Taylor Small, a trans woman from Winooski and director of health and wellness at the Pride Center of Vermont, has become the first openly transgender person elected to the Vermont state legislator.
“It hasn’t fully sunk in yet, and I don’t know when it will,” Small told the Burlington Free Press, which reported that:
Small has long imagined being involved in politics. She pictured it would be from a grassroots position, as in her current advocacy role as director of the health and wellness program at Pride Center of Vermont.
Actual politics, though, like bill-drafting, law-passing politics? She thought that was for older people.
“I saw it more as a long-term goal,” Small said. “I didn’t see it happening at the age of 26.”
Happen it did. Small was elected Tuesday to the Vermont House of Representatives, where the Winooski resident will become the first openly transgender member of the state Legislature.
Small, with both the Progressive and Democratic nomination, garnered 2,423 votes, or 29.59% of the total, in the two seat Chittenden 6-7 district, according to unofficial results on the Vermont Secretary of State Election website. She came in second behind incumbent Democrat Hal Colston, who won 2,551 votes, or 31.16% of the total.
“It hasn’t fully sunk in yet, and I don’t know when it will,” Small said of her landmark election as she spoke over coffee outside Scout & Co. in Winooski. She did say she hopes her election shows young queer and trans people that they, too, have opportunities to be leaders.
Small said she spent her early years in Johnson in a lower-middle-class family. Her parents declared bankruptcy before she was 5, Small said, and moved the family to western Massachusetts, where her parents were able to find steady employment. Small came back to Vermont in 2010 with her mother after her parents separated.
A graduate of Colchester High School and the University of Vermont, Small works at the Pride Center, a nonprofit organization that helps LGBTQ Vermonters. Prior to that she worked in the nonprofit world at the Howard Center and Spectrum Youth and Family Services, and has served on the board of directors for Outright Vermont, a nonprofit working with LGBTQ youth and their families.
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