MONTPELIER — Vermont’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Becca Balint is running for reelection, she announced Thursday. Balint, who’s from Brattleboro, is seeking what would be her third two-year term in Congress.
At a campaign launch outside the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office in Montpelier, where she’d just submitted the paperwork to run for office again, Balint told reporters, “I’ll be honest. These are not easy times.”
“Vermonters tell me that they’re deeply worried. They tell me that the federal government has lost its way, and they’re deeply concerned about the attacks on our fundamental freedoms,” she said. “They don’t want our reproductive rights or our voting rights threatened by a government that’s abusing its power.”
Balint made a case that she has “taken the fight for our constitutional rights directly” to the Trump administration over the past year, recalling sharp exchanges with then-members of the president’s Cabinet during House committee hearings.
“I went toe-to-toe with Pam Bondi, and now, she’s gone,” Balint said. “I grilled Kristi Noem, and now, she’s gone too.”
Balint was first elected to the House in 2022 after beating out a crowded Democratic primary field. Before winning that race, she served as president pro tempore of the Vermont Senate.
She’s unlikely to face a primary challenger this year. But she is set to face the same Republican challenger in this fall’s general election whom she handily defeated in 2024: Mark Coester. Coester announced his 2026 campaign last week, according to the conservative news and commentary site Vermont Daily Chronicle.
Two years ago, Coester won 30% of the vote to Balint’s 62%.
As of the most recent for federal candidates to file campaign finance disclosures, Balint had raised about $736,000 during the 2026 election cycle. Coester had raised about $33,000, according to the filings, which run through March 31.
Balint said that if she’s elected again, she’ll continue pushing to curtail the influence of the country’s wealthiest people and corporations on national politics. To do that, lawmakers need to nullify the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, she said, as well as bar members of Congress and their families from trading stocks.
She also criticized the amount of money the Trump administration has spent on its ongoing war with Iran and on expanding immigration enforcement. Instead, she wants to see the federal government once again fund the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that Congress allowed to lapse last year, as well as make major new investments in affordable housing construction, among other priorities.
“I feel like we’re absolutely on the wrong track,” she told reporters.
Olivia Gieger contributed reporting.
