Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas says he won’t run for re-election.
Douglas, a four-term Republican who has bucked Vermont’s political tide for years, says he won’t seek another two-year term in 2010 but has no plans to seek any other office.
A fixture in Vermont politics since 1972, when he was elected to the House of Representatives as a 21-year-old fresh out of Middlebury College, Douglas went on to serve as secretary of state and state treasurer before being elected governor in 2002.
A fiscal conservative and social moderate, Douglas, 58, has endured a rocky relationship with the state’s Democrat-controlled legislature, most recently losing a veto override vote on the issue of gay marriage.