SHELBURNE — Former Gov. Madeleine Kunin has endorsed Lt. Gov. Molly Gray in the closely watched race for Vermont’s sole U.S. House seat.
“It was a very close and personal decision, and the bottom line is I think she’s highly qualified,” Kunin said at a Gray campaign event Friday morning.
Kunin, a Democrat, was the first woman to serve as governor of Vermont and held that office for three terms. She later went on to serve in the Clinton administration, first as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education and then as U.S. ambassador to Switzerland.
Kunin endorsed Gray in part because of her resume, the former governor said, and because of their shared focus on maternal health care, affordable child care and paid family and medical leave.
Kunin also has known Gray for years, since the latter was a senior at the University of Vermont. Gray took Kunin’s “women in politics” class in the fall of 2005. After Gray graduated, the two stayed in touch, Kunin said, when Gray went to work in Washington, D.C., and later, Geneva.
The former governor had held off on endorsing a candidate in the U.S. House race, she said, because she was also “very close” to Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden, who dropped out of the race last week.
“I knew Kesha as a student at UVM,” Kunin said. “And you know, it’s like in the Bible — which child will you sacrifice? I just couldn’t do it.”
Ram Hinsdale last Friday announced she would instead seek reelection to the Vermont Senate. She then endorsed Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windham, who many had seen as competing with Ram Hinsdale for support from the party’s left.
Gray and Balint are both alumnae of Emerge Vermont, a program that trains Democratic women to run for public office. Kunin helped found the local branch of Emerge America, as did Ram Hinsdale.
Kunin, a columnist for VTDigger, has been one of the most prominent voices advocating for Vermont to send a woman to Washington. Vermont is the last state in the country that has yet to elect a woman to its congressional delegation.
Gray jokingly called Kunin a “matriarch” of Vermont politics on Friday and teared up as she took the podium.
“For the women here today, gosh, and for countless women across Vermont, Governor Kunin has blazed the trail and served as our guide,” Gray said. “She has been, and continues to be, an unwavering example of what is possible.”
The Gray campaign emphasized the theme of women’s representation at Friday’s event. Male staffers, clad in teal “Molly Gray for Vermont” t-shirts, hung to the back of the room so that Gray and Kunin would appear at the podium before a wall of women.
Gray spoke of times in the Vermont Statehouse when gender felt particularly salient, such as when she first stood at the podium in the Senate chamber after she took the oath of office. The floor behind the dais was a heating grate, she said, and her kitten heels sunk through the slats. Gray said she eventually put down a piece of plywood to have a stable place to stand.
“It made me wonder, ‘How long has it been since a woman’s been up here?’” Gray said.
