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EXCLUSIVE: Annise Parker, Lori Lightfoot outline path to victory for Harris

Former Houston and Chicago mayors emphasize importance of big cities

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Lori Lightfoot and Annise Parker at the LGBTQ Victory Fund and Institute's Victory at the DNC event at theWit Hotel in Chicago on Tuesday (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker and former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke exclusively with the Washington Blade last week in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention.

Among other topics, they discussed their impressions of the convention, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s path to victory in November, the Democratic campaign’s efforts to mobilize voters in key battleground states, the candidates’ proven track records of fighting for LGBTQ rights, and the ways in which their administration would build on this work of expanding freedoms and protections for the community.

This year’s DNC was the last Parker will attend as president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, which works to elect LGBTQ candidates to public office, and the LGBTQ Victory Institute, which coordinates placement of LGBTQ federal employees and administers training and networking events.

“It’s not my first convention, but I have to say it is the most exciting and energetic convention,” she said. “There’s an energy around Kamala — the surprise, the sense of change and possibility that I’m not used to, and it feels really great.”

Prior to President Joe Biden’s announcement on July 21 that he would step aside to clear the path for Harris’s nomination, Parker said that “respectfully, some of us were slogging through” because “we knew he was the better candidate than Donald Trump, and we were going to support him because of that reason.”

“Now we’re excited because we have somebody new and different,” she said, “a shift in personality and also a shift in energy, and that works its way through the campaign.”

Lightfoot agreed that “there is a tremendous amount of energy and excitement,” but hedged that “if that doesn’t translate to butts at the polls, it doesn’t matter.”

“So, everywhere I’m going and talking to folks, it’s like, this is great; step one, get the base reunified, because it was very fractured, I think, even a month ago,” she said. “The level of excitement, consolidating the votes for the nomination, positive press, the amount of money that’s being raised — that’s all good stuff, but it’s got to have a significant ground game, because people need to show up.”

Lightfoot noted that folks from Chicago and elsewhere in Illinois, a deep blue city in a largely blue state, are traveling to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota because “no one wins in November unless they win the Midwest, so we’re reaching out to our friends, our neighbors, and saying, ‘you got to plug in; you got to pay attention, educate yourself and get to the polls.'”

Parker echoed those remarks. “Our job is to bring in those who are not the regular Democratic rank and file,” she said, “the independents, and even disaffected Republicans, and there are a lot of those out there.”

The former mayors agreed that Trump’s narrow electoral college win in 2016 was made possible in part by the decision of many voters to stay home because they believed Hillary Clinton’s victory was not just likely — but certain.

The 2024 presidential election will be very close. Harris’s emergence as the nominee has put some states in play for the Democrats that were out of reach when Biden was leading the ticket, but even as she pulls ahead, recent polls in key battlegrounds show the candidates are in a near-dead heat.

In this race, Parker is counting on the “push-up” effect. Down-ballot candidates can expect a boost from Harris, she said, but likewise “we’re going to turn people out to vote for their school board candidates,” or in city council and statehouse races “and they’re going to vote at the top of the ticket as well.”

Lightfoot said that part of the task before the Harris-Walz campaign will be to engage a “broad cross section of Americans who, frankly, are still disengaged, disenchanted, angry, frustrated, scared” and otherwise struggling as they recover from the “traumatic shocks” of COVID.

The pandemic worsened preexisting skepticism toward the government, she said, so the candidates must “talk about why they are the solution to a lot of the concerns that the average voter has” particularly by “speaking to those incredibly important swing voters in the seven or eight states that are in play.”

First they must win

As Democrats, Lightfoot said, “we have a great propensity, sometimes,” of “trying to make the perfect be the enemy of the good” but “we need to win first, right?”

“This is one of those Bill Clinton-Al Gore moments back in the ’90s,” she said. “It’s like, I get it, I get it, but let me get there first, let me win, and then we can accomplish great things together.”

Parker and Lightfoot, both out lesbians, agreed that LGBTQ issues are not necessarily what Harris and Walz need to be talking about on the campaign trail with little more than two months until the election.

Rather, the focus must be on “the issues [that are] top of mind for the American voter,” Parker said, because the candidates “need to be talking to that great middle America out there that needs to show up to vote.”

