Jahala Dudley with a hemp plant Just two years ago, hemp looked like a crop that could inject some life into Vermont s flagging agricultural economy. At Statehouse meetings, entrepreneurs, lawmakers and regulators who were giddy with optimism talked of harnessing the profits of the fast-growing industry for societal good. One of them was Carl Christianson, who had just set up a hemp processing facility and testing lab in a newly purchased 10,000-square-foot former bread bakery in Brattleboro. But a nationwide rush to plant in the summer of 2019 led to an oversupply in the fall. Would-be purchasers backed away, so many farmers left their plants standing in the field and took a loss. Others harvested their crop and were left high and dry by buyers who never paid up.
Illustration When Vermont lawmakers left the Statehouse last March amid the worsening pandemic, they weren t the only ones evicted from their stately digs. The army of lobbyists who work to influence the legislative process was also driven from those corridors of power. Unable to buttonhole senators in the halls or grab lunch with committee chairs in the cafeteria, lobbyists found their working lives disrupted by the pandemic as profoundly as any bartender s or bed-and-breakfast owner s. And yet even as their stock-in-trade access to lawmakers has been curtailed, demand for their influence has remained as strong as ever. Decisions made in Montpelier, from sweeping executive lockdown orders to legislative spats over who should receive relief funds, have taken on existential import, raising the stakes for lobbyists and their clients.