What kind of upheaval would it take to put a pro­gres­sive, trans­gen­der woman from Utah in the U.S. Senate?

'A lot of disaffected working-class people see me as the true representative of the working class, whether or not they agree with me on some of the other, more progressive themes.'

Maybe Don­ald J. Trump.

Misty K. Snow thinks so. She’s mak­ing a bid to unseat Mike Lee, the state’s junior GOP sen­a­tor. Though she faces long odds, she believes a storm is gath­er­ing that will shat­ter the sta­tus quo.

“If there was ever a chance for Democ­rats to win Utah, it’s this year,” says Snow. ​“And I believe we’ll sur­prise some people.”

Snow, 31, grew up Mor­mon. She no longer prac­tices the reli­gion, but there are traces of that his­to­ry in her cam­paign. She’s mak­ing a pro­gres­sive vision of fam­i­ly val­ues her theme, and her main pri­or­i­ties are clean air, a $15 an hour min­i­mum wage and paid mater­ni­ty leave. It’s an agen­da that draws on her life expe­ri­ence, and she believes it can appeal to a broad base of vot­ers in Utah.

“A lot of dis­af­fect­ed work­ing-class peo­ple see me as the true rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the work­ing class, whether or not they agree with me on some of the oth­er, more pro­gres­sive themes,” says Snow, who works as a gro­cery store cashier.

She became polit­i­cal­ly involved in 2008, when she began pay­ing atten­tion to (and vot­ed for) Ralph Nad­er in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. She was inspired to run this year by the Bernie Sanders cam­paign and by her dis­may at the self-described ​“con­ser­v­a­tive Demo­c­rat” who was the ear­ly favorite to oppose Lee. She beat him in the June pri­ma­ry by near­ly 20 points.

Snow’s focus on paid mater­ni­ty is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant in Utah, which has the nation’s high­est birth rate. And though Utah is solid­ly Repub­li­can, air qual­i­ty is impor­tant to vot­ers there. In a sur­vey of more than 50,000 Uta­hans last year, respon­dents ranked clean air near the top of their priorities.

That find­ing reflects an envi­ron­men­tal­ist streak in the state. Its last Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor, Frank Moss, who served from 1959 to 1977, built his Sen­ate career in part by being ahead of the curve on water con­ser­va­tion. In The Water Cri­sis (1967), Moss wrote that ​“the real rea­son for our water cri­sis is our fail­ure to hus­band our resources.” Moss also dis­tin­guished him­self by work­ing to improve health care for the poor and elderly.

Beyond Snow’s focus on Utah-cen­tric issues, though, it’s the hav­oc cre­at­ed by Trump’s can­di­da­cy that could clear a path for her to win in November.

Trump’s dubi­ous con­ser­v­a­tive cre­den­tials, reli­gious big­otry and gen­er­al out­landish­ness have turned off many of the Repub­li­can vot­ers in Utah, where he won just 14 per­cent of the vote in the state’s cau­cus. Ted Cruz won 69 per­cent. A June poll put Hillary Clin­ton and Trump in a sta­tis­ti­cal tie in the state. Trump is still the favorite, but the lack of enthu­si­asm for him will prob­a­bly dimin­ish turnout among Republicans.

At the same time, Lee, who is a close ally of Cruz in the Sen­ate, has alien­at­ed many of the GOP vot­ers most like­ly to turn out in Novem­ber — peo­ple excit­ed about Trump — by align­ing with the Nev­er Trump movement.

And Lee was already unpop­u­lar because of his sup­port for the gov­ern­ment shut­down that Cruz led in 2013. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is among Utah’s largest employ­ers, in part because of the pop­u­lar nation­al parks there, and the shut­down hurt both fed­er­al employ­ees and the tourist indus­try sup­port­ed by the parks.

“A lot of our rur­al areas real­ly depend on that tourism, so that was real­ly dev­as­tat­ing to those com­mu­ni­ties,” Snow says. ​“So there’s a lot of anger toward Lee for that, even three years later.”

A poll tak­en in June found that Lee would beat Snow by about 14 points. Only 45 per­cent of respon­dents had a favor­able opin­ion of him; 37 per­cent had an unfa­vor­able opin­ion, and 18 per­cent were neutral.

But Snow has a pow­er­ful advan­tage — beyond Trump — that might prove deci­sive: Young vot­ers. As with the nation broad­ly, mil­len­ni­als in Utah are much more pro­gres­sive than old­er gen­er­a­tions. In a sur­vey tak­en last year, 62 per­cent self-iden­ti­fied as either ​“lib­er­al” or ​“mod­er­ate.” Only 39 per­cent of peo­ple born before 1945, and 50 per­cent of Baby Boomers, self-iden­ti­fied that way.

The base for Lee’s rigid­ly right-wing pol­i­tics, in oth­er words, con­sists of old­er peo­ple, and Utah is eas­i­ly the youngest state in the Union. It has a medi­an age of 30, ver­sus the nation­al aver­age of near­ly 37, and it ranks sec­ond in the per­cent­age of its pop­u­la­tion who are mil­len­ni­als. The strong youth vote was the key rea­son Sanders beat Clin­ton by a mar­gin of near­ly 60 points in the state.

What does all of this add up to? Will Utah, of all places, elect the Senate’s first trans­gen­der member?

It seems unlike­ly: Accord­ing to the most recent fil­ings, Lee’s cam­paign had more than $1 mil­lion in its war chest, ver­sus about $6,000 in Snow’s. But in an elec­tion sea­son in which Trump pos­es as the voice of the for­got­ten and dis­pos­sessed, stranger things have already happened.

“I think Lee’s strat­e­gy right now is to ignore me, because he thinks he’s a sure lock for re-elec­tion,” Snow says. ​“But work­ing-class peo­ple know our wages are too low. They know we have huge air-qual­i­ty issues. I talk about mak­ing this an econ­o­my that actu­al­ly works for work­ing peo­ple. I under­stand what it means to live pay­check to pay­check, and I’m going to fight to make life bet­ter for work­ing class fam­i­lies. That’s the mes­sage I’m get­ting out there.”