Of course, she and Lightfoot said, it is important for LGBTQ folks, especially those who have a seat at the table, to make sure the community’s policy agenda is understood by the candidates, and likewise for the campaign to remind voters of Harris and Walz’s pro-LGBTQ backgrounds — even if, as Parker said, “that’s not how she’s going to win this election, talking about that.”

With respect to their commitments to advancing LGBTQ rights, the former mayors repeatedly stressed that the vice president and the governor have nothing to prove. “They don’t have to promise anything,” Parker said. “They’ve already done it.”

“We are working with folks who have a proven track record of understanding the importance of our community,” Lightfoot said. “They’ve hired, they’ve appointed, they get it.”

Expanding freedoms and protections for LGBTQ people has been a through line of Harris’s career in public service. For example, well before it would have been politically advantageous, she fought for same-sex marriage when serving as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California, defying legal restrictions to perform some of the country’s first gay and lesbian weddings.

Additionally, the past four years have cemented the Biden-Harris administration’s legacy as the most pro-LGBTQ presidency in American history, in no small part thanks to the work of the vice president.

And for his part, practically from the moment he was chosen as Harris’s running mate, Walz has been attacked by Trump and his conservative allies over his pro-trans record as governor. Before he entered public life, Walz was a high school teacher and football coach who served as faculty adviser to the student-led gay-straight alliance club in the 1990s, an anecdote that was shared by Harris when she appeared with him for the first time on stage at a rally on Aug. 6.

The campaign has also made outreach to and engagement with LGBTQ constituents a major priority. During an Aug. 21 meeting of the LGBTQ Caucus at the DNC, Harris for President National LGBTQ+ Engagement Director Sam Alleman outlined plans for additional activity and investment in Out for Harris, the LGBTQ national organizing push.

Putting aside the looming election, when asked whether there are specific LGBTQ policies she would like to see in a Harris-Walz administration, Parker said those conversations will be possible in earnest only if Democrats are able to win not just the White House but also flip control of the House and hold onto their majority in the Senate.

Then, she said, “we’re going to want to make sure” that LGBTQ appointees are picked to serve in key positions throughout the federal government, noting that historic numbers — 15 percent — were nominated and confirmed under the Biden-Harris administration.

“I expect that to continue,” Parker said.

Congress will play a critically important role in effectuating the Harris-Walz agenda, including on LGBTQ issues, she said, but policy is implemented “in the departments and in the bowels of government” which is why representation in these spaces matters, too.

The Democratic candidates’ support for LGBTQ rights is of a piece with the positive and inclusive spirit of their bid for the White House, which stands in stark contrast with the approach seen from their opponents.

“There is a joy, truly, about Kamala Harris’s campaign,” Parker said, and while it is unclear whether and to what extent the good vibes will be sustained until Election Day, “you get the sense that she’s really, emotionally, she’s all in it.”

Lightfoot agreed. “What happened within the next 24 hours,” after Biden endorsed his vice president to run in his stead, “no one could have predicted it. No one could have scripted it. It was this organic movement and coalescing around her with really genuine enthusiasm.”

The former Chicago mayor also praised Harris’s digital team. “Their social media game is off the charts,” she said. “They are hitting home runs every single day,” maintaining the vice president’s positive message while trolling Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio.

Meanwhile, as he has done in previous campaigns, Trump “hurls insults and slurs,” deploying a strategy of “constant attack — disrespecting, vilifying people on the other side,” Parker said. “It’s negative, negative, negative.”

Harris “doesn’t have to do that,” she said. Moreover, “people don’t want her to do that.”

Lightfoot agreed. “It would be easy” for the vice president “to roll in the mud with with Trump, and my money’s on her, but she hasn’t done that — what she’s done is addressed the criticism to some extent, but then immediately pivoted to a more positive, forward thinking message.”

The approach is “clearly throwing off the Trump world,” Lightfoot said. “I love it. I think it’s exactly what people want to hear. They don’t want to see, you know, WWE in their presidential candidates.”

Voters “want somebody who is strong, who is ready and up for the task,” but — at least just as importantly — they want a leader sho is “always making sure that they are tuning in with those people who work hard every day,” she said.

