A huge thanks to the voters of Chittenden 6-4 for sending Brian Cina and I to the VT legislature as your representatives in the House. We are thrilled and honored to serve you. Thanks also to my family for trusting in me and making it through another campaign season. Thanks to my wonderful campaign manager Lauren and to all the volunteers who helped us drop leaflets, make phone calls, stamp postcards and much more. Thanks to the many donors whose modest, grassroots contributions helped fund a people-centered campaign. Thanks to the Vermont Progressive Party and Rights and Democracy VT for their support for my candidacy, and to the many organizations who provided endorsements in support of our shared vision for a progressive Vermont. Thanks to outgoing Representatives Kesha Ram and Chris Pearson for their long and valuable service to our district and the state.
Like many Vermonters, I am dismayed by our national election results. As I have said elsewhere:
I am not going to Canada or Norway or Mexico. I am going to the Vermont statehouse where I am going to fight with everything I’ve got to turn back this wave of hatred, racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and ableism. I am going to stand against the criminalization of poverty and addiction, the climate change denial, and the income inequality that is sweeping our country. I am going to work with my comrades and colleagues on the left to overcome our differences, so that we can build a true movement of working people who can turn this country around and deliver on the principles that excited so many of us earlier in this election cycle…not four years from now when the Democratic Party offers us a candidate, but right now. I am so grateful for the voters who have entrusted me to represent them, who support a progressive vision for Vermont and our country. When I stepped up to run for this office, I thought I’d likely be in for a Republican governor (we are), but I never really believed my work would require pushing back on oppression of this magnitude at the federal level. That’s privilege, pure and simple, and a failure of the imagination on my part. I am not going to let my children, or your children, see me sitting on the sidelines at this moment in history. I am in this 100% and then some.
Who’s with me?
Selene Colburn 