Vermont State Senator Becca Balint of Windham is being sworn in today as the first female openly gay person to preside over the state senate in the absence of the lieutenant governor. She is also the first woman elected by her peers into this leadership role.
Reports VT Digger:
Ever since she can remember, she has wanted to run for public office — and that makes her a bit of an “oddity.”
But when she graduated in 1986 from Walter Panas High School, she recalls coming to a conscious realization that she had to drop that political dream.
At the time, the young Balint had told only two close friends that she was gay. She had read extensively about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the history of California; he was assassinated in 1978.
“I didn’t want to serve and not be open about who I was,” she said. “And I didn’t feel safe, being open about who I was.”
After graduating from Smith College, Balint followed a different passion in her life: teaching. She has taught middle school history and social studies and worked as a rock-climbing instructor at Vermont Farm and Wilderness summer camp in Plymouth — where she met her wife, Elizabeth Wohl, in 2000.
In 2007, the pair moved to Brattleboro and married in 2009 when Vermont legalized same-sex marriage.
In that time frame, which included the birth of Balint’s first child, her political dream resurfaced. …
In 2013, Balint attended the Women’s Campaign School at Yale University, where she roomed with a Republican from Kentucky.
“I loved the bipartisan aspect of it,” she said. “It forced you to be really clear on why you believe what you did believe policy-wise, because you are constantly in these workgroups with people on the other side of the aisle.”
After that, she entered the inaugural class of Emerge Vermont, an organization former Gov. Madeleine Kunin had founded to prepare Democratic women to run for office.
In the summer of 2014, now with two young children, Abraham and Sadie, Balint announced she was running for the Vermont Senate. After then-Sen. Peter Galbraith decided to retire, Balint emerged victorious in a four-candidate primary and entered the Statehouse in 2015.
“When she decided to run for the Senate, I first met her at one of our fundraisers and it didn’t take long before I knew that she was somebody who was going to be one of the leaders in the Senate at some point,” said John Campbell, who was then Senate president pro tem.
“She’s somebody who, the moment I started talking to her, I knew that she was going to eventually end up in leadership and be an effective leader.”
After just two years in the Legislature, Balint ascended to majority leader in the heavily Democratic Senate, holding a leadership position with Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden.
In her six years in the Senate, she has served on the economic development committee. Balint has also been vice chair of the education committee, and a member of the committee on institutions and the finance committee.
“I know that politics can be a dirty, ugly game to some people. It’s not a game to me. This is about people’s lives,” she told VT Digger. “If people want to play games, they can do that and I will engage in ways that feel true and right on behalf of my senators and on behalf of my constituents, but I’m not in it for the tally sheet of winning or losing. I’m in it because I want to make a difference in people’s lives.”
Read the complete VT Digger story here.
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