Parker said Harris made “a great choice” picking Walz as her running mate, adding,” I’ve met him before, and he’s the real deal.”

Nodding in agreement, Lightfoot said, “I grew up in one of those small towns where football was everything” and “it’s unimaginable, unimaginable, that the football coach” would have publicly embraced the high school’s LGBTQ students as Walz did, including by chairing the GSA club.

Tapping into the power of cities and mayors

Conservatives are fond of characterizing Democrats from progressive coastal cities, especially those from San Francisco, as out of touch elitists whose values do not align with those held by the overwhelming majority of American voters.

Nancy Pelosi, the longtime Democratic leader whose congressional district includes most of the city, balked when Vance sought to smear not only Harris but also Walz, her former House colleague, as a “San Francisco-style liberal,” a label that the former speaker has co-opted for herself and worn as a badge of honor.

Not only was the governor beloved by colleagues when he represented Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, but he was also widely seen as a moderate, she said. “I can say this with some authority: He’s not on the left,” Pelosi told NBC News. “He was right down the middle, right down the middle in his values and leverage in the debate in the Congress.” (As it happens, Walz had never set foot in San Francisco before last month.)

Parker and Lightfoot agreed the matter strikes at an issue that is deeper than misleading political rhetoric targeting the 2024 Democratic candidates.

“Americans live in the big cities across the country,” the former Houston mayor said. “We are a powerful voting bloc, but we’re also where people’s lives happen. Trump has built this mythology — there’s tires burning in the streets, barricades and riots everywhere, there’s armed camps.”

“He’s been attacking cities,” she said, and we need to reclaim them.

Together, America’s largest metropolises are “like 80 percent of the GDP,” Lightfoot added. “So, why are you attacking the economic engine of our country? Why are you attacking the places where innovation happens? Of all the good things that come in America, a huge percentage of that comes from big cities.”

Not only has Trump characterized D.C. as a crime-ridden hellscape, but he has also pledged to “take over” the district — potentially exercising the authority he would have, if elected, to put the police force under his control and arrogate powers that are exercised by the D.C. Council and the mayor.

“I think Mayor [Muriel] Bowser has done a yeoman job under difficult circumstances where she doesn’t get to make her own calls, because she’s got to worry about folks in the federal government, and particularly in Congress, second guessing everything that the good citizens of D.C. do,” said Lightfoot, who noted that Bowser is a close personal friend.

Cities “are the heartbeat of this country, and I think a leader who says, ‘I want to bring everybody together, I want to be the leader of the free world,’ — well, you got to start with being a leader of cities and recognizing our importance on every single issue domestically,” she said.

Parker and Lightfoot agreed that the Harris-Walz campaign would be well served in the election by reclaiming cities.

“All things local,” Lightfoot said. The chief executives of municipalities are some of “the best surrogates to get the message out, particularly mayors of the towns like those that we represented.”

“If the [Harris-Walz] campaign is smart, and it’s getting there, it’s going to galvanize mayors all across the country to be those surrogates,” she said. “Mayors like me who governed under Trump, governed under Biden and Harris, and [can speak to] the sea change and the difference in how cities in particular were helped and recognized and respected in a way that we didn’t see in the previous four years in the previous administration.”

Parker agreed. “Mayors can talk about their cities. Mayors are the public face and the voice of their cities.”

This does not mean one should avoid talking about the challenges facing places like D.C. or Chicago, but there must be an understanding that “cities have to be strong and healthy, or America’s not strong and healthy,” she said.

Next up for Victory

Parker announced her planned departure from Victory at the beginning of February, though she will continue leading the organizations past the election and through the end of 2024 or “until I find my successor.”

She told the Blade that “the goal” is to choose a new president and CEO in September.

“I’m sure that they’re going to find somebody amazing to step in,” Parker said, but in the meantime, “I’m going to leave it in good shape, I can tell you that.”

Over Parker’s six-year tenure, annual budgets were doubled, contributions to candidates served by the Victory Fund were increased fourfold, and the Victory Institute’s David Mixner Political Appointments Program was relaunched to advocate for LGBTQ representation in government.

