Openly poly trans woman is Colorado Dems' pick for Congress

Misty Plowright

Colorado Springs is a pretty hopeless place for a Democrat to run for Congress, but the Dems in Colorado's 5th District had a primary on June 28th and chose Misty Plowright to run against Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, the popular five-term incumbent.

Plowright is not only trans but open about her poly household with her wife and their male partner. Her campaign website says, "All 3 partners support each other emotionally, physically and financially." Two years ago, Misty and Lisa gave Sebastian a wedding ring.

All this is getting attention, the trans part more than the poly part.

In the Department of Coincidences, Misty Plowright is not to be confused with the other trans woman named Misty whom Democrats in the next-door state of Utah chose on the same day as their candidate to run against Utah Senator Mike Lee. That one is Misty K. Snow. She too faces overwhelming odds.

From an article about Plowright in The Guardian:

Transgender nominee for Congress: 'It's about damn time' politics got inclusive

...She is an unusual Democrat — an unusual politician — in ways beyond her gender identity.

A crack shot with a rifle, she does not like guns but would not take them away from others. She’d also like to own a Hello Kitty AR-15. A self-proclaimed “computer geek”, she thinks the next big civil rights movement will concern artificial intelligence and the ethical issues that will arise “if we create a sentient intelligence”.

But most of all, she was raised by a single mother who had to work three jobs and still barely got by. She remembers the month her mother earned $50 more than usual, and they lost the government benefits that helped them survive — subsidized housing, food stamps, free school lunch.

“Frankly, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of people up on Capitol Hill who know what it’s like to bust their ass and still not make ends meet,” she said. “I’ve stared at cat food and wondered if I was really that hungry. No one in Congress knows what that feels like.”

...She knows that representative Doug Lamborn will “throw the kitchen sink at me” when they face off in November.

“He’s going to attack me on the trans piece,” she said. “He’s probably not going to gender me appropriately. And he’ll hammer me on the poly bit.”

The “poly bit” Plowright was referring to is her unusual living situation, which she mentions in passing on her campaign website. She and her wife Lisa, who have been together for nine years, share their home and their life with Sebastian.

She describes him as “a gentleman we’ve known for several years. Two years ago we were in Vegas for the World Series of Poker. We got him a ring. We consider it to be our marriage to him”.

The biggest hurdle to success in November, she said, isn’t the fact that she is transgender; “a lot of the people I talk to don’t care”. And it’s not her polyamorous relationship, although she acknowledges that it “has raised a few eyebrows”.

“I think the biggest challenge to overcome”, she said, “will be the D next to my name”.

And the point in running at all in such a district?

Win or lose, [the two Mistys] have a shot at changing perceptions nationwide at a time when Americans seem increasingly receptive.

“This is smart politics,” said Ted Trimpa, a Denver-based political strategist. “Realizing you have an uphill battle, you use the platform of a race for US Congress in order for people to see that transgender people are like everyone else, with the same struggles. To see them in the flesh, in real life.

“I think it’s brilliant,” he continued. “I’m jealous I didn’t think of it”.

Read the whole article (July 4, 2016).

And at Yahoo News:

'I chose to live': Transgender congressional nominee Misty Plowright talks about her historic victory

...It seems especially fitting, then, that in the same week she became the Democratic congressional nominee for Colorado’s most conservative district, the U.S. military lifted its longtime ban on transgender troops — a move that Plowright, a veteran of the Army, called “long overdue.”

...When asked how her largely conservative constituency has responded to the fact that she and her wife of nine years are currently in a polyamorous relationship with a man, the candidate said that “so far the voters that I’ve talked to frankly don’t really care that much.”

“They’re much more interested in issues like jobs, national security, defense, guns, property rights,” she said. “They’re very interested in the issues, not so much my personal life.”

Perhaps that’s because, as Plowright pointed out, she’s long kept the two separate, choosing to focus her political platform more on the economy, for example, rather than LGBTQ rights....

I just chipped in a small campaign contribution as a show of support.

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