THIS IS AMERICA

VERMONT’S CHRISTINE HALLQUIST made history in August by becoming the first out transgender person to win a major party’s gubernatorial nomination anywhere in the United States. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Hallquist received 48 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, making her the party’s nominee, The New York Times reports. (Her two nearest Democratic competitors each earned just over 20 percent of the vote.)

Hallquist, the former CEO of the Vermont this summer, Hallquist said her priorities include fighting poverty and encouraging economic development in the state’s rural areas, promoting renewable energy, fighting climate change, raising the minimum wage, enacting paid family leave, working toward single-payer health care, and revamping the school funding structure, while resisting efforts to privatize schools and instead assure every child receives a quality public education. She also pledged further steps to empower LGBTQ Vermonters in a state that already has some of the strongest LGBTQ civil rights protections.