Misty Plowright is shockingly honest, in a nothing-to-lose and what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of way.

She hasn’t slept in 24 hours and she’s wearing jeans and running shoes for an interview inside a noisy Castle Rock coffee shop. A self-proclaimed nerd and politics junkie, Plowright is unpolished and unguarded, but passionate, as she talks about her run for U.S. Congress as the first openly transgender person to gain a major party’s nomination for a congressional seat in Colorado.

Plowright, a 33-year-old IT consultant who previously worked for Microsoft, joined the race because she was inspired by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ call for a political revolution, and because she believes Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn is out of touch with the district’s libertarian, live-and-let-live attitude.

“He doesn’t listen to any of his constituents,” she said. “He doesn’t even engage with them.”

Plowright isn’t regarded as a serious threat to Lamborn, the shoo-in in the most conservative congressional district in Colorado. She has raised $11,000 and received no money from the state Democratic Party, compared with Lamborn’s $561,000 in donations. Plowright — running in Colorado Springs, the city of Focus on the Family — is a transgender woman married to a woman whose relationship also includes a man they call a husband, though legally he is not. A conservative radio host called her campaign a publicity stunt.

Lamborn, first elected to the 5th District 10 years ago, has ignored each of Plowright’s numerous requests to join her at the eight town hall meetings her campaign organized, she said. “It’s hard to come after me — I’m not ashamed of who I am,” Plowright said. But “he’s completely ignoring me. It’s almost like he thinks that seat is his by divine right.”

Lamborn countered that his campaign has been “robust” and that he has connected with people across the district. “The many thousands of people I diligently assist and interact with year in and year out would agree that I am a responsive and helpful U.S. representative,” he said via e-mail. It’s not a divine right that gets him re-elected by “very healthy margins,” he said, but his commitment to service and his conservative record.

Plowright, who grew up in Arkansas and moved to Colorado about 10 years ago, said as a congresswoman she would work for veterans and push for a law protecting veterans who are immigrants from deportation. Veterans who are deported can return to the United States after their death, she said. “If you are not taking care of veterans before they have to be put into the ground, you are messing up,” said Plowright, herself an Army veteran.

Lamborn, the second-highest ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, touted his work to bring a new veterans’ clinic to the region and said he is determined to bring Pikes Peak National Veterans Cemetery to El Paso County.

Plowright also wants to improve the country’s internet infrastructure so that even rural areas have high-speed access, in part by supporting public-private partnerships to provide broadband internet. And she has campaigned on fiscal responsibility. “I believe in paying the bills,” she said.

Plowright was raised mostly by her grandmother and great grandmother in a deeply religious home. She knew in elementary school that she did not feel like a boy, though she didn’t have the words for it. Her thought process back then: “Whatever it was, I wasn’t praying hard enough.” Throughout high school and beyond, she suffered from depression and survived suicide attempts.

She did not transition to live as a woman until 2006, around the time she moved to Colorado, and didn’t reveal that to strangers for years. Plowright came out publicly as transgender last spring, a spontaneous decision made as she listened to fellow delegates at the El Paso County Convention consider a rule about punishing officials for “violations of law” or “moral transgressions.”

She stood up to speak, identifying herself as a transgender woman. “Whose morals are we talking about here?” she asked. Plowright’s wife and campaign manager, Lisa Wilkes, was shocked, perhaps the only person in the audience who knew it was the first time Plowright publicly announced she was trans.

Soon after, Plowright decided to run for Congress.

“I’ve been content to stay in the shadows for a long time,” she said. She vowed to keep no secrets, to run an honest race — she wouldn’t hide anything about herself, but she wouldn’t make being transgender a major part of her campaign either. “You can’t escape who you are, but no one should ever vote based on whether you are gay or straight or black or white or blond or red-haired. It should always be about issues and about people.”

Regardless of the election’s outcome, Plowright is “breaking barriers” and is an “inspiration to transgender people and allies across the country,” said Jay Brown, communications director for the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ civil rights group. “It is only a matter of time, as progress continues and candidates like Misty lead the way, that we’ll see transgender people in Congress.”

The Colorado Democratic Party has contributed to Plowright’s campaign with manpower, staffing three offices in the district with a dozen people who knock on doors and call voters, said party chairman Rick Palacio. The best a Democrat has ever done in the district is 40 percent. “It’s a tough campaign for any candidate,” he said. “We are doing everything we can to maximize our vote there and across the state.”

Palacio said Plowright’s campaign “speaks to the inclusiveness of the Democratic Party and says a lot about Democratic values.”

Plowright said she feels like she’s “stirred something.” She’s received numerous messages from gay and transgender people thanking her for her inspiration, as well as support from a broad spectrum of political types ready for a change — from the Tea Party to the Green Party.

“I went to the school of hard knocks at the university of life,” she said. “I’ve been underestimated my entire life. Well, I’m still here and I’m still going.”