Strikingly, during this time the number of LGBTQ officials served by Victory swelled from 450 to more than 1,300. “I would love to take credit for that, but some of it is truly the Trump effect,” she said. “The more we are attacked as a community, the more people want to stand up and say, ‘no, I’m not going to put up with this.'”

“The work of Victory has continued for more than 30 years,” Parker said. “The work is still there, it’s still important, representation still matters.”

“We need to elect tens of thousands more [LGBTQ] people to achieve parity,” she said, because even though the number of out elected officials has more than doubled in six years, 1,300 is only 0.25 percent of the “hundreds of thousands of open positions.”

Lightfoot added, “her leadership has been phenomenal. Phenomenal. I mean, really, the organization is stronger now than when she found it. It’s going to be stronger when she leaves it. The amount of things that we’ve been able to accomplish — the programmatic gains, the financial gains, these would not have happened without Mayor Parker.”

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Congress

Top Congressional Democrats reintroduce Equality Act on Trump’s 100th day in office

Legislation would codify federal LGBTQ-inclusive non-discrimination protections

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Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and Democratic members reintroduce the Equality Act, April 29 2025 (Washington Blade photo by Christopher Kane)

In a unified display of support for LGBTQ rights on President Donald Trump’s 100th day in office, congressional Democrats, including leadership from the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, reintroduced the Equality Act on Tuesday.

The legislation, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, codifying these protections into federal law in areas from jury service to housing and employment, faces an unlikely path to passage amid Republican control of both chambers of Congress along with the White House.

Speaking at a press conference on the grass across the drive from the Senate steps were Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.), U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), who is the first out LGBTQ U.S. Senator, U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (Calif.), who is gay and chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (N.H.), who is gay and is running for the U.S. Senate, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.).

Also in attendance were U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (Del.), who is the first transgender member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Dina Titus (Nev.), U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (Ill.), and representatives from LGBTQ advocacy groups including the Human Rights Campaign and Advocates 4 Trans Equality.

Responding to a question from the Washington Blade on the decision to reintroduce the bill as Trump marks the hundredth day of his second term, Takano said, “I don’t know that there was a conscious decision,” but “it’s a beautiful day to stand up for equality. And, you know, I think the president is clearly hitting a wall that Americans are saying, many Americans are saying, ‘we didn’t vote for this.'”

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Sunday showed Trump’s approval rating in decline amid signs of major opposition to his agenda.

“Many Americans never voted for this, but many Americans, I mean, it’s a great day to remind them what is in the core of what is the right side of history, a more perfect union. This is the march for a more perfect union. That’s what most Americans believe in. And it’s a great day on this 100th day to remind our administration what the right side of history is.”

Merkley, when asked about the prospect of getting enough Republicans on board with the Equality Act to pass the measure, noted that, “If you can be against discrimination in employment, you can be against discrimination in financial contracts, you can be against discrimination in mortgages, in jury duty, you can be against discrimination in public accommodations and housing, and so we’re going to continue to remind our colleagues that discrimination is wrong.”

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which was sponsored by Merkley, was passed by the Senate in 2013 but languished in the House. The bill was ultimately broadened to become the Equality Act.

“As Speaker Nancy Pelosi has always taught me,” Takano added, “public sentiment is everything. Now is the moment to bring greater understanding and greater momentum, because, really, the Congress is a reflection of the people.”

“While we’re in a different place right this minute” compared to 2019 and 2021 when the Equality Act was passed by the House, Pelosi said she believes “there is an opportunity for corporate America to weigh in” and lobby the Senate to convince members of the need to enshrine federal anti-discrimination protections into law “so that people can fully participate.”

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Politics

George Santos sentenced to 87 months in prison for fraud case

Judge: ‘You got elected with your words, most of which were lies.’

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Former U.S. Rep. George Santos (Washington Blade photo by Christopher Kane)

Disgraced former Republican congressman George Santos was sentenced to 87 months in prison on Friday, after pleading guilty last year to federal charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. 

“Mr. Santos, words have consequences,” said Judge Joanna Seybert of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. “You got elected with your words, most of which were lies.”

The first openly gay GOP member of Congress, Santos became a laughing stock after revelations came to light about his extensive history of fabricating and exaggerating details about his life and career.

