Althea Garrison

Althea Garrison (born October 7, 1940) is an American politician from Boston, Massachusetts who 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 while a member of the state legislature. While from then on it was public knowledge that Garrison is transgender, she did not publicly confirm this herself until 2023, long opting instead to refer to herself as a woman without any further elaboration.

Garrison is a perennial candidate, having been an unsuccessful candidate for political office at least 45 times. In her only successful campaign, she won election as a Republican to the Massachusetts House of Representatives from the 5th Suffolk district 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, the rules of the Boston City Charter gave Garrison the right of first refusal to assume the seat vacated by Pressley. Garrison lost her bid for re-election in November 2019.