Endorsements and donations from Patient Choices, the VT pro-assisted suicide group backed up by the nationwide group Compassion and Choices, do not seem to have paid off in the 2014 VT elections.
The most spectacular defeat for a Patient Choices-endorsed legislator was that of Linda Waite-Simpson, about whom we have written several times. Waite-Simpson was instrumental in getting the VT law passed, then took a paying job as state director of Compassion and Choices when it moved into VT, then testified in the CT legislature’s assisted suicide hearings as a VT legislator without revealing her ties to C&C, then spent the summer traveling the state trying to “educate” reluctant doctors and patients into “using” the law, while simultaneously running for re-election. The vote wasn’t even close!
Several other Patient Choices-endorsed legislators were also defeated.
The elections were very good news for Vermonters working to defeat assisted suicide!