Meet the Two Transgender Women Who Won Primary Contests

They both happen to share a first name as well.

ByABC News
June 29, 2016, 4:14 PM

— -- Two women named Misty won primary races Tuesday night but the similarities between them don't stop there.

Both Misty Snow, who won the Democratic Senate primary in Utah, and Misty Plowright, who won a Democratic congressional primary in Colorado, are transgender.

"It's kind of baffling when I found out," Plowright said of Snow's campaign.

"We even used some of the same language to describe some of the same things," she said.

They were inspired to launch their inaugural political campaigns in part by Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential run.

Misty Snow, 30, who beat her Democratic competitor by nearly 19 percent in the primary, said she believes her working class background is striking a chord with voters.

She did not attend college and has been working as a cashier at Harmons grocery store for more than 13 years.

"A lot of people in Congress have never been poor. They have no concept of what it's like to be scraping by paycheck to paycheck," Snow said.

For her part, 33-year-old Plowright also "encountered financial barriers and was unable to attend college" and enlisted in the Army. She told ABC that she was a self-described "computer geek" during her time in the military and currently works as an IT consultant. She was a longtime independent but became a registered Democrat because of Sanders' campaign, she said. She launched her campaign in late March.

Plowright is married to a woman and they have a "loving, long-term, committed relationship with their mutual partner, Sebastian," according to her campaign bio page.

She has been open about her polyamorous love life since the beginning of the campaign, and said that it has not been a major factor with voters.

"There hasn't been much interest in it any time that it comes up, I simply explain it to people," she told ABC News.

Plowright said that she didn't "want to run away" from her her trans identity but sees her candidacy as a way to help raise awareness.

"One of the really big things that really helped create the sea of change for gay rights was people getting to know gay people ... and you realize that gay people are amazingly enough -- people," she said. "The same thing is true with people who are trans and the more that we are out there and the more people get to know us ... things will really start to get a lot better and the same sea of change will happen."

As the first transgender person from a major political party to run for Senate, she said "a lot of people have told me that I've made a difference by running and that they appreciate it."