National
Barney, speaking frankly
Retiring congressman on state of LGBT movement, coming out in 1987 and his future plans
Retiring Rep. Barney Frank spoke to the Blade this week about a wide range of topics, including the state of the LGBT movement and his future plans. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who announced last week that he won’t run for re-election next year, said the LGBT community has seen an “enormous” amount of progress during his more than 30 years in Congress and would achieve close to full equality in 12 years.
“I think we are on the verge of a very complete victory within a dozen years or so,” he told the Washington Blade in an interview in his office on Tuesday.
“That is, I think the country is supportive. It gets better generationally,” he said. “I don’t think people will be allowed to marry in every state, unfortunately, 10 years from now. I think people in those states where a majority of people live will be allowed to marry and will have full federal rights.”
Frank said he became the first member of Congress to voluntarily disclose he was gay in 1987, six years after taking office in 1981, after he determined staying in the closet was too constraining on his personal life.
“I got there and I thought, OK, well I can be privately out but publicly closeted,” he said. “But it didn’t work. I found it very hard to have a satisfying, healthy emotional and physical life.”
Frank said that during the years he withheld disclosing his sexual orientation, both as a congressman and a member of the Massachusetts State Legislature, he promised himself that he would never hold back on his strong political support for LGBT rights in an effort to conceal his status as a gay person.
“I remember my thought process was, well I can’t be honest about being gay. I wouldn’t win. But it would be despicable for me as a gay man to be any less than fully supportive,” he said.
In a wide-ranging discussion of his views on how the LGBT movement should push for civil rights legislation in Congress and through the states, Frank expressed in the blunt way he has been known to do that LGBT activists should use the most effective means of moving their agenda, even if that sometimes means making compromises.
He described as “political suicide” the call by some LGBT activists and bloggers for withholding support for President Barack Obama on grounds that Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress didn’t push harder for more LGBT legislative advances, including the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, which remains stalled in Congress.
Frank said he has seen important advances in the support for transgender rights in Congress and several states, including Massachusetts, which just passed a transgender non-discrimination bill that includes protections in employment, housing, credit and adds transgender protections to the state’s hate crimes law.
But Frank noted that the bill passed after transgender leaders and their supporters in the legislature agreed to a compromise that eliminated public accommodations protections from the bill. Lawmakers supportive of the bill said they would add public accommodations protections to the law as soon they can line up the votes in the legislature needed to do so.
Frank dismissed as “ridiculous” the attacks by some LGBT activists who called the compromise unacceptable and an outrage against the transgender community.
“That is an example of their political stupidity,” he said, noting that the compromise bill provides employment and housing protections that otherwise would not have passed if advocates held out for an all-or-nothing bill.
Frank described as “reasonable” a proposal by LGBT advocates that President Obama issue an executive order requiring companies that receive federal contracts in the defense and other industries to provide non-discrimination protections for their LGBT employees.
“I think that’s a reasonable thing to keep pushing for,” he said. “There are limits to what you can do. You don’t want the president to overreach from what could be required in legislation. I think that’s worth pushing for if it’s carefully done.”
A transcript of the Blade’s interview with Rep. Frank follows. The interview was conducted on Dec. 6, 2011, in Frank’s Capitol Hill office.
Washington Blade: To what degree have you seen support for LGBT equality increase in the U.S. Congress since you took office as a congressman in 1981?
Rep. Barney Frank: Oh, enormously. When I first got here, the first vote we had was in 1981 when the House – as it was able to do then by a one-house vote – overturned the D.C. Council’s repeal of the [city’s] sodomy law. It was a heavy vote against us. And we’ve just made very great progress since then. It’s to the point where now — and it’s unfortunate that it’s gotten very partisan. The country has gotten much better in its view on LGBT rights. The Democrats have gotten better — equal to or ahead of the country. But the Republicans have gotten much worse. So it’s now one of the major partisan issues. It’s unfortunate how terrible the Republicans have become. You saw that in ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ for instance, in the House. But in general the expectation is the Democrats in the House will be supportive on most issues, and I think that reflects the country.
Blade: What prompted you to come out as gay in 1987?
Frank: First, my personal life. I’ve known I’ve been gay since I was 13. I lived a very repressed life until then. And then, because I had emotional and physical needs that needed an outlet, I got here and I thought, OK, well I can be privately out but publicly closeted. But it didn’t work. I just found it very hard to have a satisfying, healthy emotional and physical life. So it was primarily my personal life. But it was also the secondary factor that I thought it would be helpful in fighting prejudice. One of the things I realized about talking a lot about gay rights – and increasingly by then people knew I was gay. I wasn’t out publicly. I realized they did not understand what it was like, what we went through, what the pain was. But that’s because they didn’t know anybody. It’s hard to sympathize with people when you don’t know who they are. You don’t see what it is.
Blade: Unlike other gay public officials who were in the closet, you didn’t seem to hold back in your public support for gay rights.
