National
Grenell says both parties play politics with gay equality
Former Romney staffer ‘humbled’ by support after stepping down
Richard Grenell (Photo courtesy of Grenell)
Richard Grenell, the gay man who resigned from Mitt Romney’s campaign after intense criticism of his hiring from the left and right, said his stepping down should not be seen as a sign that a Romney administration would be hostile to gays.
“I would caution you not to jump to any conclusions about what this means for hiring gays in a Romney administration,” Grenell said in an interview with the Washington Blade. “You can’t compare campaigns to governing.”
Noting that he did not want to speak for the campaign, Grenell said he was overwhelmed and humbled by messages of support he received from Republicans during the flap. He sees the reaction to his resignation as a sign that the Republican Party is gradually moving in the right direction on gay rights.
“I received an overwhelming number of private emails, texts and calls from Republicans sending their support,” Grenell said. “The private support was overwhelming and humbling; the public support wasn’t. … It’s frustrating but also encouraging at the same time because I’ve been involved in the party long enough to remember when the private support wasn’t there.”
He noted that no elected Republican in Washington spoke out against his joining the Romney campaign.
Grenell was hired by the Romney campaign in April as foreign policy spokesperson after informally advising the foreign policy team for about six months. He said his sexual orientation was never an issue during the interview process.
“Everyone I’ve been working with knows I’m gay and knew my partner,” he said. “I’m very out; it’s not something I ever hide. I don’t have the ability to not be myself and talk about my life with my partner.”
Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton is among the Romney advisers who Grenell said were supportive. Grenell worked in the George W. Bush administration as United States spokesman at the U.N.
“There’s not a Republican who doesn’t know I’m gay,” he added. “The [Romney] campaign was unequivocally supportive and said that doesn’t matter to us or to the governor and that we hire according to experience and qualifications.”
But that support didn’t extend to the right wing of the Republican Party. Shortly after Grenell’s appointment, Christian conservatives pounced, criticizing Romney and suggesting that his hiring an openly gay man constituted an attack on families.
Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association, Tweeted, “If personnel is policy, his message to the pro-family community: drop dead.” Later, Matthew Franck wrote in the National Journal, “Whatever fine record he compiled in the Bush administration, Grenell is more passionate about same-sex marriage than anything else.”
Further, Franck suggested that Grenell — who supports marriage equality — would jump ship and support President Obama if Obama endorsed same-sex marriage during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Obama, of course, has since endorsed marriage equality.
“I’m not endorsing Obama,” Grenell said. “Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of playing politics with gay equality.”
Grenell echoed the sentiment expressed by many gay conservatives that they sometimes feel unwelcome by elements in the Republican Party and equally unwelcome in the LGBT community.
“The claim that gays should be barred from conservative activism is a bipartisan bigoted view,” he said. “The far left doesn’t want a gay to be conservative; the far right doesn’t want a conservative to be gay. I don’t have the luxury of being a one-issue voter. I’m more thoughtful and complex than that. I am comfortably gay and conservative.”
The criticism of Grenell’s hiring didn’t come exclusively from conservatives. Bloggers and commentators on the left denounced Grenell, too, mostly over Tweets he sent that were deemed misogynistic and even homophobic.
One Tweet, in particular, sparked outrage among LGBT critics. Grenell wrote, “rachel maddow needs to take a breath and put on a necklace.”
Richard Grenell (Photo courtesy of Grenell)
Michelangelo Signorile, who hosts an LGBT-themed talk show on SiriusXM radio, wrote, “It was the kind of crack many people would expect from a homophobic straight guy.”
“I’m not a mean-spirited person,” Grenell said of the Twitter controversy. “I attempted to be funny and I wasn’t and I see how very hurtful that could be. I apologized immediately for that.”
Grenell said he regrets some of the Tweets and acknowledged that he deleted hundreds of Tweets after the criticism.
“The fact is when I was confronted by some on the left that I had inappropriate Tweets, I reviewed those Tweets and in reviewing the roughly seven Tweets that people pointed out, there were some I couldn’t find so I deleted everything before January 2012.”
He added that the impression he deleted hundreds of misogynistic Tweets was “ridiculous, I love strong women.” In addition to Maddow, Grenell targeted Hillary Clinton and Callista Gingrich in some Tweets. The angry reaction to his Twitter feed amounted to an attack from the Obama campaign, Grenell said.
