Politics
LGBTQ candidates running in key races up and down the ballot
Out lawmakers could tip the balance of power in state legislatures and more

The LGBTQ Victory Fund is supporting “a ton of amazing LGBTQ candidates who’ve stepped forward” this election cycle, the organization’s vice president of political programs, Sean Meloy, told the Washington Blade during an interview last week.
Among the “amazing, historic candidates running for office at all levels,” he said, are national officeholders like U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), and U.S. House candidates Will Rollins (D-Calif.) and Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), along with those running for state and local positions across the country.
Meloy hails from and currently resides in the “swingiest swing state” of 2024, Pennsylvania. He said, “I’ve never seen the kind of LGBTQ organizing at the level it currently is,” thanks in part to Victory’s coordinated efforts with Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign.
The Keystone State is critical for the presidential race and also home to key contests that could decide control of the House and Senate.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania is running against mega-millionaire hedge fund executive David McCormick in one of the four Senate races of 2024 that Cook Political Report considers a toss-up, a distinction he shares with two incumbent House Democrats and one incumbent House Republican from the state.
The LGBTQ vote is key, which helps to explain the focus on organizing within the LGBTQ coalition, but Meloy stressed that exciting candidates like gay Pennsylvania State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta can boost the performance of others closer to and at the top of the ticket this year.
Kenyatta, who last year was named by President Joe Biden to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Black Americans, is “running an amazing campaign,” Meloy said, for auditor general.
He promises to “help bring his voice as a champion for normal folks to government, to make sure our tax dollars are used effectively and efficiently,” Meloy said, adding that “electing a young gay Black man, I think, goes a real long way.”
Folks who have heard him speak will recognize that Kenyatta “is fighting for them,” that he “actually looks like the people that [he’s] meant to represent,” bringing “multiple different historic firsts” to his campaign, Meloy said.
Broadly, “The LGBTQ vote and LGBTQ candidates are going to decide exactly what the makeup of our government looks like, whether it is a pro-equality government that includes LGBTQ people at the table, or one that is vehemently anti-LGBTQ and continues to demonize and attack our community,” he said.
Speaking of attacks against the community, former President Donald Trump and Republican candidates have spent tens of millions of dollars on anti-trans attack ads. Meloy is doubtful they will succeed, but noted the “polling is all over the place” so it is difficult to tell whether the messaging has harmed candidates supported by Victory.
“They’re doubling down on trying to cash in on bigotry, and we just have to make sure that that doesn’t work,” he said.
The battleground states
Along with Baldwin, Meloy said Victory is investing in key down-ticket candidates in Wisconsin, with a staffer on the ground in the battleground state working to elect LGBTQ leaders — like Ryan Spaude, running for Wisconsin State Assembly, and Kristin Alfheim, running for Wisconsin State Senate — who “are going to make or break whether or not Democrats lift that state legislative chamber.”
“They’re very much on the tip of the spear there, and that girds and is also supporting Tammy Baldwin for her reelection,” he said, adding that with help from their elections, the state could “potentially follow other Midwestern legislative chambers like Minnesota and Michigan, to pass pro-LGBTQ legislation.”
“That’s the change that we saw happen in Michigan,” another swing state, “that led to a record amount of LGBTQ folks getting elected, and then passing pro-LGBTQ legislation,” Meloy explained. “Similar things happened in the Pennsylvania State House, fair districts were passed, we doubled the amount of LGBTQ people, and then a record amount of pro-choice, and pro-LGBTQ legislation was passed.”
In Michigan, he said, LGBTQ candidates like Kyle Wright will help Democrats keep their House majority.
Meloy also pointed to the swing state of North Carolina, where even if far-right gubernatorial hopeful Mark Robinson is defeated, LGBTQ candidates like Lisa Grafstein, the state Senate’s lone LGBTQ voice, will help to guard against a GOP supermajority that would “pass absolutely crazy anti-LGBTQ legislation.”
Out west in the swing state of Nevada, Democrats are poised to pick up a couple of seats in both chambers of the legislature, which would give them control of the state Assembly and the state Senate, a check against Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.
“We’ve got Ryan Hampton running to pick up a seat” in the assembly, Meloy said, along with Dallas Harris, who is running for the state Senate.
And across the border in Arizona, another swing state, Lorena Austin is “running there to help keep a seat,” he said.
Elsewhere, opportunities to make history
In deep-red Iowa, Meloy said, “Aime Wichtendahl is running for the state House, and she’d be the first trans voice ever elected to that state legislature.”
“Similarly, in Florida,” he said, “we could have a record amount of LGBTQ legislators impacting the balance of power in Tallahassee, which is extremely important when you have such an anti-LGBTQ governor,” Ron DeSantis (R).
Meloy added that the Sunshine State also has the opportunity to elect its first trans state legislator, Ashley Brundage. Together with the other LGBTQ candidates running in Florida, her election could potentially triple the number of out state lawmakers serving in the legislature.
Congress
Wasserman Schultz: Allies must do more to support LGBTQ Jews
A Wider Bridge honored Fla. congresswoman at Capital Jewish Museum on Thursday

Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Thursday said allies need to do more to support LGBTQ Jewish people in the wake of Oct. 7.
“Since Oct. 7, what has been appalling to me is that LGBTQ+ Jewish organizations and efforts to march in parades, to be allies, to give voice to other causes have faced rejection,” said the Florida Democrat at the Capital Jewish Museum in D.C. after A Wider Bridge honored her at its Pride event.
Wasserman Schultz, a Jewish Democrat who represents Florida’s 25th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, added the “silence of our allies … has been disappointing.”
“It makes your heart feel hollow and it makes me feel alone and isolated, which is why making sure that we have spaces that we can organize in every possible way in every sector of our society as Jews is so incredibly important,” she said.
The Israeli government says Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, killed roughly 1,200 people, including upwards of 360 partygoers at the Nova Music Festival, when it launched a surprise attack on the country. The militants also kidnapped more than 200 people on that day.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed nearly 55,000 people in the enclave since Oct. 7. Karim Khan, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, has said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who the Israel Defense Forces killed last October, are among those who have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel.
A Wider Bridge is a group that “advocates for justice, counters LGBTQphobia, and fights antisemitism and other forms of hatred.”
Thursday’s event took place 15 days after a gunman killed two Israeli Embassy employees — Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim — as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum.
Police say a man who injured more than a dozen people on June 1 in Boulder, Colo., when he threw Molotov cocktails into a group of demonstrators who were calling for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages was yelling “Free Palestine.” The Associated Press notes that authorities said the man who has been charged in connection with the attack spent more than a year planning it.
Congress
Sen. Schiff proposes resolution urging DOD not to rename U.S. Naval Ship Harvey Milk
Pentagon reportedly plans to change the name of ship named for gay rights icon

U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Thursday introduced a resolution urging the U.S. Department of Defense not to rename ships that bear the names of civil rights leaders like gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk.
The move comes just after reports on Tuesday that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered U.S. Navy Secretary John Phelan to rename the U.S. Naval Ship Harvey Milk, with an announcement deliberately planned for Pride month on June 14.
The vessel, a replenishment oiler, is part of the John Lewis class fleet. The Pentagon is also considering renaming other ships in the fleet including the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and USNS Harriet Tubman, according to CBS News.
“By naming these ships,” Schiff wrote in his resolution, “the United States Navy has appropriately celebrated notable civil rights leaders and their legacy in promoting a more equal and just United States.”
Milk was assassinated in 1978 while serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Prior to his election to the Senate last year, Schiff represented California districts in the U.S. House since 2001.
Part one of his resolution “strongly supports the naming of John Lewis-class fleet replacement oilers after the aforementioned civil rights leaders as a fitting tribute to honor their contributions to the advancement of civil rights,” while part two “strongly encourages the Department of Defense not to take any action to change the names.”
Congress
House passes reconciliation with gender-affirming care funding ban
‘Big Beautiful Bill’ now heads to the Senate

The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted 215-214 for passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” reconciliation package, which includes provisions that would prohibit the use of federal funds to support gender-affirming care.
But for an 11th hour revision of the bill late Wednesday night by conservative lawmakers, Medicaid and CHIP would have been restricted only from covering treatments and interventions administered to patients younger than 18.
The legislation would also drop requirements that some health insurers must cover gender-affirming care as an “essential health benefit” and force states that currently mandate such coverage to find it independently. Plans could still offer coverage for transgender care but without the EHB classification patients will likely pay higher out of pocket costs.
To offset the cost of extending tax cuts from 2017 that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans, the reconciliation bill contains significant cuts to spending for federal programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The Human Rights Campaign criticized House Republicans in a press release and statement by the group’s president, Kelley Robinson:
“People in this country want policies and solutions that make life better and expand access to the American Dream. Instead, anti-equality lawmakers voted to give handouts to billionaires built on the backs of hardworking people — with devastating consequences for the LGBTQ+ community.
“If the cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP or resources like Planned Parenthood clinics weren’t devastating enough, House Republicans added a last minute provision that expands its attacks on access to best practice health care to transgender adults.
“This cruel addition shows their priorities have never been about lowering costs or expanding health care access–but in targeting people simply for who they are. These lawmakers have abandoned their constituents, and as they head back to their districts, know this: they will hear from us.”
Senate Republicans are expected to pass the bill with the budget reconciliation process, which would allow them to bypass the filibuster and clear the spending package with a simple majority vote.
Changes are expected as the bill will be reviewed and amended by committees, particularly the Finance Committee, and then brought to the floor for debate — though modifications are expected to focus on Medicaid reductions and debate over state and local tax deductions.
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