Vermont Democrats made history Tuesday by nominating Christine Hallquist as the first transgender individual to be a major party candidate for governor.
Meanwhile, preliminary results showed that Gov. Phil Scott survived a challenge animated by his former Republican allies in the gun-rights movement.
The general election matchup pits Hallquist, a former utility executive who has never held statewide elected office, against Scott, a former construction company owner seeking a second term.
Vermont Democrats made history Tuesday by nominating Christine Hallquist as the first transgender individual to be a major party candidate for governor.
Meanwhile, preliminary results showed that Gov. Phil Scott survived a challenge animated by his former Republican allies in the gun-rights movement.
The general election matchup pits Hallquist, a former utility executive who has never held statewide elected office, against Scott, a former construction company owner seeking a second term.
"It's going to take a lot of work to get to every town in Vermont," Hallquist said Tuesday of her upcoming campaign, "and it's going to take twice the amount of work to knock on every door in Vermont, because there's a lot of areas of Vermont that we don't have internet to."
"Not yet!" someone in the crowd yelled.
Her historic campaign has attracted nationwide attention and support, but Hallquist still faces a challenging path as she seeks to defeat a sitting Vermont governor for the first time in more than half a century.
Scott, a Republican, was first elected in 2016, pulling together a coalition of independent, Republican and Democratic voters in a year when Vermont overwhelmingly supported the Democratic presidential candidate.
Hallquist was one of them. She now regrets voting for Scott in the last election.
“I knew Phil Scott for many years,” Hallquist said in an interview last month. “So I look at what Phil’s doing today and I say, either this is the Phil Scott that I didn’t know, or I just wasn’t paying close enough attention. But like I tell people, I’m making up for it now.”
Scott held on to the Republican nomination by a comfortable margin over challenger Keith Stern, who rode a wave of anger from gun-rights activists who felt Scott betrayed them.
The owner of a White River Junction wholesale produce business, Stern launched his campaign by arguing that Scott, a fiscal conservative, had not done enough to cut government spending. He also criticized the governor's support for a bill preserving the Obamacare requirement that Vermonters must have health insurance.
But it was the gun issue that came up repeatedly when Scott spoke with voters, and that most threatened his hold on the Republican nomination.
Gun-rights rallies chanted "dump Phil Scott," and online commenters called him "Phlipper."
Scott continues to defend the gun bills that he endorsed, including expanded background checks on private firearms transfers and a limit on magazine size. Gun-rights activists have sued the state over the magazine restriction, arguing that the law is unconstitutional.
"We didn't take any gun rights away," Scott said at a candidate forum last month.
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