Vermont has lost one of its best public servants. State Representative Cola Hudson has died at the age of 81. The accolades and memorials are flowing all around the state, and they can’t be too generous. Here’s from Rep. Chris Pearson on the blog of the Vermont Progressive Party:

Cola represented the best of a citizen legislature. In committee he shared old stories and colored them with lessons of the legislative process. He would ask the chair, a position he held off and on over his tenure, for permission to speak and off he would go, illuminating what he considered the appropriate role of the legislature, our committee, or something having to do with the separate branches of government.

In my interaction with the member from Lyndon I witnessed a man who supported his party but never over his principles.

I didn’t know Rep. Hudson personally, but I know other Vermont Republicans who are of the same principled cloth, committed to responsive and responsible government. (Not least among them is Sen. Bill Doyle, whom I mentioned in an earlier post.) I take the “good government Republican” designation from an editorial I read probably a couple of years ago, and probably in the Times Argus. It was a good editorial that made a distinction between good government Republicans and shameless, arrogant neocons.

I’m a newcomer to Vermont, having been here a mere 23 years. I still remember being astonished, when I arrived, by Vermont’s political picture. There were, and are, Republicans much more attentive and responsive to their constituents than many of the old Southern Democrats who held sway in my early years in NC. And when it came to NC Republicans of my middle young adult years, let’s just say the likes of Vermont’s Robert Stafford and (now former Republican) James Jeffords were like day to NC’s Jesse Helms’ night.

For whatever disagreements there have been on particular issues, there was always agreement on the issue of integrity. And in that, Vermont has indeed lost one of its jewels with the passing of Cola Hudson.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen