BURLINGTON, Vt. — A former energy company executive from Vermont has come a step closer to becoming the nation's first transgender governor. Christine Hallquist swept to victory in Tuesday’s crowded gubernatorial primary, besting three other Democrats — including a 14-year-old boy — to become the party’s nominee. She is the first trans person to win a major party’s nomination for governor. "Tonight we made history, and I'm so honored to be ... part of this historical moment," Hallquist said to a room full of clapping fans at her election-night party in Burlington. "I'm so proud to be the face of the Democrats tonight." Hallquist will face Republican incumbent Phil Scott in November. Scott’s popularity has waned in recent months, but he managed to beat his Republican primary challenger by a healthy margin on Tuesday. The most specific parts of Hallquist’s platform follow a now-familiar progressive model: a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for all and free higher education. She is also campaigning on an aggressive expansion of renewable electricity and high-speed broadband access across the state. Hallquist said the anti-transgender policies of the Trump administration, including the attempt to ban trans people from serving in the military and the reversal of Obama-era protections for trans people in gender-segregated facilities, were factors in her decision to run for office. “This isn’t something I was thinking about doing,” Hallquist explained. “I say, in the physics world, for every action, there’s an opposite and equal reaction. This is a reaction to 2016.” She said she hopes “our children and our children’s children look back at 2018 and say, ‘Hey, that’s when we all got in, and our democracy survived a despot.’” Hallquist’s past career as CEO of the Vermont Electric Cooperative gave her a major boost going into Tuesday’s contest. She’s credited with turning the electric utility around, and a poll found she had the highest name recognition of all the Democratic hopefuls in the gubernatorial race. On the campaign trail, she criticized Gov. Scott’s high rate of vetoed legislation, which she called a “leadership failure” and a product of his “focus on division.” “We are a very loving state, so when people are focusing on division, people don’t like it,” Hallquist said. Hallquist said she’s confident she has a good chance against Scott in November. “It’s pretty clear he’s vulnerable,” she said. “I think he lost support from both the gun advocates and the Democrats who might have voted for him before.” One element of Hallquist’s platform that generated buzz leading up to the primary is a program for rural internet expansion. Beforing the polls closed on Tuesday, Hallquist visited Brighton, a small town in Vermont’s poor northeast, where she said, “Rural America is facing a problem right now.” “You’re seeing increasing rates of poverty, flights to the city, an aging demographic,” she said. “The same thing happened in the 1930s, when cities had electricity and rural America did not.” That story of rural electrification and the way it transformed Vermont in the 1930s is a major theme of Hallquist’s campaign, and it featured prominently in her advertisements. The modern-day version of stringing electric lines is stringing fiber-optic internet cables, and Hallquist, who formerly led the Vermont Electricity Cooperative, knows a thing or two about infrastructure. “You just run it on the same poles and wires, that’s why this thing works. It’s just another wire,” she said. “If you use your utility buckets, labor and equipment, you can do it for a third of the cost.” Dustin Tanner, a Democratic nominee for the Vermont state Senate who ran uncontested on Tuesday, said he voted for Hallquist. A self-described “Bernie-wing” Democrat, Tanner said there are parts of Hallquist’s platform that are “a little conservative” for him. However, he said her plan for rural broadband connectivity was a main reason why he voted for her in Tuesday’s primary. Tanner, whose day job is in the information technology department of a local school, said he’s keenly aware of how crucial it is for Vermonters to have fast internet. Liz Gamache, the former mayor of St. Albans and a Hallquist booster, attributed Hallquist’s wide support in the state to “lots of word of mouth.” “It goes a long way in this state,” Gamache said. “We see each other in the grocery store; we are one or two people removed from just about everybody.” Former Houston, Texas, Mayor Annise Parker, now president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, a political action committee that endorsed Hallquist, called her primary victory a “defining moment in the movement for trans equality.” “Yet Vermont voters chose Christine not because of her gender identity, but because she is an open and authentic candidate with a long history of service to the state, and who speaks to the issues most important to voters,” Parker said in a statement sent to NBC News. “When voters head to the polls this November, we are confident Vermonters will make her the first openly trans governor in the nation.” FOLLOW NBC OUT ON TWITTER, FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM<doc-sep>[Read more about Republican governors in Democratic states.] Mr. Scott’s popularity fell, however, especially among conservatives, after he signed gun control measures this year. Still, a poll in July by public media organizations in the state found two-thirds of Vermonters supported the law, and nearly half of Democrats had a favorable opinion of Mr. Scott. Only 18 percent of Democratic respondents in the same poll said they had a favorable opinion of Ms. Hallquist, and 55 percent did not yet know who she was. That may change now that Ms. Hallquist is the nominee, and she is likely to draw national attention — and fund-raising dollars — because of the historic potential of her candidacy. “She’ll raise more money and her message will get out there more,” said Eric Davis, an emeritus professor at Vermont’s Middlebury College. “Even if she doesn’t get elected governor, the greatest contribution of her campaign could be to raise awareness about the issues transgender people face.” Before she ran for governor, Ms. Hallquist spent 12 years as the chief executive of the Vermont Electric Cooperative, an in-state power utility that she helped to bring back from near ruin. Her transition from male to female took place in 2015, while she was at the helm of the company, and was the subject of a documentary film made by her son. As a candidate, she made it part of her stump speech, drawing knowing laughs from her female supporters at a fund-raiser this summer as she talked about what it was like to experience life as a woman for the first time. “I remember the first time after transitioning, a stranger walking by told me to smile — I’m like, ‘Who the heck are you to tell me to smile?’” Ms. Hallquist said. “What my transition has taught me is just how far we have to go.”