“It’s the classic Obama playbook,” he said. “Republicans are either racist, homophobic or misogynistic. I’m not a hurtful person.”
The Tweets, he said, were never discussed internally at the Romney campaign.
Perhaps the last straw for Grenell came in late April, when he helped organize a conference call with reporters to discuss national security issues. As the New York Times reported last month, Grenell was told by a senior Romney aide not to speak on the call because the campaign wanted him to “lay low for now.”
The Times story depicted Grenell as “seething” over the slight. When asked about the Times story, Grenell did not dispute the account but declined to comment further.
Days later, Grenell announced his resignation from the Romney campaign. Senior campaign staffers tried to talk him out of leaving. Aides to Romney were convinced the controversy would blow over, the Times reported. But Grenell quit anyway. He said he was frustrated that the media and his critics were focused on his “personal life” and not on the important foreign policy issues he wanted to discuss.
“I care very deeply about national security issues and it became increasingly clear that I wasn’t going to be talking about national security,” Grenell told the Blade. “The far left and far right wanted to talk about my personal life and my stance on gay marriage.
“For someone who’s hired to talk about the president’s failed policies on Iran and North Korea, that’s frustrating,” he continued in explaining his decision to resign. “These are my issues — foreign policy and that’s what I spend my time with. It’s ironic, too, because I served eight years in a high-profile position in the Bush administration, comfortably out, but national campaigns are hyper-partisan operations.”
The Romney campaign has declined Blade requests for comment and interview requests throughout the primary season. The campaign issued a statement to reporters in response to Grenell’s resignation.
“We are disappointed that Ric decided to resign from the campaign for his own personal reasons,” said Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, in a statement. “We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill.”
Grenell declined to say what the campaign could have done differently that might have encouraged him to stay on.
“Campaigns are not the real world,” he noted. “They have hyper-partisan activists on both sides shooting to kill. It’s not governing. The evidence shows Obama was an amazing campaigner and a terrible governor.”
Asked about Romney’s record on LGBT issues, which includes signing a pledge from the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage that says he would support a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Grenell urged both Democrats and Republicans to view gay rights as a civil rights issue.
“I wish that Gov. Romney would not view gay equality as a partisan issue,” he said, “it’s a civil rights issue.”
He continued, “The Democratic strategy is to point out extremists in my party and play politics with the issue. I recognize the historic nature of Obama’s personal stance on gay marriage. What I don’t hear from Democratic partisans is a critique on the fact that he hasn’t changed his policies.”
Asked to elaborate, he said that Obama supports the right of states to decide marriage for themselves, something Grenell opposes.
“We gay conservatives are fighting within our party on a daily basis and critique our own party,” he said. “I don’t see that critique on the Democratic side. The extreme lefties are just as intolerant as the far right.”
He went on to criticize Obama for the timing of his marriage announcement — just after a vote to add a ban on marriage and civil unions to the North Carolina Constitution.
“The president waited until after the North Carolina vote to talk about his personal stance and his policy stance is that North Carolina gets to be hateful — that’s his policy stance. Obama, [Nancy] Pelosi, Romney, [Speaker John] Boehner should recognize that this is a civil rights issue and asking other citizens to vote on someone else’s equality is wrong.”
Obama criticized the North Carolina amendment effort prior to the vote and has said he opposes similar efforts to “take away rights” in other states. His administration has also declared that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and the Justice Department is no longer defending the statute in court.
But Grenell said Democrats have failed to confront anti-gay voices in the party. “Prop 8 proves that Democrats have work to do too,” he said.
In a wide-ranging, nearly two-hour interview, Grenell spoke passionately about his hope that both parties would stop viewing gay rights as a partisan issue and instead as a civil rights issue. He also spoke about the need to confront religion-based objections to equality.
“We can learn a lot from North Carolina and California in that gay equality issues should not be a political issue,” he said. “It’s clear the Democrats have a lot of work to do and I would suggest that all gay leaders in Washington concentrate on religious leaders and other groups that have the ability to support civil rights issues.”
Grenell was raised an evangelical Christian and his brother is a minster. He attended an evangelical undergraduate school. Despite the attacks from Christian conservatives, he said he received private support from religious activists and asserted there’s “clearly an opening” to engage with conservative Christians.
Asked about a recent Washington Post story that Romney participated in an assault on a gay student while in high school and forcibly cut the boy’s long hair, Grenell assailed the mainstream media.
