Peter Elliott Shumlin (born March 24, 1956) is an American politician from Vermont. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 81st governor of Vermont from 2011 to 2017. He was first elected to the office in 2010, and was reelected to a second term in 2012. In 2014 he received a narrow plurality in his race for reelection, but did not attain the 50% threshold mandated by the Constitution of Vermont. In such cases the Vermont General Assembly elects the winner. The legislature almost always selects the candidate who received a plurality; this held true, and the General Assembly re-elected Shumlin to a third term by a vote of 110–69 in January 2015. In June 2015, Shumlin announced that he would not seek re-election in 2016. He signed laws on physician-assisted suicide as well as the United States' first genetically modified food labeling requirement during his tenure as governor. He was chair of the Democratic Governors Association during his first two terms. He was a member of the Vermont House of Representatives from 1991 to 1993, and represented the Windham District in the Vermont Senate from 1993 to 2003 and again from 2007 to 2011. He was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Vermont in 2002. Early life, education and private career Born in Brattleboro, Vermont, Shumlin went to high school at Buxton School in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and graduated from Wesleyan University in 1979. Shumlin served on Selectboard for the town of Putney in the 1980s and helped found Landmark College, which was created to help people with learning disabilities gain a college education. Shumlin's father, George J. Shumlin, a third-generation American, was Jewish and descended from Russian immigrants; his mother, Kitty A. (Prins) Shumlin, was from The Hague in the Netherlands, and was Protestant. Early political career Vermont Legislature Shumlin was appointed by Governor Madeleine M. Kunin to fill a vacancy in the Vermont House of Representatives. He served part of one term plus one full term, and represented Putney from 1990 through 1993. In 1992, he was elected to the Vermont Senate, and he soon became Minority Leader. In the 1996 elections, Shumlin led his Senate Democrats to win back control of the chamber after four years in the minority, and in 1997 he became Senate President Pro Tempore. Campaign for lieutenant governor In 2002, Shumlin won the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor,