Kansas City Star – Marcus Kabel
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – In many ways, Midge Potts is like other everyday citizens who feel the call of politics. The self-described fiscal conservative and Eisenhower Republican is running a one-person primary campaign against five-term congressman and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt in southwest Missouri’s 7th District.
A few things set Potts, 37, apart from many Republican candidates. She thinks President Bush should be impeached over his domestic spying program, for example. And she used to be a he.
Potts, a Navy veteran who served in the early 1990s as Mitchell Eugene Potts, is a transgender person, a man who feels a call to live as a woman.
Potts has been living that way full-time for about two and a half years, taking herbal supplements to make her body’s hormones more female, changing her legal name, dressing in women’s clothes and wearing makeup.
“Even though I have my own unique niche, being transgender, I really feel like I’m a candidate of the regular people, for the regular people,” Potts told The Associated Press.