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Meet the transgender US Senate candidate who’s making history

By Will Stroude

Misty Snow is a woman who’s breaking records.

Miss Snow, who was working as a “cashier at a grocery store and raised in a lower income family”, has won the Democratic Senate nomination in Utah, making her the first trans Senate candidate for a major party, and potentially the first trans Senator in the history of the United States.

That wouldn’t be the only first, either: She’d also be Utah’s first female state Senator and, at just 30 years of age (the minimum age you can be to run under the US constitution), the first millennial.

The blue collar ambassador says she’s delighted to have won the nomination despite having much less time, money and connection within than her politicial adversaries, and is happy to be a voice for those feeling left out by society, be it women, ethnic minorities or LGBT people.

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As for her policies, Misty Snow is aiming for a $15-an-hour minimum wage, a positive impact on climate change, an improved and more accessible health-care system, the legalisation of marijuana and hopes to render higher-education possible for ‘lower-class’ citizens.

Indeed, Snow sees herself as a woman who happens to be a transgender rather than a ‘transgender running for a Senate seat’.

In a conversation with Fusion, she said: “[Voters] don’t care about identity. They care about what politicians are going to do for them and their families.”

On her official campaign website, she adds: “There are some that claim that Utah is not ready for a candidate like me, but I strongly disagree. Utah is not only ready but in desperate need of a Senator exactly like me.

“We cannot wait for others to give us equality. We have to claim equality for ourselves.”

Words: Salomé Baudino

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