Alison Preston (Blackford)

**Alison Preston** (October 8, 2005 - September 14, 2082) was an American politician and activist who served as a U.S. representative from Indiana from 2049 to 2065. She represented the 7th district from 2049 to 2063, and the recently reestablished 10th district from 2063 until her retirement in 2065. She was later the Green Party's nominee for President of the United States in 2068, receiving 8.4% of the popular vote in the best performance for President in that party's history. During her tenure, both districts that she represented comprised of most of Indianapolis, the capital and largest city of Indiana. During her tenure in Congress, she was a member of the Democratic Party (2049-2050), a non-affiliated independent (2050-2053), and a member of the Green Party (2053-2065), becoming the first member of the Green Party to sit in either chamber of Congress. Despite formally breaking off ties with the Democratic Party when she joined the Green Party in 2053, she was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus for the duration of her congressional tenure, becoming the *de facto* leader of the caucus' most radical faction for most of the 2050s and chairing the caucus from 2057 to 2061. She was also the dean of Indiana's congressional delegation from 2059 until her retirement in 2065.

Despite this, she criticized other members of the caucus for alleged "undemocratic" behavior, citing the Democratic Party's attempts to block the Green Party from receiving ballot access in the past. Even still, she would consistently receive the endorsement of the Indiana Democratic Party for her seat, and she ran without any organized opposition on multiple occasions, most notably in 2062 when she was redistricted to the newly reestablished 10th district (which was comprised of most of downtown Indianapolis) and received 88.4% of the vote, receiving only minimal resistance from the Libertarian Party's nominee, former Indianapolis City-County Council member Tyson Padilla. Prior to her election to Congress, Preston had served as a member of the Indianapolis City-County Council as a Democrat from 2044 until her resignation upon her election to the House of Representatives in 2049, rising to become President of the Indianapolis City-County Council by 2047.

She was the first transgender woman elected to the House of Representatives, as well as the second elected to the Indianapolis City-County Council, and during her time in the House of Representatives she would introduce and sponsor numerous pieces of legislation aimed at protecting human rights for LGBTQ+ Americans, while also advocating racial equality and social justice. She generally positioned herself to the left of the majority of the Democratic Party, and was a frequent target of both political attacks and personal attacks from Republican politicians and their supporters, being the target of several assassination attempts by far-right groups, most notably in June of 2057 when she and one of her staffers were ambushed by a gunman while eating outside a restaurant in Indianapolis. The ensuing shooting left the previously mentioned staffer as well as a bystander dead and left her hospitalized for several weeks.

In 2051, she was the subject of several transphobic and sexually explicit comments made by Dustin Alberts, a Republican representative from Indiana's 3rd congressional district in the northeast of the state. As a result of these comments, Alberts would become the 30th representative in U.S. history to be censured when a resolution to censure him and strip him of his committee assignments would pass with 222 in support, 216 in opposition and 1 abstained. Alberts would later become the first Republican to lose an election in the extremely heavily Republican 3rd district since 2000 in the 2052 election cycle, something largely credited to the scandal. Alison was later a co-founder of the Progress Party, a left-wing to center-left party that was formed in 2074 out of a merger of the Green Party with leftist factions of the Democratic Party concerned with the increasingly conservative shift that the main party had started to take during the late 2060s and 2070s.

She was the Progress Party's nominee for Governor of Indiana in 2076, coming in second to Conservative Union nominee Josh Barrett. Though she was considered a contender for the Progress Party's nomination for Vice President of the United States in 2080 and was formally offered the nomination by the Progressive National Committee, she would turn down the offer. In 2082, she announced her intention to run for re-election to her old congressional seat in the 10th district as a member of the Progress Party, and she would receive the nomination virtually unopposed. She was considered by far the favorite in the race and was widely expected to win the election with relative ease, however this would come to an end when she died suddenly on September 14, 2082. Despite this, her name was still included on the ballot for the 2082 United States House of Representatives elections and she would win the election with 66.4% of the popular vote, despite having died several weeks earlier. A special election for the seat would be held on January 1, 2083, to determine who would take Alison's position in the House, and Paisley Horne, the Progress Party's nominee and Alison's campaign manager for her 2082 congressional campaign, would win the election with 71.2% of the popular vote.