“That report was more hyper-partisan campaign mudslinging,” he said. “It shouldn’t be an issue — it was a Washington Post partisan hit job. … The credibility of Washington journalism has imploded. When you get out of Washington, the majority of people don’t buy what you’re selling. That’s why mainstream media print journalism has imploded; they created this problem by pretending to be unbiased reporters and being partisan activists.”
His critique of the mainstream media extends to gay writers. In March, Grenell wrote an op-ed published in the Washington Blade criticizing gay Washington Post writer Jonathan Capehart for failing to challenge Obama on marriage while attending a White House state dinner. Capehart responded, suggesting that Grenell was hypocritical for taking the Romney job because Romney opposes marriage equality.
“I have nothing against Jonathan,” Grenell said this week. “He’s a reporter who’s in the tank for Obama. We all have a role to play and if you’re going to take a reporter’s role then you should act like a reporter.”
“What Ric repeatedly fails to understand is that I am a reporter with the privilege of being required to have an opinion and to express it,” Capehart told the Blade this week. “And in my opinion, Ric cannot accept that President Obama has something that Gov. Romney does not: a strong record on LGBT equality.”
Grenell urged the Log Cabin Republicans to endorse Romney, though he noted that he is not active in the organization. Log Cabin hasn’t yet said whether it will issue an endorsement in the race. In 2004, the group declined to endorse Bush’s re-election over his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, something that Romney has also endorsed.
On foreign policy, Grenell’s favored topic, he sees a role for the United States to play in advancing LGBT rights abroad and offered praise for Hillary Clinton’s recent speech on LGBT rights in Geneva.
“Absolutely the United States should use its influence to advance rights and freedoms,” he said. Among those rights, he cited access to the Internet, the ability to freely assemble and the ability to be openly gay. “These issues cannot be separated. I think the U.S. should always stand as a beacon of hope for those who are seeking greater democracy and freedom.”
Grenell described Clinton’s Geneva speech — in which she famously said “gay rights are human rights” — as “a great speech for human rights. As much as I can critique Condi Rice’s foreign policy limitations, I have to recognize that she, too, pushed the State Department to accept gays and lesbians more. She was very forward leaning. Hillary built on some of what Condi was doing and has raised the bar even further.”
But that’s where the praise ends for the Obama administration. Grenell fears that Obama doesn’t understand foreign policy and cites as evidence the U.S. policy in Syria and Iran. Grenell faults the administration for not taking a more aggressive approach to Iran at the United Nations and for sending an ambassador to Syria, something Bush resisted.
“There’s no strategy, it’s trial and error diplomacy,” he said. “The Syria policy is to look the other way; the Russians are controlling the policy.”
Asked whether Obama deserves credit for combating terrorism and authorizing the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, Grenell said Obama’s performance on these issues reflects a dramatic change from his posture during the campaign.
“There are three or four terror issues where candidate Obama didn’t know what he was talking about and when he got in the White House, he realized how wrong he was.”
The Obama campaign declined to comment on Grenell’s criticisms.
Grenell, 45, works with an L.A.-based public affairs firm, Capitol Media Partners, on international public affairs consulting projects. He lives in Los Angeles with his partner of nearly 10 years, Matthew Lashey, an executive in the media and entertainment industry.
“We’d like the right to marry but don’t live in a state where that’s an option,” he said. “I think it’s important to have the option be a legitimate federal option where you get all the rights and responsibilities that come with marriage.”
National
Remembering the LGBTQ heroes of 9/11 terrorist attacks
25 years later, ‘the heartbreak remains strong’
Many in the LGBTQ community in the D.C. area and throughout the country were expected to join friends, co-workers, and family members this week in commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and on the Pentagon just outside D.C. as well as the jetliner hijacking that ended in a fatal crash in an open field in Shanksville, Pa.
A total of 2,996 people died in the 9/11 attacks, including 19 terrorists who hijacked four jetliners whose passengers included Americans and citizens of many other countries.
Activists involved with local and national LGBTQ advocacy organizations recall witnessing a coming together of LGBTQ people and their co-workers, neighbors, and family members to support one another during a time of unimaginable horror and grief.
Among those who lost their lives in the 9/11 terrorist attacks was American Airlines co-pilot David Charlebois, an out gay man and member of the Gay Pilots Association, who was on American Airlines Flight 77, which the terrorists crashed into the Pentagon.
