From Keisha for Vermont:
Kesha was born into a multiracial, working class family that gave back to the community every chance they could. She grew up waiting tables in the family business — an Irish pub run by her Jewish American mother and Indian immigrant father. She learned from her father to ask the critical, difficult questions, and from her mother to hold space while empowering those around her.
Kesha knows the cost of broken systems. She experienced racial profiling at 13 years old while walking home with a friend, when she was arrested without explanation. She and her friend were detained most of the night without legal representation or being able to call their families, while the officers bragged about receiving overtime pay. In the moment, it took away her humanity. She vowed to build towards a world that honors the dignity and safety of all, especially our young people. From her earliest run for office, this is what’s powered her voice.
Before the Green New Deal had a name, Kesha authored a bill in 2007 that tied economic and racial justice to environmental justice, which she worked to introduce in the Vermont Legislature as a college senior. That experience spurred her to run for the State House in 2008 during the start of the Great Recession. She made history as the youngest state legislator in the country at the time and the first person of color ever elected to represent Burlington, Vermont’s largest city.
Kesha has always lifted up others and built a pipeline for the next generation of leaders. She is a founder of Emerge Vermont and the Bright Leadership Institute, supporting women, people of color, and young people to represent their communities. While serving on the boards of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and the Vermont Natural Resources Council, Kesha advanced the interconnected fight for health equity, abortion justice, and environmental protection.
In 2020, she made history again as the first woman of color ever elected to the Vermont State Senate. There, Kesha has used her deep legislative background to support Vermont’s working families and advance climate action. She has fought for universal health care, funding teachers’ and state workers’ pensions, access to the ballot box, abortion justice, and recovery dollars for unemployed Vermonters and small businesses.
Kesha is running to be Vermont’s first Congresswoman to take on the corporate interests and right-wing extremists working to roll back every hard-won inch of progress and threatening the foundation of our democracy. She’ll keep Vermont and the nation moving forward: fighting for a Green New Deal that protects and expands middle class jobs, championing Medicare for All that puts people before profits, securing the fundamental voting rights that uphold our democracy, and guaranteeing access to abortion care no matter your zip code. If elected, Kesha would be the first woman and first person of color to represent Vermont in Congress, and the first Jewish person of color in Congress.
Kesha married the love of her life, Jacob Hinsdale, in a Hindu-Jewish-French Canadian-Congregationalist ceremony on the shores of Lake Champlain in 2021. They live with their beloved, rambunctious dog Miso in Shelburne, Vermont. Jacob grew up sugaring and baling hay on his family farm in the next town over, Charlotte.