Politics
Harris campaign’s LGBTQ+ engagement director on winning in November
Sam Alleman shares details of his personal and professional journey
Sam Alleman, national LGBTQ+ engagement director for the Harris-Walz 2024 campaign, talked with the Washington Blade last week for an exclusive interview about his work building and strengthening coalitions within the community in hopes of winning in November.
On the Democratic side, organizing LGBTQ voters for a presidential campaign goes back at least a decade, he said, to 2012 when Jamie Citron — currently the deputy assistant to the president and principal deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement — helped to lead these efforts on behalf of then-President Barack Obama’s reelection bid.
On Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Alleman said, it was Dominic Lowell working in close coordination with Sean Meloy, director of LGBT engagement for the Democratic National Committee, who now serves as vice president of political programs at the LGBTQ Victory Fund and Institute.
“Something that we’re very proud of as the little crew of folks who all are friends,” Alleman said, “is really building off each other’s work to continue scaling this and building out infrastructure to organize within the community.”
He added that in 2020, Reggie Greer, who led LGBTQ engagement for the Biden-Harris campaign and is now the State Department’s senior adviser to the U.S. Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons, “was dealt the very difficult hand of a global pandemic.”
He explained, despite the challenges, Greer and others managed to build “a wonderful program that’s very much virtual, put forward from folks that did this work and were online,” which has shaped efforts through to this day as the Harris-Walz campaign seeks to “really get people back in person” as they focus their push in, especially, the seven battleground states.
The goal, Alleman said, is “not losing the virtual component, but complementing it” to “get people back on board, back to the event, back to the rally, back to the business that is a presidential campaign in 2024.”
“That’s a question and a piece of this work that is not necessarily unique to the LGBTQ+ portfolio,” he said. “But then it’s been something that we’ve worked through, and I think getting that from 2020 and rebuilding and fleshing that out has been a top priority.”
“We have wonderful working relationships with Liam Kahn over at the DNC right now,” Alleman said, referring to the committee’s director of LGBTQ+ coalitions, “and then, of course, my counterpart in finance, James Conlon, we work hand in glove as a team to execute on all of this work,” together with “my deputy, oh my gosh, he just started, I’m so excited, Cesar Toledo — who is like an absolute force and really runs the day to day of the organizing program.”
For his part, Alleman’s career has taken him from organizing work as a college student for then-Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis to campaign work for Clinton to the center of the reproductive rights movement at Planned Parenthood to the White House and, now, the Harris-Walz 2024 race.
“I started on the campaign in April of 2024,” he said, working on behalf of what was then the Biden-Harris ticket, while before that, “I was at the DNC for two and a half years. So I started over there as the LGBTQ coalitions director in October of 2021 and helped to manage all their LGBTQ+ programming through the midterm elections.”
Alleman continued, “I was also the regional coalitions director for the Midwest. We affectionately called it the “snow belt,” but [it was] our Great Lakes and Northeast states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire in 2022 as well, working in that pod in tandem with all of our state programming.”
When transitioning into the new role, Alleman said “it was keenly important” for him to facilitate the continued investment in building “infrastructure for our community at the DNC” which is something the organization has shown is a priority focus.
“At the DNC, the work is very infrastructure focused,” he said, through the vehicle of coordinating with “our state parties” and “making sure that they have the resources to do this work to mobilize voters.”
Alleman added that a few dozen state Democratic parties have LGBTQ caucuses, so at the DNC he was working to “make sure that they were getting organized” in coordination “of course, with the partners, too.”
Asked to compare his experiences working in similar roles for the committee and then the presidential campaign, Alleman said “The party has a bigger responsibility, I should say, to think about the totality of the ticket” which means considering questions like “how are we getting resources to [down-ballot] races, like city council members and state reps and state senators?”
He noted “there are a lot of LGBTQ state reps and state senators with big names [who are doing] amazing work in this moment.”
By contrast, “when we’re here on the presidential [ticket] it’s a lot of the same strategies and tactics, but really homed in on our battleground states, really homed in on [the question of] ‘how are we building out capacity to talk to those voters where we know our pathway to victory is?'”
In between the Clinton campaign and the DNC was a long stint at Planned Parenthood, Alleman said, an opportunity that found him via a friend who reached out after Trump’s victory in 2016.
Packed into the Javits Center, where the Clinton team had organized what they — and most Americans — expected to be a victory party, Alleman said “everything changed from that point on” as “things that had felt so certain and so set in terms of what I was planning on doing, just sort of all changed.”
