When she’s sworn in as mayor of Burlington on April 1, Emma Mulvaney-Stanak will become the first woman and first openly LGBTQ+ person to lead Vermont’s largest city. As she made note of these milestones in her victory speech at the Zero Gravity brewery Tuesday night, the crowd went wild.
“There is so much joy and happiness here and maybe even a bit of surprise — for me anyway,” Arshad Hasan, who identifies as queer and volunteered on Mulvaney-Stanak’s campaign, said at the event.
Hasan, a Democratic political operative, said he was initially “skeptical” of the Progressive candidate, but appreciated her response when she learned about a hate crime he’d faced.
“She really impressed me in the way that she was able to respond to things even when I had questions and complaints or skepticism. She met them thoughtfully and humanely. And, you know, that’s the way that I want to be represented,” he said.
Mulvaney-Stanak, 43, a two-term state representative and former city councilor, won 51.4% of the vote in Tuesday’s election, beating Joan Shannon, a longtime Democratic city councilor. Her victory held particular significance for a number of women and LGBTQ+ people who attended the mayor-elect’s celebration Tuesday night, as well as for members of other marginalized groups.
Elaine Haney, executive director of Emerge Vermont, an organization that trains Democratic women to run for office, said it’s about time — after 159 years — that Burlington elected a woman as mayor.
Only 10 women have served as mayors throughout the entire state since 1793, according to Haney — a number she called “dismal.” Haney is hopeful Mulvaney-Stanak’s victory will empower more women to step up to serve in government.
During her victory speech Tuesday night, Mulvaney-Stanak also told her supporters, “I am pretty darn sure that I’m the first out queer mayor in the state of Vermont.”
“I want Burlington to be that place where people can truly be themselves,” she said in a subsequent interview, “but more importantly, where folks who are marginalized know they haven’t a seat at the table, one that also acknowledges that racism is a thing in this state.”
Mulvaney-Stanak said she knows firsthand what that feels like, recalling her own experience growing up in working-class Barre City.
“Until you have a leader who shares any of those marginalized identities at the helm, you don’t move at the same urgency,” she said. “You sort of are able to have your privilege lead you and not address things with that kind of deep-felt sense of the harm that that creates when those tiny little patches of microaggressions keep happening.”
Mulvaney-Stanak said she hopes to be a leader for all residents, including an increasingly diverse student population — nearly a third of whom identify as LGBTQ+, according to a 2021 survey from the Vermont Department of Health.
“I think we have to acknowledge that, as leaders, we have a very different Burlington that we are raising, and we have an obligation to keep this community safe and inclusive for them,” she said.
That’s welcome news at Outright Vermont, a statewide nonprofit that supports LGBTQ+ people.
“She embodies so much hope during what can otherwise feel like a dark time,” said the organization’s executive director, Dana Kaplan, citing data that indicates a high rate of self-harm and depression among LGBTQ+ youth.
“There’s a uniqueness to Emma because she has an incredible combination of lived experience, policy expertise, and a genuine commitment to justice and equity,” Kaplan continued. “For our community, and especially LGBTQ+ youth who face a daily barrage of hateful messages, she’s a unicorn who gets it and gets things done.”
There has been a documented rise in attacks on marginalized people, particularly those who identify as gay or transgender, in recent years across the nation, including in Vermont, from the 2022 killing of a transgender woman in Morristown to pride flags being vandalized across the state.
Lena Greenberg, an independent who lost their bid for the Ward 5 City Council seat, said Mulvaney-Stanak’s win “says to me that, as queer people, we are not just welcome here but we are wanted here and we are loved here.”
Melo Grant, a Black woman and a Progressive city councilor representing the Central District, said the victory “signifies that people care about these issues because equity keeps coming up over and over again.”
Mulvaney-Stanak has also underscored her identity as a working mother and said that juggling the campaign with parenting two kids and serving as legislator was her biggest challenge. On Tuesday night, she thanked her wife, Megan Moir, who directs the city’s water resources division. The crowd exploded when Moir greeted the mayor-elect at the podium with a kiss.
“This is the dorkiest love story ever,” Mulvaney-Stanak said. “We met because I was a city councilor and she got a job in the city of Burlington — so thank you.”
Amid the hours of work and organizing the campaign required, they managed well thanks to community support such as meal trains and people pitching in with child care, Moir told VTDigger.
Growing up in Houston, Texas and not seeing many gay people as role models, Moir said she is hopeful Mulvaney-Stanak’s win signals to people in Vermont and across the nation that not only women but queer women and queer moms can do this.
“I think it’s not something that a lot of moms take on because we already have so much going on,” she said.
Amid the euphoria of the moment at Zero Gravity Tuesday night, Hasan struggled to put into words what he was feeling at the end of the night.
“We win races or lose races, whatever. But I hadn’t felt this in a long time,” he said. “I think what it means is I can see a vision for myself where I fit into a community that I love, I really do love, and there’s a future. I didn’t feel that way for years.”
Correction: A photo caption previously misspelled Megan Moir’s name. The story also misstated the year when a transgender woman was killed in Morristown — it was 2022.