Also among the terrorist victims in the 9/11 attacks was gay public relations executive and rugby enthusiast Mark Bingham of San Francisco, who was among several passengers of the hijacked United Airlines jet who reportedly stormed the cockpit to regain control of the jetliner before one of the hijackers crashed the jet into the countryside in rural Pennsylvania.
The jet had taken off from Newark, N.J. with its destination being San Francisco. Investigators learned the hijackers turned the plane around and were heading to Washington, D.C., with plans to crash it into the White House or the U.S. Capitol.
The passengers, including Bingham, who stormed the cockpit and were among the 44 passengers and crew who lost their lives in the crash are credited by investigators and family members and friends with saving the lives of hundreds of others if the hijackers succeeded in crashing into the White House or Capitol.
Among the other LGBTQ people known to have lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks was Father Mychal Judge, 68, a gay Franciscan priest who served as a Catholic chaplain for the New York City Fire Department. According to the National Catholic Reporter, Judge rushed to the scene of the World Trade Center shortly before the Twin Towers collapsed. He was fatally struck by debris falling from the south tower while giving last rites to a fallen firefighter, the Catholic publication reported.
“He was a decent, wonderful human being,” said New York gay journalist Andy Humm, who had interviewed Judge for LGBTQ-related stories prior to the 9/11 attacks. “I saw him at many demonstrations for gay and AIDS causes, showing up in his Franciscan monk’s cassock,” Humm told the Washington Blade five years ago at the time of the 9/11 20th anniversary. “And he was equally beloved by the fire department, there at every major fire tragedy in the city, lending moral support to firefighters,” Humm said.
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministries, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic group that advocates for LGBTQ supportive policies within the church, reported five years ago that his group was supporting an effort to call on the Catholic Church to officially recognize Fr. Judge as a saint by canonizing him. But DeBernardo told the Blade this week that those efforts failed to obtain the needed support from various Catholic entities, including the Franciscan Order of Friars Minors, of which Judge was affiliated, ending efforts to canonize Judge as a saint.
DeBernardo has written a book about Judge’s life and legacy published in 2023 called “Mychal Judge:Take Me Where You Want Me to Go.”
Among the other widely reported LGBTQ victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks were a gay couple from California, Daniel Brandhorst and Ronald Gamboa, and their adopted son, David, who were among those who died aboard the United Airlines flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. The Los Angeles Times reported that Brandhorst, an attorney, and Gamboa, the manager of a Santa Monica Gap store, had adopted three-year-old David when he was an infant.
For many LGBTQ residents of New York and the D.C. area, the suffering over the loss of loved ones, including same-sex partners, was heightened a short time later when they learned they were initially ineligible for local and federal programs aimed at providing financial assistance to survivors of the 9/11 attack victims because same-sex couples were not legally recognized.
At the urging of LGBTQ rights organizations, state and local officials in the New York and the D.C. area took steps to address the initial denial of financial support for surviving same-sex partners In programs under their control. Officials with a massive federal aid program for 9/11 survivors, however, said they did not have legal authority to authorize payments to same-sex partners.
The officials, in the administration of then-President George W. Bush, said the best they could do would be to leave it up to local authorities to determine whether state probate laws would recognize a same-sex partner as a family member for eligibility in the federal aid program for 9/11 survivors, many of whom lived in states outside the New York and D.C. area.
Nicole Nava, a spokesperson for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, a federally funded program established to compensate for physical harm or death caused by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, including support for surviving family members, said she would inquire into whether same-sex surviving partners were being supported under that program in subsequent years in response to a request from the Washington Blade.
Jenny Pizer, an attorney for the LGBTQ litigation group Lambda Legal, which supported LGBTQ partner survivors of victims of the 9/11 attacks, said the information she and her organization had showed that many if not most of the LGBTQ partner survivors were unable to obtain the federal Victim Compensation Fund payment benefits that married heterosexual spouses obtained. She said she didn’t have a definitive answer on whether some LGBTQ surviving partners were compensated.
However, at least one case where an LGBTQ partner was compensated was reported by the Washington Post in a Jan. 22, 2003, news story about Peggy Neff, the lesbian partner of 18 years of Sheila Hein, 51, a civilian employee at the Pentagon, who was killed when the terrorist hijacked jetliner crashed into the Pentagon.
