Althea Garrison

Althea Garrison (born October 7, 1940) is an American politician from Boston, Massachusetts who previously served a single term in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1993–1995) and a partial term as an at-large councilor on the Boston City Council (2019–2020). She is considered the earliest transgender person known to have been elected to a state legislature in the United States. She was outed against her will by the Boston Herald after her 1992 election. She is a perennial candidate, having been an unsuccessful candidate for political office more than forty times.

In her only successful campaign, Garrison won election as a Republican to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1992. She served one term from 1993 to 1995, losing her bid for reelection in 1994. Both before and after this, she has run for office many other times. Her campaigns have seen her run under different party affiliations, varyingly running as Republican, a Democrat, and an independent. Garrison, in the 2010s, described her political ideology as "independent conservative".

Garrison served as an at-large member of the Boston City Council from January 2019 to January 2020 due to a vacancy left by Ayanna Pressley's election to the United States House of Representatives. Because Garrison was the next-place finisher in the 2017 Boston City Council election, Boston City Charter rules gave Garrison the right of first refusal to assume the seat vacated by Pressley. Garrison lost her bid for re-election in November 2019.

Background
Born in Hahira, Georgia, as the youngest of seven children,   Garrison attended Hahira High School there. Garrison moved to Boston to attend beauty school, but went on to enroll in Newbury Junior College and received an associate degree there. Garrison later received a B.S. degree in administration from Suffolk University, an M.S. degree in management from Lesley College, and a certificate in special studies in administration and management from Harvard University.

According to records in the Suffolk County Probate Court, Garrison petitioned for a name change to Althea Garrison in 1976. The petition stated that the name Althea Garrison "is consistent with petitioner's appearance and medical condition and is the name by which he [sic] will be known in the future."

Besides her one term in the Massachusetts House, Garrison has worked as a clerk in human resources for the Massachusetts state comptroller's office, where she used her vacation time to run for office. She served for four years on the Metropolitan Area Planning Council.

Early years
In 1982 and 1986, Garrison ran unsuccessfully for the Massachusetts House of Representatives as a Democrat. She ran unsuccessfully for Boston City Council in 1983, 1985, 1987, 1989, and 1991. During the 1991 campaign, the Boston Herald noted that she had run for office nine times, although Garrison herself later described the race as her 10th or 11th bid for office. In the 1991 race, Garrison finished in third place in the District 7 preliminary election.

Massachusetts House
In 1992, Garrison ran successfully for the 5th Suffolk district in the Massachusetts House, representing the Dorchester and Roxbury areas of Boston. Garrison's 1992 election to the legislature was made possible in part by the fact that she challenged some of the signatures that the then-incumbent representative, Nelson Merced, had submitted to qualify for the Democratic primary ballot. Her challenge was successful and meant that Garrison did not have to run against an incumbent in the general election. In the general election, Garrison defeated Democratic candidate Irene Roman, 2,451 votes to 2,014.

The fact that Garrison had been formerly known as a male was not widely publicized until shortly after she was elected to the legislature. When the Boston Herald asked whether she was a man, Garrison denied it and ended the conversation when asked about her past, including her name change.

In the Massachusetts House, Garrison consistently voted in favor of labor unions, resulting in her being endorsed for re-election by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and eight unions. On many votes, she voted with the Democrats in the legislature rather than with the Republicans. However, she opposed same-sex marriage and abortion.

Garrison was defeated in her 1994 bid for re-election by Democratic nominee Charlotte Golar Richie by a margin of 2,108 votes to 1,718.

Unsuccessful bids for office
Garrison has run for office at least 44 times, all but once unsuccessfully.

Boston City Council tenure
Garrison took the at-large seat of former councillor Ayanna Pressley on the Boston City Council, as Pressley left the City Council following her November 2018 election to Congress from Massachusetts's 7th congressional district. City rules require that vacancies for the at-large council seats are filled by the next-placed candidate in the previous election, which was Garrison in November 2017. Garrison was sworn in on January 9, 2019. Garrison claimed that she had, despite ideological differences, supported Pressley's campaign for the House of Representatives with the knowledge that, if Pressley were elected, Garrison would have the opportunity to be Pressley's City Council successor by virtue of her own finish in the previous city council election.

Garrison differed ideologically from the rest of the city councilors. She was noted to be the only strong conservative on the Boston City Council. She was noted to be a strong supporter of then-president Donald Trump and an ardent backer of the Boston Police Department. Around the time she joined the Boston City Council, Garrison described herself as an "independent conservative". She once explained, "I'm basically a conservative, but I also have some liberal ideas," and also explained, "I am a conservative, I am independent also," calling herself "a Black conservative." In a separate instance, she described herself and her voter base as being "moderate to conservative". She described her views as more closely aligned with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.

As a city councilor, Garrison supported reviving rent control in the city. In April 2019, she introduced a home rule petition for the city to seek state permission to reinstate rent control in the city. The petition was heavily criticized by many fellow city council members. She also voiced support for eviction control and price controls related to development. Garrison was supportive of the controversial "Operation Clean Sweep" effort by the police in August 2019 which saw 34 arrests in a two-day period in the so-called "Methadone Mile". Garrison proposed a pro-police resolution in the aftermath of Super Happy Fun America's 2019 "Straight Pride Parade" and unrest that occurred related to it. Garrison opposed a proposal by Councilor Michelle Wu to generate revenue by imposing fees for residential parking permits. While believing that planning and development needed to be "community based", Garrison dismissed a proposal by Councilor Wu to abolish the current Boston Planning and Development Agency as merely being a ploy for reelection by Wu.

In late-February 2019, Garrison proposed a measure to hold a hearing on the possibility of withholding city payments to the MBTA over the state of its service. At the time, the MBTA was proposing divisive fare increases. The measure was signed-onto by a majority of councilors. Councilor Michelle Wu had introduced a similar measure the year prior.

Boston City Councilors can invite local religious leaders to deliver the City Council's convocation. In her first turn to select the convocation, Garrison invited pastor and right-wing perennial candidate Roy Owens. Owens is vocally anti-LGBT.

Garrison was a candidate for re-election in the November 2019 election, but finished seventh in the general election field of eight candidates. In that election, she had urged voters to unseat the three other three sitting at-large city councilors (Michael F. Flaherty, Annissa Essaibi George, and Michelle Wu), and urged voters to "bullet vote" by casting a vote only for her in the at-large councilor column instead of voting for multiple (up to four) candidates.

In December 2019, the lame duck Garrison was one of only three city councilors to vote against a home rule petition requesting that the state allow the city to impose a real estate transfer tax.

Personal life
Garrison is a transgender woman. After being outed by the Boston Herald in 1992, Garrison did not publicly discuss her gender identity until 2023, when she shared that she identifies as trans and had begun the process of socially and medically transitioning in the 1960s. Before 2023, despite it being public knowledge that she was transgender, Garrison avoided publicly discussing the topic of her being a transgender individual, and had not publicly identified herself as being transgender; merely identifying herself as a woman, without any further elaboration.

Garrison is known not to embrace the use of technology, remarking in 2018, "I don't do computers, I don't do technology."

Garrison is also seen as adverse to granting the news media access to herself, with Quincy Walters of WBUR writing in a 2018 profile, "Garrison is suspicious of the media and rarely gives interviews. It's warranted. Back in 1992, a Boston Herald reporter confronted her with public records that indicated Garrison once went by a man's name. But Garrison has never identified as transgender. And some believe the public outing by the media contributed to her loss the next term."

Boston City Council
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