After a win in last week’s primary, Vermont State Senator Becca Balint is widely expected to win her race for the U.S. House in November, which would make her Vermont’s first woman and first out LGBTQ person in Congress. She’s also a mom, and her family is a clear inspiration for her work.
Balint is already the first woman and first out LGBTQ person to serve as the Vermont Senate President Pro Tempore, after having been initially elected to the State Senate in 2014. As leader of the Senate, her website says, “she passed the strongest reproductive rights law in the nation, secured major wins for Labor, passed the first gun safety legislation in Vermont history and made the biggest investment in affordable housing in a generation.” Before that, she taught middle school for 14 years, including in four rural public schools—and if you think it’s not important to have people (particularly LGBTQ people) with hands-on experience in education also helping to shape and pass legislation, you haven’t been paying attention.
Balint was born in Germany in a U.S. Army hospital, but grew up in upstate New York, the daughter of an immigrant dad and a working-class mom. She has a B.A. from Smith College, an M.Ed. from the Harvard School of Education, and an M.A. in history from the University of Massachusetts.
She had first come to Vermont to be a rock-climbing instructor, then met her future spouse, attorney and opera singer Elizabeth Wohl, and settled down. She and Wohl now have two children, ages 14 and 11, and “an adorable but incorrigible dog named Wheelie.” She also has a cool motorcycle (which is not a reason to vote for her, but may nevertheless intrigue some readers here).
In her latest campaign video, which includes images of her family as well as other Vermonters, Balint notes the increasing restriction of rights in our country and says, “In my family, we know what’s at stake. My grandfather was murdered in the Holocaust. My whole life I’ve known that beating the forces set on dividing us takes showing up every chance you get.”
Her campaign has been endorsed by LGBTQ political action committees Victory Fund, LPAC, and the Human Rights Campaign PAC; by Moms Demand Action as a Gun Sense Candidate; and by numerous unions and progressive organizations, as well as by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, among many others. CNN called Balint the “overwhelming favorite” to win the U.S. House seat in November against Liam Madden, though Madden told VT Digger that he thought she would have a tougher time in the general election, and that Vermonters will be “very interested in hearing” his own message.
Balint, for her part, told supporters, “It’s finally our time.”
Even though I don’t live in Vermont myself, it’s great to see yet another example of a queer parent balancing family life and a life of service to our country.