But the national spotlight on Ms. Hallquist has tended to overlook her nuts-and-bolts policy ideas in favor of her gender identity.

“Immediately after the election I was like, ‘What the hell happened?’ I felt like Forrest Gump,” Ms. Hallquist said. “You stumble into this historic thing and then you have to understand what it means.”

But transgender rights activists said they immediately knew what it meant.

“This could be truly life saving for some trans kids,” said Mara Keisling, the executive director for the National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund. “That she won the nomination — or just that she got to be the C.E.O. of an electric utility — shows that transgender people can have any kind of position. Christine has been a trailblazer.”

And in an age when Democratic politicians stake positions around terms like “socialist” — one of many labels for which she has little use — Ms. Hallquist has made the electric grid central to her political identity.

“We can grow the hell out of this rural economy if we connect every home and business to fiber optic cable” strung alongside power lines, which could bring high-speed internet to the state’s many remote towns, she said. And by moving electricity production away from fossil fuel she believes “the electric grid could be the tool to solve climate change.”