“I feel like it was that way for so many of us, both in terms of work, our personal lives, everything that happened in 2016,” he said. “And so I got a call from a friend — a good friend of mine who’s still one of my best friends, actually, I just officiated her wedding.”
The personal is political
“Everything really just sort of clicked there,” Alleman said, adding, “I worked at Planned Parenthood for five or six years, doing various jobs,” starting with the Metropolitan Washington affiliate where he worked to “plan the logistics and busses for the Women’s March” in 2017 to protest Donald Trump’s election.
Reproductive rights, he said, is “a big part of my story and why I’m in the work.”
Alleman is a Texas native. In college, he worked for the campaign of then-state senator Wendy Davis, who famously held a 13-hour-long filibuster in 2013 to block legislation that would have imposed harsher abortion restrictions.
“I’m originally from Plano,” he said. “By virtue of being from Texas, these things that feel like very big issues now have sort of always been litigated, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, in our state based off just conservative extremists,” adding, “we would call them MAGA Republicans now.”
While he was always supportive of reproductive rights, Alleman said that as a young man who was grappling with his sexuality and on his own coming out journey, he did not fully understand “the totality” of those freedoms and how they intersect with other core American values.
“A very important part of my story, and a big part of why I do this work, is my sister,” Alleman said. Just seven months after getting health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, he said his sister was “diagnosed with breast cancer at a Planned Parenthood health center via a breast exam.”
While she “is now cancer free and in remission and doing very well,” Alleman said, “I don’t know what my family would have done if we had not been able to access health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.”
“It would have bankrupted my family,” he said, “and I would have dropped out of college. I wouldn’t be sitting here today, right? Like, nothing that happened would have happened, would have been possible. She very well may not be alive, you know?”
Alleman continued, “And so, the importance of healthcare and access to affordable healthcare, and then the ability for us to have bodily autonomy and then control of our own decisions and destinies, has always just been something that has been critically important for me.”
“We talk about all the accomplishments that we’ve seen from the Biden-Harris administration,” he said, like “the Affordable Care Act and what that means, but my story is an example of the impact of that, [of] what this actually means for people to have access to health care and health insurance, what this actually means for people to be able to go to their Planned Parenthood health center and feel safe in accessing reproductive health care in its totality, from abortion to breast exams.”
He described falling “in love” with the work at Planned Parenthood as well as with the movement for reproductive freedom. “I moved up to the national office about six or seven months after starting at the affiliate on their political team,” he said, “and ended as their national political manager before moving over to the DNC.”
From there, Alleman said, “I worked at the DNC for two and a half years managing the LGBTQ coalition work” during which time “we were really proud of the Biden-Harris administration, but it always felt [like] it was so clear where we would probably be in terms of who we were running against, right, where we are today in 2024.”
So the focus remained, he said, on “what was at stake, not only in the work that we needed to get done politically to, you know, get infrastructure done, get the Inflation Reduction Act done, make sure that we help the Senate and House as best we could in the midterms, so that we can continue achieving things like the Respect for Marriage Act — but as well, to put us in as best a position as possible to take on what was the looming threat to our democracy, and what is the looming threat to our democracy, that is Donald Trump.”
Alleman added, “And we see now” from “Project 2025” what “things will look like should he win — though we have, I think, a pretty good plan to keep that from happening.”
Storytelling and organizing go hand-in-hand
“I consider myself first and foremost an organizer, and there’s nothing more powerful for an individual than knowing your story and being able to tell that and stand in its truth and what that means for you and your power,” Alleman said.
He sees this as an important part of not just his work and career but also a focus of the campaign.
“So storytelling is absolutely, to me, one of the most fundamental things we do as organizers — it’s helping people find their voice and how they want to use that to benefit their communities, to turn out voters, and really just participate in our democracy,” he said.
Storytelling is also an important element of communicating about our intersectional identities, Alleman said. “We talk about these communities sometimes in such different lanes, but in reality, we’re all creatures of narrative.”
He added, “We’re all sort of experiencing life in that more qualitative, narrative way. And those stories are where people not only are able to sort of synthesize all the things that they are, but also provide the actual emotion and the human aspect of these issues in life.”
2026 Midterm Elections
LGBTQ issues, attacks on Democrats dominate unusual RNC midterm convention
“Trumpapalooza” emphasized the gains Republicans need to maintain control of the federal government.