The Post reported that the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, under the leadership of its director, Kenneth Feinberg, approved an award of $557,390 for Neff in compensation for the loss of her partner. The Post story quoted a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign as saying, “It is our sincere hope that this signals that other gay families who have suffered the loss of a loved one will be treated similarly.”
The compensation program, which is operated by the U.S. Department of Justice, remains in operation until 2090. The Blade will report on any additional similar awards for LGBTQ surviving partners if Nava provides such information.
Events commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks were scheduled to take place this week at memorial sites honoring the 9/11 victims located outside the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., at the site of the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City, and the site of the jetliner crash in Shanksville, Pa., which is operated by the U.S. National Park Service.
The U.S. Congress in 2017 and 2021 approved separate bills signed by President Donald Trump during his first term in office and President Joe Biden creating the Global War on Terrorism Memorial and its construction, to be built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. that’s scheduled to be completed in 2028.
The memorial, to be located near the Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Veterans Memorial close to 23rd Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W., is intended to honor people who served and were lost in the wars and counterterrorism operations that followed the 9/11 attacks, including U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Longtime LGBTQ rights advocate Jay Fisette, who at the time of the 9/11 attacks held the elected position of chair of the Arlington County Board, which serves as the county’s governing body, was among the Arlington officials that came to the Pentagon’s grounds in Arlington to oversee efforts by firefighters to rescue Pentagon workers on the day of the attack.
At an Oct. 7, 2001, 9/11 Day of Remembrance and Appreciation ceremony held in Arlington, Fisette expressed the views of many in the community in response to the 9/11 attacks.
“Tonight, our community gather as a family,” he told the gathering. “We gather in sorrow and in disbelief, in remembrance and appreciation,” he said. “But we come here, too, with resolve and pride. We come together as Arlingtonians who love our country, as Americans who love our country,” he said.
“Our enemies may hurt our bodies and destroy our buildings, but they will never defeat our determination to make this a world of peace and a community in which our children grow up safe and secure,” Fissette said.
Although some of the same-sex partners of those killed in the 9/11 attacks faced obstacles in obtaining financial support through the federal 9/11 relief program, Tom Hay, the surviving partner of 14 years of American Airlines pilot David Charlebois was treated with respect and honor by American Airlines officials and colleagues at Charlebois’s funeral mass at D.C.’s St. Matthew Cathedral.
More than a dozen uniformed company pilots and flight attendants attended the mass. And a press release issued by American Airlines mentioned Charlebois’s relationship with Hay and told how Hay stood with Charlebois when Charlebois advocated for equal rights for LGBTQ people in the airline industry through his involvement with the National Gay Pilots Association.
“David was an early member of the NGPA,” the American Airlines statement said. “His contribution helped ensure ongoing progress toward fairness and solidarity.”
Activists in New York have said the 9/11 attacks drew attention to the need for legal protections for same-sex couples, including the need for recognition of same-sex marriage, which the U.S. Supreme Court legalized nationwide in its landmark ruling in 2015.
But LGBTQ advocates in New York pointed to the difficulties LGBTQ surviving partners faced when desperately seeking to find out if a partner had survived at the site of the World Trade Center attack where the Red Cross and other emergency relief agencies set up a station near the site of the attack.
“Literally, gay people had to go there, turn around, go back home, and get some paperwork that spouses didn’t have to get to prove a relationship existed,” said Ross Levi, who at the time served as executive director of the New York LGBTQ advocacy group Empire State Pride Agenda.
“You were nervous and scared and sad and then you had to go through that,” Levi told the Blade in 2011 at the time of the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “And worse yet, other people turned them away, even with the paperwork, saying sorry you’re not a family according to our guidelines.”
Activists said New York City and New York State officials quickly recognized the inequities faced by same-sex partner survivors and took steps to change polices and laws to correct the situation. Among other things, New York’s then-Gov. George Pataki (R) issued an executive order in October 2001 that included surviving partners of gay and lesbian victims of the World Trade Center attacks in receiving full spousal benefits from the state’s Crime Victims Board.
In a separate development, the LGBTQ litigation group Lambda Legal, ESPA, the Human Rights Campaign, and other LGBTQ advocacy groups created the September 11 Gay & Lesbian Family Fund to provide some support to surviving same-sex partners who were ineligible for help from the federal relief fund program.
