Stu Rasmussen

Stu Rasmussen was an American politician. She became the nation's first openly transgender mayor when she was elected as the mayor of Silverton, Oregon in November 2008.
She had previously been elected twice in the 1990s as mayor of Silverton before coming out as transgender. She was also three times a member of the city council. Stu described herself as a "gender anarchist", and used both he/him and she/her pronouns. She sometimes went by the name Carla Fong.
Rasmussen unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Oregon [House of Representatives] in 1994 as an independent, and a seat in the Oregon State Senate in 1996 as a Democrat. She ran for the House again in 1998 as a Democrat, losing with 41% of the vote.
In 2013 a musical about Rasmussen, Stu for Silverton, premiered at Seattle's Intiman Theatre.
Rasmussen, a self-described fiscal conservative and social liberal, served as city councilor until January 2009.
She co-owned Silverton's 1936 Palace Theater, which shows first-run movies, since 1974.
Rasmussen died from prostate cancer on November 17, 2021, at the age of 73.