The Republican Party held an unusual midterm convention in Dallas last week, where President Donald Trump and other prominent GOP officials spoke in hopes of building enthusiasm and support ahead of the November elections.
The two-day gathering at the American Airlines Center was the first midterm convention of its kind for the Republican Party. Unlike a traditional presidential nominating convention, there was no official party business or nominations. Instead, the event was designed to energize Republican voters and unite the party behind its candidates and broader message heading into the midterm elections.
Trump, who spoke during both nights of the convention, repeatedly emphasized the importance of Republicans turning out to vote in the midterms — elections in which incumbent presidents and the parties in power have historically faced significant challenges.
“I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot,” the president implored attendees on the first day.
On the second night, Trump delivered another direct appeal to Republican voters.
“You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell,” he said.
Trump also urged attendees at one point to “cheat like hell” to keep Republicans in control of Congress.
The president also used the event to promote Republican candidates, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the GOP nominee in the state’s closely watched Senate race against outspoken LGBTQ rights supporter James Talarico.
“He may not dress right, he may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen, but he’s the greatest attorney general in America and he deserves to be your next senator,” Trump said when talking about Paxton.
Among those in attendance were gay Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), North Carolina Senate nominee Michael Whatley, and Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted.
Both days, there were thousands of empty seats, including almost all of the upper level, despite Trump insisting the arena was “packed” with “thousands” more waiting outside.
The convention’s message frequently emphasized personal and political attacks on Democrats, often over detailed policy discussions. Speakers repeatedly targeted Democratic candidates and progressive figures, with Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed among those mentioned throughout the event.
The first lady was notably absent from the event.
Five RNC officials described the scope of the party’s nationwide “election integrity” effort to Axios. They said strict enforcement of voting laws and preventing noncitizens from registering and voting are top priorities, even as analysts say voter fraud is rare and there is no evidence of any systemic or significant problem.
President Trump also proposed giving American adults $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate, a proposal that immediately raised questions about its legality and implementation.
The Republican base has also fractured over several key issues during the last 18 months, including the war in Iran, the handling of the release of the Epstein files, surging gas prices, and rising costs driven by tariffs. The convention was organized as an effort to rally Republicans around the party and motivate turnout despite those divisions and broader concerns heading into the midterms.
A protester carrying a Mexican flag interrupted Vice President JD Vance’s speech on Sept. 10.
“It’s about sending a message to the Democratic Party that if you send your crazies, we’re going to send you packing,” Vance said of the stakes of November’s elections.
More than 100 protesters also marched through downtown Dallas during the RNC Midterm Convention, briefly blocking traffic near the American Airlines Center.
At the convention both nights, an image that can only be described as a thirst trap of Democratic socialist commentator and creator Hassan Piker was shown on the jumbotron, garnering attention on social media.
The social media star posted a video shortly after images of him, abs and all, appeared on the jumbotron, sitting at a desk and completely dumbfounded at the thought that “my meat pic was on the jumbotron at the republican midterm convention.”
Piker has been a frequent target of conservative and Republican figures because of his criticism of the Israel-Palestine war, the war in Iran, and his broader critiques of the establishment and political institutions of both parties. Piker and El-Sayed were two of the most targeted progressive figures during the convention.
Another figure from the other side of the aisle who made an appearance was Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who in recent months has adopted more conservative positions on some issues and continued to voice strong support for Israel — an issue on which there are divisions within the Democratic Party.
“Yes, I’m a Democrat. Why am I here talking to you today? Because well, I’m a common sense Democrat,” Fetterman said in the prerecorded video that also aired on the American Airlines Center’s jumbotron. “I’m always going to stand with America. I’m always going to reject the extremes and socialism and that anti-American way of life.”
“We’ll work with President Trump to fight and defend the steel way of life right here in the steel valley,” he added.
Fetterman’s prerecorded appearance was a notable moment at an event otherwise dominated by Republican officials and speakers.
Also at the event, accusations began to spread online about alleged Grindr outages in the area of the convention — a juxtaposition with the anti-LGBTQ positions the Republican Party officially reflects and its emphasis on “family values.”
A spokesperson for Grindr told Snopes, “Grindr has not experienced recent outages. Third party sources that often make these claims rely on unreliable data such as self-reporting, while Grindr reports outages directly on its status page.” The status page showed no outages in August or September 2026.
Another person, who goes by the name of Nick Pringle online, garnered over eight million views on an Instagram video in which he claims he was about to start working “undercover as a male escort” at the convention.
