LGBTQ+ candidates poised to make US political history
According to political action committee LGBTQ Victory Fund, the number of queer political hopefuls in the upcoming elections in November has increased from the previous midterm elections.
From the 432 candidates in 2018, there are now more than 600 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer candidates running for office.
Some of these LGBTQ+ candidates will make political history should they emerge victorious. We highlight a few of them in this article.
City and state: Possible diversity firsts
Celia Israel, who currently represents District 50 in the Texas House of Representatives, is running for mayor of Austin, Texas.
She was inducted into the Austin Women’s Hall of Fame and was named “Champion of Equality” by Equality Texas. If elected, Israel would be the first LGBTQ+ mayor of Austin and the first Latina mayor of a major U.S. city.
In Connecticut, lawyer Erick Russell is running for state Treasurer. If elected, he will be the first Black LGBTQ statewide elected official.
Russell earned both his bachelor’s and law degrees in the state. He was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, where he currently resides with his husband, Chris.
Possible LGBTQ+ firsts in the House of Representatives
At 36-years-old, Robert Garcia was elected mayor of Long Beach, California, in 2014- becoming the city’s youngest, first LGBTQ, and first Latino person to assume the office he stills holds today.
Garcia is running for the U.S. House of Representatives, California’s 42nd Congressional District. If elected, he would be the first LGBTQ+ immigrant elected to Congress.
These other political hopefuls will also make history as the first LGBTQ+ representatives from their respective states.
If elected, these include: Becca Balint, Vermont’s At-Large Congressional District; Jamie McLeod-Skinner, Oregon’s 5th Congressional District; Eric Sorensen, Illinois’ 17th Congressional District; Jennie Armstrong (District 16) and Andrew Gray (District 20), Alaska House of Representatives.
First lesbian governors are quite possible
Another exciting possibility: Maura Healey (Massachusetts) and Tina Kotek (Oregon) could make trailblazing record by simultaneously becoming the first out lesbians ever elected governor in the United States.
Both women are no strangers to political firsts, after all.
In 2009, Healey, who is now the Massachusetts attorney general, led the nation’s first successful challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriages.
And in 2014, she broke barriers again, becoming the nation’s first out lesbian to be elected state attorney general.
Nearly 3,000 miles west, Kotek became the first out lesbian speaker of a state House of Representatives in 2013.
She made history again by becoming Oregon’s longest-serving House speaker, before stepping down in January to run for governor.
If either Healey or Kotek succeeds, they will follow two other out LGBTQ+ Democrats who have been elected to lead their states.
These are Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, who is bisexual and became the first openly LGBTQ person to be elected governor in 2015, and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who became the first openly gay man to be elected governor in 2018.