Becca Balint
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Becca Balint

U.S. Congressperson

b. May 4, 1968

“It is about basic humanity, people being able to live their lives and work in peace.”

Becca Balint is the first woman and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to serve in both the Vermont Senate and the Vermont House of Representatives.

Born in a U.S. Army hospital in Heidelberg, West Germany, and raised in Peekskill, New York, Balint is the daughter of a working-class mother and a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant father. Her parents’ experiences—and her grandfather’s murder in the Holocaust—instilled in her an early and profound awareness of injustice.

Balint was bullied in middle school for having a crush on another girl. She came out as a lesbian to close friends in high school. She attended Smith College, where she was coxswain on the women’s crew team and earned the nickname “the Admiral” for her natural leadership ability. Balint graduated magna cum laude in 1990 with a degree in history and women’s studies. She earned master’s degrees from Harvard University in 1995 and the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2001.

Balint moved to Vermont in the mid-1990s, where she initially taught middle school and wrote for a local newspaper. She met Elizabeth Wohl in 2000, and they married in 2009 after Vermont legalized same-sex marriage.

Though politically engaged for years, Balint launched her political career in 2014 with a successful run for the Vermont Senate. She was the first out lesbian to hold the position. Balint was reelected three times. In 2017, she was unanimously elected majority leader, and in 2021, she made history again as the first woman and first out lesbian to serve as president pro tempore of the Senate.

A Democrat, Balint successfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022 and was reelected in 2024 with over 62% of the vote.

A longtime advocate for progressive causes—gun control, voting rights, and combating bigotry—Balint is a fierce defender of LGBTQ+ rights. She has fought conversion therapy legislation and opposes transgender discrimination. She serves on the House Judiciary Committee and as a leader of the Progressive Caucus and passionately defends American democracy.

In 2023, Out magazine named Balint one of the 100 most impactful and influential LGBTQ+ people. She lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, with her wife, an attorney and opera singer, and their two children.