Vermont’s Statehouse has no shortage of lobbyists working the hallways, buttonholing lawmakers on housing, healthcare, and tax policy. But this week, a more unusual lobbying effort played out under the golden dome, one centered not on legislation but on whether a sitting judge gets to keep her job.
Superior Court Judge Rachel Malone faced a full legislative retention vote Wednesday, March 25, alongside five other Superior Court judges whose seats came up on the state’s six-year review cycle. For Malone, the stakes were higher than for her colleagues. Earlier this month, the Judicial Retention Committee declined to recommend her, a rare outcome that pushed her into unfamiliar political territory and prompted her to engage a paid lobbyist ahead of the final joint assembly vote.
Attorney and registered lobbyist Anthony Irrapino stepped in to help Malone present her record to lawmakers. He is coordinating with Jessica Oski, a lobbyist with the Necrason Group who has long worked with judges through the Vermont Trial Judges Association. Oski is providing pro bono guidance to Malone and the five other judges up for retention this week. The firm asks judges to consider donating to the Vermont Bar Foundation in return, though Oski emphasized the arrangement is optional.
“We’re all lawyers, and this is our effort to give back to the judiciary, to support the judiciary,” Oski said.
The involvement of lobbyists in judicial retention is not new, but it typically operates quietly in the background. Coaches help judges craft a concise pitch for chance hallway encounters with lawmakers. They make sure committee members have the materials they need. The goal, according to people familiar with the process, is navigation, not persuasion.
Bob Paolini, former executive director of the Vermont Bar Association and a veteran of the retention process on both sides of the table, draws a sharp distinction between policy lobbying and what happens during judicial retention.
“You have to understand the position of a judge: They do lots of different things, but politics is a strange world for them,” Paolini said. He noted that judges are accustomed to evaluation by peers, not elected officials, and that the retention process forces them into a political arena for which nothing in their professional lives prepares them.
Vermont’s system places judges in this position by design. Unlike many states, Vermont does not elect its judges. The governor appoints them, and then the legislature reviews each Superior Court and Supreme Court seat on a rotating six-year cycle. That timing attaches to the seat rather than the individual, which is why Malone, appointed by Gov. Phil Scott in November 2023, found herself facing a retention vote less than three years into her tenure.
For thirty years, that process has been largely ceremonial. Lawmakers have voted to retain every judge since 1993, making each retention vote more formality than flashpoint. Malone’s situation breaks from that pattern. The Judicial Retention Committee’s decision not to recommend her introduced real uncertainty into a process that had grown almost reflexively routine.
What Malone’s case exposes is the awkward seam between two systems that operate on entirely different logics. Courts prize insulation from political pressure. Legislatures run on it. When a judge’s professional fate lands in the hands of lawmakers who may have little familiarity with her record, some form of translation becomes necessary. Lobbyists fill that gap.
That arrangement raises legitimate questions about equity. Judges with connections to well-organized bar networks can access pro bono guidance and experienced advocates. Judges without those networks may not know what resources exist or how to navigate a process that looks nothing like a courtroom.
The deeper issue is structural. A retention system that remained dormant for over three decades creates few incentives to prepare judges for a genuine contest. When one finally arrives, the tools available for navigating it reflect the same informal, relationship-driven logic that governs the rest of the Statehouse.
Vermont will almost certainly decide Malone’s fate one way or another before the week is out. Whatever the outcome, this moment reveals something worth watching: what happens when judicial independence and legislative accountability pull in opposite directions, and who gets to help smooth over the friction.