His colleagues voted in December 2023 to expel him from Congress. An investigation by the U.S. House Ethics Committee found that Santos had used pilfered campaign funds for cosmetic procedures, designer fashion, and OnlyFans.

Federal prosecutors, however, found evidence that “Mr. Santos stole from donors, used his campaign account for personal purchases, inflated his fund-raising numbers, lied about his wealth on congressional documents and committed unemployment fraud,” per the New York Times.

The former congressman told the paper this week that he would not ask for a pardon. Despite Santos’s loyalty to President Donald Trump, the president has made no indication that he would intervene in his legal troubles.

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Congress

Democratic lawmakers travel to El Salvador, demand information about gay Venezuelan asylum seeker

Congressman Robert Garcia led delegation

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Andry Hernández Romero (photo credit: Immigrant Defenders Law Center)

California Congressman Robert Garcia on Tuesday said the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador has agreed to ask the Salvadoran government about the well-being of a gay asylum seeker from Venezuela who remains incarcerated in the Central American country.

The Trump-Vance administration last month “forcibly removed” Andry Hernández Romero, a stylist who asked for asylum because of persecution he suffered because of his sexual orientation and political beliefs, and other Venezuelans from the U.S. and sent them to El Salvador.

The White House on Feb. 20 designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as an “international terrorist organization.” President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.”

Garcia told the Washington Blade that he and three other lawmakers — U.S. Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), and Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) — met with U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador William Duncan and embassy staffers in San Salvador, the Salvadoran capital.

“His lawyers haven’t heard from him since he was abducted during his asylum process,” said Garcia.

The gay California Democrat noted the embassy agreed to ask the Salvadoran government to “see how he (Hernández) is doing and to make sure he’s alive.”

“That’s important,” said Garcia. “They’ve agreed to that … we’re hopeful that we get some word, and that will be very comforting to his family and of course to his legal team.”

The U.S. Embassy in El Salvador in 2023. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Embassy of El Salvador’s Facebook page)

Garcia, Frost, Dexter, and Ansari traveled to El Salvador days after House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) denied their request to use committee funds for their trip.

“We went anyways,” said Garcia. “We’re not going to be intimidated by that.”

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on April 14 met with Trump at the White House. U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) three days later sat down with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the Trump-Vance administration wrongfully deported to El Salvador on March 15.

Abrego was sent to the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT. The Trump-Vance administration continues to defy a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ordered it to “facilitate” Abrego’s return to the U.S.

Garcia, Frost, Dexter, and Ansari in a letter they sent a letter to Duncan and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday demanded “access to” Hernández, who they note “may be imprisoned at” CECOT. A State Department spokesperson referred the Blade to the Salvadoran government in response to questions about “detainees” in the country.

Garcia said the majority of those in CECOT who the White House deported to El Salvador do not have criminal records.

“They can say what they want, but if they’re not presenting evidence, if a judge isn’t sending people, and these people have their due process, I just don’t understand how we have a country without due process,” he told the Blade. “It’s just the bedrock of our democracy.”

President Donald Trump greets Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele at the White House on April 14, 2025. (Public domain photo)

Garcia said he and Frost, Dexter, and Ansari spoke with embassy staff, Salvadoran journalists and human rights activists and “anyone else who would listen” about Hernández. The California Democrat noted he and his colleagues also highlighted Abrego’s case.

“He (Hernández) was accepted for his asylum claim,” said Garcia. “He (Hernández) signed up for the asylum process on an app that we created for this very purpose, and then you get snatched up and taken to a foreign prison. It is unacceptable and inhumane and cruel and so it’s important that we elevate his story and his case.”

The Blade asked Garcia why the Trump-Vance administration is deporting people to El Salvador without due process.

“I honestly believe that he (Trump) is a master of dehumanizing people, and he wants to continue his horrendous campaign to dehumanize migrants and scare the American public and lie to the American public,” said Garcia.

The State Department spokesperson in response to the Blade’s request for comment referenced spokesperson Tammy Bruce’s comments about Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador.

“These Congressional representatives would be better off focused on their own districts,” said the spokesperson. “Instead, they are concerned about non-U.S. citizens.”

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