1980, Welch was elected to the Vermont Senate from Windsor County.

In his second term, Welch was chosen as the Minority Leader, and he became president pro tempore after Democrats gained control of the Senate.

Welch was a member of the Vermont Senate from 1981 to 1989, including terms as minority leader.

He was the Senate's president pro tempore from 1985 to 1989, the first Democrat to hold the position.

In 1988, he gave up his seat to run for the United States House of Representatives and lost the Democratic primary to Paul N. Poirier.

In 1988, Welch left the Vermont Senate to make an unsuccessful run for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives.

He was the Democratic nominee for governor of Vermont in 1990, losing the general election to Republican Richard A. Snelling.

In 1990, Welch won the Democratic nomination for governor of Vermont but lost the general election to Republican Richard Snelling.

Welch continued to practice law and returned to politics in 2001, when he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the Vermont Senate.

Welch did not run for another office for more than a decade; in 2001, Governor Howard Dean appointed him to fill a vacant Vermont Senate seat in Windsor County.

He was re-elected in 2002 and 2004 and was Senate president from 2003 to 2007.

He was elected to the seat in 2002 and reelected in 2004, and again was president pro tempore.

In 2006, Welch was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, succeeding Bernie Sanders, who was elected to the United States Senate.

In November 2021, Welch announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in the 2022 United States Senate election in Vermont to succeed retiring Senator Patrick Leahy.

On August 9, 2022, he won the Democratic primary.

On November 8, 2022, Welch won the general election, defeating Republican nominee Gerald Malloy.

Elected at age 75, he is the oldest person to become a freshman senator, a record previously held by Frederick H. Gillett.

When Vermont's U.S. Representative, Bernie Sanders, ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006, Welch chose to run for Sanders's seat.

He defeated Republican Martha Rainville in the general election, 53% to 45%, in a race where both candidates pledged to be entirely positive.

A member of the Democratic Party, he was U.S. representative for VT's at-large congressional district from 2007 to 2023.

He has been a major figure in Vermont politics for over four decades, and is only the second Democrat to be elected a senator from the state.

Welch was re-elected in 2008 with no major-party opposition, becoming the first Democrat to be reelected to the House from Vermont since 1848.

He was in the unusual position of being both the Democratic and Republican nominee for the seat, due to Republican voters writing his name in on the blank primary ballot.

Welch was reelected with 64% of the vote against Republican nominee Paul Beaudry, Liberty Union nominee Jane Newton, Working Families nominee Sheila Coniff, and independent candidate Gus Jaccaci.

Welch defeated Republican nominee Mark Donka, Liberty Union candidate Jane Newton, and Independent candidates James "Sam" Desrochers and Andre LaFramboise with 72% of the vote.