“The terrorist attack on September 11th is a tragedy that touched every American, impacting people and families from all walks of life,” Jonathan Lovitz, the Human Rights Campaign’s Senior Vice President for Campaigns and Communications told the Blade in a statement this week.
“As in all moments in American history, LGBTQ+ Americans were there, and feel the impact of this day,” he said. “As we remember the lives lost 25 years later, the heartbreak remains strong and the work to ensure that every person can live safe from violence in this country continues.”
2026 Midterm Elections
Chris Pappas wins NH Democratic Senate primary
Gay congressman running to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen
New Hampshire Congressman Chris Pappas on Tuesday won the Democratic primary in the race to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) in the U.S. Senate.
Pappas defeated Karishma Manzur, who was his primary challenger, by a 61.8-36.1 percent margin.
The gay congressman will face off against former U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu, who defeated former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown in the Republican primary.
“Tonight’s victory sends a clear message that voters are looking for leaders who will fight for their rights, their freedoms, and to be treated with dignity and respect,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson in a statement.
She campaigned for Pappas in Manchester, New Hampshire’s largest city, on Aug. 30.
“Chris Pappas has delivered results, stood up for equality, and showed up for the people he serves,” said Robinson in her statement. “HRC was proud to mobilize Equality Voters across New Hampshire to help power this win. We don’t have a second to waste between now and November. We look forward to continuing our work with Rep. Pappas as he drives toward victory in November so he can help return a pro-equality majority to the United States Senate.”
A poll the University of New Hampshire Survey Center released on Aug. 26 showed Sununu ahead of Pappas by a 45-43 percent margin if they were to face off in the general election. The margin of error is +/-2.1 percent.
Pappas would become the first openly gay man elected to the U.S. Senate if he were to win in November.
Georgia
Everton Blair makes history as first openly gay congressman from Ga.
Former Gwinnett County Board of Education member to serve remainder of David Scott’s term
Georgia made history last week when Everton Blair, Jr., was sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the state’s first openly LGBTQ member of Congress and the latest LGBTQ addition to the chamber.
Blair, who represents Georgia’s 13th Congressional District, was sworn in on Sept. 1 after winning a special election to fill the vacancy left by the late-Congressman David Scott. Blair defeated Marcye Scott, the late congressman’s daughter, in the Aug. 25 runoff, winning 53.2 percent of the vote to Scott’s 46.8 percent.
He will serve the remainder of Scott’s term through Jan. 3, 2027. Blair is not running in the November general election for a full term.
Blair brings a progressive platform to Congress.
The 34 year-old supports Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, raising the minimum wage, and universal gun background checks. His campaign platform also included positions on LGBTQ rights, reproductive freedom, workers’ rights, climate, and gun violence.
Since joining the House, Blair has joined the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus. He is also a co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus.
Before joining the House, Blair served on the Gwinnett County Board of Education, where he became the first Black member and youngest-ever member elected to the board, as well as its first openly gay member. He was later unanimously selected as chair.
Blair also served as a fellow in President Barack Obama’s White House Initiative on Educational Excellence that focused on improving academic outcomes and expanding opportunities for minority students.
The son of Jamaican immigrants, Blair was born and raised in Georgia’s 13th Congressional District. He earned a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University, a master’s degree in policy, organization, and leadership from Stanford University, and a Doctor of Education Leadership degree from Harvard.
Blair’s campaign received endorsements from a number of organizations, including the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and progressive Democratic groups such as Future Democrats.
The Equality PAC, a political action committee dedicated to electing openly LGBTQ candidates to office, celebrated Blair’s victory and provided a statement to the Washington Blade about the historic nature of his election.
“This is a historic election for Georgia, the South, and our entire country,” Equality PAC said in an email. “Everton Blair brings a strong record of public service and a deep commitment to making government work for working families.”
The group said Blair would “fight to lower costs, expand access to quality health care, create economic opportunity, and ensure every community has a voice in Washington.”
“At the same time, Everton understands the importance of standing up for equality and defending the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ Americans and every community facing discrimination,” Equality PAC said. “His historic election as Georgia’s first openly LGBTQ Member of Congress and the first openly LGBTQ man elected from the South is a powerful reminder of how far our country has come — and how much work remains.”
Equality PAC said it was “proud to welcome Everton to the House” and looked forward to working with him.
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