B’ville native is Democratic candidate for governor in Vermont

By Sarah Hall

Editor

Christine Hallquist may be making headlines now as the first openly transgender candidate to have won a major party nomination for governor — she won the Democratic primary in Vermont on Aug. 15 — but years ago, she was just a kid living in Oswego Street in the village of Baldwinsville with her parents and six brothers and sisters.

“Baldwinsville was a great community to grow up in,” said Hallquist, 62, who went by the name David until she came out publicly as a woman in 2015. “We all knew each other and supported each other.”

Hallquist, a climate change activist who previously served as CEO of the Vermont Electric Cooperative, took close to 40 percent of the vote in the Vermont Democratic primary on Tuesday, Aug. 15, beating out three other candidates for the nomination: environmental activist and Lake Champlain International Executive Director James Ehlers; Brenda Siegel, opioid epidemic and hurricane relief activist, founder of a southern Vermont non-profit and a former campaign volunteer organizer for Bernie Sanders; and 14-year-old Ethan Sonneborn, a high school freshman (whom Hallquist called “a great kid”).

She will take on incumbent Republican Gov. Phil Scott in the general election in November. Scott, one of the most popular governors in the country in 2017, saw a sharp decline in his approval rating in Vermont after signing sweeping gun control legislation earlier this year.

While Hallquist has received hateful comments and even death threats since the victory, she said most have come from outside her home state.

“I think [the vote margin] is very, very clear and positive proof that Vermonters are beyond focusing on gender issues,” she said.

Hallquist said she thinks her platform resonates with constituents.

“Rural Vermont is a microcosm of rural America, and it’s probably similar to the issues that Baldwinsville is experiencing, I can guess,” she said. “So naturally, I’m focused on rural economic development… Some of the most rural counties, we had some of the highest percentage of [vote] margin.”

In order to help rural areas, Hallquist said she wants to make internet a public utility, connecting every home and business with fiber optic cable, so that rural areas can keep up with the bigger cities. She would expand the tax increment financing model that’s been successful elsewhere in the state to rebuild rural and small suburban communities. She’s also a proponent of Medicare for All, though she said Vermont is likely too small a state to take on such a big job on its own.

“I would form a union with other states to accomplish that goal,” Hallquist said.

She also plans to continue her work to combat climate change, and she pledges to improve Vermont’s public education system. And she doesn’t plan for the governorship to just be a steppingstone to a higher office.

“With the Electric Cooperative, one of the things I did when I took over the company that was really floundering is put together a 10-year plan and carry that plan out,” Hallquist said. “The state needs a 10-year plan and a 20-year vision. So I’m committed to stay to see that plan carried out. And the vision should go beyond any governor.”

Growing up in B’ville

Hallquist said she owes a lot to the little village on the river she once called home.

“I think my faith in people was very much framed by my upbringing and community in Baldwinsville,” she said.

Hallquist and her siblings started at St. Mary’s Catholic School, then moved into the public school system when Hallquist was in eighth grade.

“We lived at I think 74 Oswego St., so we were halfway between the school and the center of the village,” she recalled. “We lived in the perfect location, from my perspective.”

Hallquist remembers walking to school with her brothers and sisters in a neighborhood where the children and their parents had a number of close friends. It was a good life — but she knew something was amiss.

“I didn’t know what to call it, but I was different,” she said. “I was a transgender child. I certainly had some struggles related to that.”

Whatever her hardships, Hallquist had the full support of her parents. Her father, an engineer, and her mother, whom she called “very much an activist,” instilled in her a confidence in herself and in the world around her.

“In the adolescent times, knowing that I was different, I still knew that I was loved and supported,” she said. “And that was very, very powerful. That’s what carried me through life.”

Hallquist graduated from C.W. Baker High School in 1974. She credits the neighbors in B’ville who gave her odd jobs as a teenager who helped her to develop a strong work ethic, as well as her job at Radio Shack, which ultimately helped her pay her way through Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica.

At 20, she moved to Vermont and completed an in-house training program for associate’s degree technicians to advance to the role of engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation. After stints at IBM and Digital Equipment Corporation and as an independent consultant, Hallquist ultimately ended up as CEO of the Vermont Electric Cooperative. Now she’s running for office to give Vermont’s youth the same opportunities she once had.

“I like to remind our young people today that the way they’re living is not the way we lived. We had it much better,” Hallquist said. “And our young people should demand, and demand at the voting booth, we restore their opportunity.”

Making a run for it

While the primary reflects the campaign’s forward momentum, Hallquist wasn’t always so hopeful about the future. She said she went into a “political depression” after the 2016 election. While the Women’s March in 2017 and the Climate March later that year helped, she still wasn’t spurred to action.

“I looked at Vermont, and I was in denial because Vermont’s such a wonderful, loving state,” she said. “But in late 2017, we started to see white supremacist activity in Vermont, which we hadn’t seen since the early ‘80s.”

Hallquist said the governor was also using divisive rhetoric.

It was at a youth march on Jan. 20, 2018, that Hallquist made the decision to run for governor.

“I listened to these four high school seniors, women, that called themselves Muslim Girls Making Change, and they did slam poetry on what it’s like to be Muslim in Vermont. And I cried because I realized those women went to school everyday and they faced discrimination and harassment from their peers.” Hallquist recalled. “So I realized, thousands of Vermonters before me gave up their lives for freedom. The least I could do was give up my career and maybe my retirement.”

It’s a decision she hasn’t regretted.

“It’s funny, the politicos were saying it was a sleepy race — we weren’t going to get a good turnout,” Hallquist said of the primary. “We had a very good turnout for an off-year election.”

Hallquist said the reason for that is simple.

“I think people will turn out if they have hope,” she said. “And I’m proud to say, I think we’ve provided people hope.”

She said she believes people are tired of the negativity and division in the country.

“I’m hoping that the parties are learning that we need to be aspirational and we need to create long, broad visions and get back to the work of creating a better place for our next generation,” she said. “That will get people out.”

Hallquist said she thinks the country is “in the middle of a revolution right now.”

“I think for many people, what we look at across our country and including the state of Vermont, we don’t like what we see in terms of our democracy,” she said. “I really want people to recognize we can change that. But it does become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t believe you can change it, it won’t change.”