<doc-sep>She came out as a woman to her wife, Pat, early in their marriage, and opened up to their three children about eight years ago. But it was not until 2015, when she was CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative, that she started publicly identifying as a woman. Local news outlets documented her transition, and she drew national attention as a pioneering example of a business CEO transitioning while in office.<doc-sep>Christine Hallquist has become the first transgender candidate to win a major political party's nomination for governor. A former utility executive and engineer from Vermont, Ms Hallquist defeated three other Democrats in Tuesday's Vermont primary. The 62-year-old former CEO is part of a wave of LGBTQ candidates seeking higher office across the US. Ms Hallquist spent 12 years as the chief Executive of Vermont Electric Cooperative and made her transition from male to female while running the company. "I think Vermont is a beacon of hope for the rest of the country," Ms Hallquist said speaking to Reuters after her victory. "This is what I call expanding our moral compass and that is what I think it represents." Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a popular Democratic Socialist running for Congress in New York, took to twitter after the results to show her support for Ms Hallquist, calling it an "incredible and groundbreaking victory". Bernie Sanders, who easily won his own Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday night, offered his congratulations and called on Ms Hallquist to "keep making history" by getting elected in November. Ms Hallquist will face a tough fight against Republican incumbent Phil Scott, who remains more popular with Democrats then members of his own party in the liberal state. However Ms Hallquist is not the only representative of the LGBTQ wave hitting US politics. Before Vermont's election, four transgender candidates had won primaries in 2018, although all for house and senate seats in state legislatures. Alexandra Chandler, a former naval intelligence analyst, is running for Congress in Massachusetts. "I'm running for Congress to be a voice for trans kids out there", Ms Chandler said in a recent promotional video.<doc-sep>
Christine Hallquist, who is running as a progressive Democrat in Vermont, made history on Tuesday as she became the first transgender gubernatorial candidate nominated by a major political party. Advancing a progressive platform focused on economic and social justice, including a $15 minimum wage, environmentally sustainable rural development and expanding access to internet services, Hallquist edged out challengers in a crowded primary. She led the field with 39 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results from the secretary of state at the time of The Associated Press projection. "I am so proud to be the face of the Democrats tonight," Hallquist said, addressing supporters at a victory party Tuesday night. Describing her push for education reform, a living wage, and Medicare for All, Hallquist said, "this is called being a civil society." She will face incumbent Gov. Phil Scott in November, whose approval ratings with his GOP base have tumbled following recent efforts to tighten gun control in Vermont. If Hallquist pulls off an upset in the general election, she will become the nation’s first transgender governor. “Christine’s victory is a defining moment in the movement for trans equality and is especially remarkable given how few out trans elected officials there are at any level of government,” Houston Mayor Annise Parker, president of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, said in a statement. Hallquist joins three other openly LGBTQ candidates for governor this year -- a historically high number. Gubernatorial candidates Lupe Valdez of Texas, Kate Brown of Oregon and Jared Polis of Colorado, all Democrats, are out as LGBTQ. Following the AP projection, the Republican Governors Association (RGA) released a statement on Hallquist’s victory: “Vermont Democrats have selected a candidate committed to increasing the tax burden on working families,” RGA Spokesman John Burke said, referring to Hallquist’s plan to increase some property taxes. Hallquist is the former CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative, a member-owned utilities group, and has stressed that while media coverage often focuses exclusively on her identity as a transgender woman, she wants to be seen as more than an LGBTQ candidate. Hallquist points out that she’s also an engineer, an innovator and a progressive. During her primary race, she received the backing of Justice Democrats, a progressive political action committee founded by former Bernie Sanders campaign leaders, including The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur, which helped propel leftist superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to her victory over longtime New York 14th Congressional District incumbent Joe Crowley earlier this summer. Some commentators have dubbed the 2018 midterm cycle the "Year of the Woman" due to the record numbers of female candidates for elected office, and governor’s races have so far proved no exception: Out of 36 gubernatorial races in 2018, 21 likely have women candidates running, according to Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics. With general elections still to come, however, it remains to be seen whether Hallquist and other progressive women will sweep governor’s seats nationwide with a "blue wave."