Jim Jeffords: The Vermont Republican Whose 2001 Switch Flipped the Senate

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Jim Jeffords was born in Rutland, Vermont, in 1934, the son of Vermont Supreme Court Chief Justice Olin M. Jeffords. After Yale in 1956 he served as a Navy officer on the USS McNair, the first ship to enter the Suez Canal after the 1956 crisis, and took part in the 1958 Lebanon response. He earned a Harvard law degree in 1962, entered local politics in Shrewsbury, won the state senate in 1966 and became attorney general in 1968. Elected to Vermont's only House seat in 1974, he came from the progressive Aiken-Gibson wing of the state party and in 1981 was the only one of 192 House Republicans to vote against Ronald Reagan's tax cuts.

Elected to the Senate in 1988, he backed Bill Clinton's 1993 health plan, was one of five Republicans to vote to acquit Clinton, and lobbied for intervention in Rwanda in 1994. With the Senate split 50 to 50 after the 2000 election, he demanded full funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act before backing the Bush tax cuts. On May 24, 2001, he left the Republican Party to caucus with Democrats as an independent, flipping control of the chamber. He then voted against the Iraq war authorization and the Department of Homeland Security, but for the Medicare prescription drug bill. He retired in 2006, was succeeded by Bernie Sanders, and died in August 2014 at 80.

• He sat at the Senate candy desk and sang in the Singing Senators with Trent Lott, John Ashcroft and Larry Craig.
• UN commander Romeo Dallaire recorded him as one of only two senators pressing for action in Rwanda.
• Harry Reid promised him the Environment and Public Works chairmanship and his seniority.
• Before the switch he had the lowest American Conservative Union rating of any Republican senator.
• Only one Republican, Chuck Grassley, spoke on the floor to honor him at his farewell.