Nearly a year ago, we reported on an impressive number of Wes alums elected to congressional and gubernatorial office in the midterm elections of 2010. Among the notables was Peter Shumlin ’79, a former Vermont state senator from Putney who attended Wesleyan in the same class year as President Roth and later helped found Vermont’s Landmark College, one of only two colleges in the country designed for students with learning disabilities. Shumlin, a 55-year-old Democrat, had won the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor back in 2002, but that didn’t quite work out.

In 2010, Shumlin sought the highest office in Vermont and won, receiving 117,561 votes to Brian Dubies’ 113,227. The governor’s priorities in the first months of his term remain largely faithful to his campaign promises: reforming Vermont’s health care system and seeking to close the state’s Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant.

Until last week, that is. Hurricane Irene ravaged through southern and central Vermont last weekend, destroying homes, killing at least three, and leaving a startling number of towns without electricity, phones, or adequate food supplies. Thrust suddenly into the national spotlight while dealing with Vermont’s worst national disaster in over 80 years, the freshman governor has proven himself an inspired leader in a state with relatively little experience in disaster management.