Transgender candidates are hoping to build on the breakthrough year of 2017, when at least 10 won office across the country at levels ranging from state legislator to zoning (town planning) board - the most ever recorded.
This year, 43 transgender candidates have run for political office at all levels in the United States, most of them Democrats but a few running as independents, for the Green Party or for nonpartisan offices, according to Logan Casey, a research associate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Hallquist is the first openly transgender candidate to win a major party nomination for governor or a statewide office of any kind.
The win “is a defining moment in the movement for trans equality,” Annise Parker, president and CEO of LGBTQ Victory Fund, which seeks to elect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender candidates, said in a statement.