In the video, he appears to be in a hotel bathroom and says he will post for the sake of exposing hypocritical Republican lawmakers who have used their power to champion what he described as hateful and divisively anti-LGBTQ legislation.
The Blade reached out to Pringle via Instagram to ask whether he ultimately carried out what he described in the video and whether he had any evidence or additional information to share about his experience at the convention, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
Politics
Ind. prosecutor declines to press charges over false Buttigieg child welfare complaint
Former Biden-Harris Cabinet member declined to comment on decision
An Indiana prosecutor has declined to file criminal charges against a woman who made a false child welfare complaint against Pete Buttigieg.
Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary in the Biden-Harris administration, was accused in June of posing a threat to his children via an anonymous call to police that resulted in him being temporarily separated from his four-year-old twins.
Marshall County Prosecuting Attorney E. Nelson Chipman Jr. opted not to pursue charges against the Alabama woman who filed the false child welfare claim against the Democratic political figure while she was in Marshall County.
According to ABC 57, the television station in South Bend that published a letter from Michigan State Police to Indiana State Police, the 50-year-old woman, identified only as TJ of Alabama, was responsible for the “brief and intrusive investigation” into Buttigieg and his family.
In the letter to Indiana State Police, Michigan State Police described TJ’s documented alcoholism and other chemical dependencies, as well as hallucinations and delusional thinking. The prosecutor also noted that TJ has self-identified as God and claims to hear voices only she can hear.
The letter from Michigan State Police to Indiana State Police states:
“Your investigation reveals that TJ, 50 years old, has a documented history of alcohol abuse and has experienced numerous treatment facilities and programs for alcoholism and other chemical dependency over the years. Further, TJ has a long history of mental illness, manifested by hallucinations and delusional thinking which includes frequently responding to voices only she hears and grandiose ideation including self-identifying as God. She frequently reports she has enjoyed an evening meal with Barack and Michele Obama.
TJ is from Alabama. During her relatively short stay here, TJ was able to generate three separate police encounters that resulted in reports, one of which resulted in TJ’s arrest for domestic battery. I note her BAC in that case was reported at .323. I also note one of the three early reports was based upon TJ’s claim of herself being a victim of sexual abuse at the age of 3 by her mother some 47 years prior. Her explanation for such a delayed report was incoherent.
As you found out, TJ returned to Alabama and took up residence in a treatment facility only to be soon evicted for a rule violation. She currently resides in a half-way house near Alabama, with very limited mental health treatment options available. I note TJ’s abusive and harassing attitude has resulted in restricting only somewhat her access to a telephone, and that she continues to have access to computers at the facility. Obviously she may still have the ability to file additional complaints. No doubt a regrettable situation.
In light of the totality of circumstances, I am unable to conclude that TJ is capable of forming the requisite intent to support a criminal conviction for this offense. Accordingly, this office will not be filing a criminal case in this matter.
Thank you, as always, for a thorough investigation and cogent report.
Stay safe.
Best regards,
E. Nelson Chipman, Jr.
Marshall County Prosecuting Attorney”
When the situation first arose in June, Buttigieg opened up about the experience via his Substack, where he described the situation as one of the worst things that has ever happened to his family — one that resulted in him being separated from his twins, Joseph August “Gus” and Penelope Rose, for their safety.
“The caller said that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk,” Buttigieg wrote in a post he titled “A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family.” “I am a reasonable man. I try to keep as calm and low-key as possible. But I cannot describe the mix of rage and sadness that I feel at the idea that someone brought our children into this.”
A Buttigieg spokesman declined to comment on the prosecutor’s decision not to pursue charges, but did tell the Washington Post in a statement: “This has been a painful and infuriating situation for the family. They are in touch with Michigan authorities, seeking answers and accountability for what happened.”
In response to the story Buttigieg shared on his Substack, Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, released the following statement:
“I know how I would feel if someone tried to come between me and my kids. This is truly bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. It takes an awful, hateful person to question someone’s fitness as a parent just because of who they are, who they love, or in Sec. Buttigieg’s case, perhaps even who he speaks out against politically. We’re thinking of Pete, Chasten, and their whole family in this moment — and we aren’t resting until all LGBTQ+ families have the kind of safety and justice every one of us deserves.”
The Washington Blade reached out to Michigan State Police after the story initially broke to ask if any disciplinary action would be imposed on the woman who made the false report, but was told to file a FOIA request to view the full report. After filing a FOIA request, the Blade was denied access to any additional information.
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.
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Comings & Goings
