Once the ballots are tallied on Town Meeting Day next week, Winooski is set to have all of its city councilors be openly LGBTQ+ — a historic first for the state.
The Winooski City Council already has three LGBTQ+ members. Two are not up for reelection this year — Thomas Renner, who is gay, and Aurora Hurd, who is bisexual, nonbinary and transgender. Incumbent councilor Bryn Oakleaf, who is queer, is up for reelection, though she does not face any challengers.
The City Council also has an open seat this year, with incumbent Jim Duncan opting to not seek reelection. Charles Judge, who is transgender, is running for that seat uncontested.
In Winooski, the city’s mayor is a member of the City Council and can cast votes. Mayor Kristine Lott — who is not up for reelection this year — does not identify as LGBTQ+.
Still, officials said that assuming Oakleaf and Judge get elected — they aren’t aware of any write-in campaigns — Winooski likely would be the first municipality in Vermont, and among the first in the U.S., to be represented entirely by openly LGBTQ+ councilors.
“It’s historic,” Judge said Thursday. “It will be an honor if the people of Winooski trust the group of us to be their city councilors, knowing that not everyone in Winooski is queer — but that all of us are larger than our queerness.”
In 2017, the city of Palm Springs, California, elected the first entirely openly LGBTQ+ city council in the country. State Rep. Taylor Small, P/D-Winooski, who is transgender, said she does not know of any other U.S. city that has done the same since.
Oakleaf pointed to data from Gallup and the LGBTQ Victory Institute, which together show that while openly LGBTQ+ people represent more than 7% of the U.S. population, they represent only about 0.2% of the country’s elected officials at any level.
She said she hopes LGBTQ+ people in Winooski and across the state will look at Winooski’s newly elected council and be inspired to run for office themselves.
Winooski has long been known as one of Vermont’s most progressive communities, and Oakleaf said she hopes a full slate of LGBTQ+ councilors bolsters that reputation. Still, Hurd noted, the city has more work to do to be as inclusive a community as possible.
An equity audit in April 2022 found that Winooski — Vermont’s most racially diverse municipality — was “diverse but not inclusive.” The city’s first-ever equity director later resigned from her position after experiencing “structural racism and microaggressions” at work and within city government, Winooski City Manager Elaine Wang has said.
Hurd said they think it’s important for all Vermonters — and, especially transgender people — to see LGBTQ+ representation in office at a time of “growing outlashes of hate” and attacks aimed at transgender communities across the country.
“I’m just hoping that folks and, especially, trans youth, know that it’s not just bad — that there are lots of people that care about them, and that they have a lot of great stuff in the future,” they said.
Small said she sees this year’s slate of councilors as a sign of real progress for Winooski. She recalled talking to a city resident who ran for the Legislature in the 1990s but lost in large part because she was openly lesbian.
“Now we’ve moved into a time where not only do we have the only trans representative in the state,” Small said, referring to herself, “but following that, we’re able to move into a time where we have all LGBTQ city councilors. It is quite the transformation.”
Town Meeting Day is Tuesday, March 7. Voting in Winooski is set to take place at the city’s senior center at 123 Barlow St. from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
