Hallquist has said she doesn’t want Vermont residents to elect her governor because of her transgender status. Rather, she has said, she wants her candidacy to rise or fall on her plans to help state residents get higher-paying jobs, provide health care for their families and better educate their children.
She said she plans to appeal to voters with a progressive message that includes a livable wage, Medicare for all, free public college education and high-speed broadband access even to those who live on remote back roads.
Outside Vermont, though, she said she’s happy to carry the standard as the candidate who, if elected, would be the nation’s first transgender governor.
Scott, first elected in 2016, was facing a rebellion from his base due to his support for a series of gun restrictions that, while mild by national standards, angered many members of Vermont’s avid hunting community. The restrictions, which Scott signed into law in April, came after the arrest of a teenager on charges he was plotting a school shooting.
Those measures included raising the age to buy firearms from 18 to 21, restricting the size of gun magazines and requiring background checks for most private gun sales.
Scott will seek re-election in November by continuing his pledge to make the state more affordable, not raise taxes or fees, foster a better environment for businesses and attract newcomers to the state.
Hallquist defeated environmental activist James Ehlers; dance festival organizer Brenda Siegel; and 14-year-old student Ethan Sonneborn, on the ballot because a quirk in state law doesn’t require candidates to be of voting age. Democratic state Sen. John Rodgers, from Vermont’s remote and conservative Northeast Kingdom, failed in his bid for a grassroots write-in campaign, largely motivated by his displeasure with firearms restrictions.
Good job. Gives me hope.
You go, girl! It’s so inspiring to see Democratic candidates who are non-white, non-male, non-straight, non-xian, non-gender-conforming winning these races. It really is a revolution.
Laying in extra champagne for November. Not anticipating. Just in case.
And yet she has made a very public point of being “out” as a man pretending to be a woman.
Vermont has been first on many progressive issues, but this is a line too far. How can Vermonters trust a person who is so confused about his biological sex and so self-loathing about his masculinity?
Every American has a right to choose one’s public identity, but not to insist that such pretense be accepted, let alone celebrated, by the general public.
Rachel Dolezal was rightly condemned for being a Caucasion so thoroughly “identifying” as black that she sought a position as head of the Spokane NAACP. Why do we treat gender pretense so differently, as both race and sex are biologically determined.
“Race” is not based in biology. It is a social construct.
Biological sex has never been binary. It’s only recently been recognized in the news that there variations between physiological male and female.
The science behind gender identity is sparse, but how one determines gender is not a conscious “choice.”
Define masculinity please
Examples?