Frank: It was quite the opposite. I decided to run for office in 1972 – to run for the state legislature in Massachusetts. And I remember my thought process was, well I can’t be honest about being gay. I wouldn’t win. But it would be despicable for me as a gay man to be any less than fully supportive … There were then two gay groups, a men’s group and a women’s group. And they wrote to everybody who was running for the state legislature in 1972. It was just a couple of years after Stonewall. And for the first time you had organized gay political activity. And they said, ‘Would you introduce legislation to provide legal equality for gay people, which was the term we used then. And I said yes. I was the only one who said yes. So that’s how I became the prime sponsor of the legislation. I was the only one. But I was glad to take on the role. So, yeah, I clearly decided I would not in any way retreat. And I remember the first time I testified on gay rights. I was 32, unmarried. And I thought, well, what are they going to think? And my answer was, oh, the hell with what they think. I was prepared to sacrifice enough not to come out. But I was not prepared to degrade myself by pretending to be anything less than supportive of who I was.
Blade: When you came out in Congress did you sense you were being held back from advancing because of a so-called glass ceiling due to your sexual orientation?
Frank: I think there was one at first. I think, now, yes and no. Certainly it didn’t interfere with my being the chair of a very powerful committee and being, frankly, because of the circumstances, one of the major leaders. In fact I said that on the floor. I remember saying when we were talking about the hate crimes bill, ‘I’m a big shot now but I used to be 15 and I remember what it was like.’ … If I were running for a leadership position it might be a problem in the House. Some of the Democrats come from the few areas left where they’re afraid. But now we have almost all the Democrats on board. We have a handful that aren’t. So no. And the other – I assumed it would have been a bar to [running for] the Senate. But in 2004, when we thought John Kerry might get elected president, we had a mock election for the Senate in Massachusetts. Five of us were running – Congressman Markey, Congressman Lynch, myself, then Congressman Meehan and Martha Coakley, now the attorney general. And we were running and I’ve had people who worked in the other camps say I would have won that race. So if Kerry had been elected president I believe I would have been elected to the Senate in 2004. So I mean other than the presidency and the vice presidency I think there’s probably not one.
Blade: Where does the LGBT movement stand now in its ability to advance legislation?
Frank: We’ve gotten better. I think there’s two good examples of great victories. They didn’t involve demonstrations, they didn’t involve marches. They involved some discretion and some compromising. Deferring to [New York Governor] Andrew Cuomo’s leadership politically in the battle for [same-sex] marriage in New York, and he told them how to do it. And then accepting the exclusion of public accommodations from the trans [non-discrimination bill, which passed in November 2011] in Massachusetts.
Blade: The trans bill in Massachusetts became an issue to some—
Frank: An issue to whom?
Blade: Some of the more outspoken trans activists, who say they are outraged because it includes employment, housing and other protections but not public accommodations protections.
Frank: No, I would say ridiculous trans activists who are outraged, who would prefer there be no rights for employment than this. That is an example of their political stupidity. They may be very bright about other things. I don’t see how anybody can see that as a rational argument right now, nor, by the way, do I think it represents five percent of our community. I don’t even think it represents a majority of the transgender people. How can it possibly be – and by the way, these people don’t know history, because I will tell you that Martin Luther King and the other civil rights leaders would not for a second have hesitated to accept that deal. They were constantly moving toward making things better but those are both examples, I think, of the political maturity of our community – of knowing how to go about it. And I think as a result we are on the verge – well, by the way, we did the same thing with ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ We didn’t abolish ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ We didn’t ban statutorily discrimination against us in the military. We banned the requirement that we discriminate. And there was some, ‘Oh, gee, how do you know they maybe will not do it fairly?’ I think we are on the verge of a very complete victory within a dozen years or so. That is, I think the country is supportive. It gets better generationally. I don’t think people will be allowed to marry in every state, unfortunately, 10 years from now. I think people in those states where a majority of people live will be allowed to marry and will have full federal rights.
Blade: Are you concerned about the provision of DOMA – if it’s repealed – that says the states don’t have to recognize same-sex marriages from other states –
Frank: That doesn’t mean anything. I’ve said this all along. That doesn’t mean anything at all. The court will disregard that. Quite frankly people don’t understand that. That’s a matter of interpreting the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution. The Supreme Court will tell Congress, ‘Mind your own business.’ It has nothing to do with you. That is totally meaningless, that section. It doesn’t mean a thing. Congress cannot affect by statute a constitutional interpretation. By the way, the Constitution always was that states did not have to recognize that. When the Supreme Court threw out the law against inter marriage racially it wasn’t based on one state having to recognize another state’s marriage. The assumption was in 1967 that Virginia, which is where the case was brought, didn’t have to recognize a marriage in Europe. So everybody agreed – an African American and a white person can get married in New York and Virginia can disregard it. It was thrown out on constitutional segregation grounds. So in the first place, that’s been the Constitution anyway. Secondly, if it was, Congress would have nothing to do with it. It’s an entirely meaningless provision.
Blade: Some, like Hillary Clinton when she ran for president in 2008, said her husband signed DOMA because it would act as a safeguard against passing a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
Frank: That’s nonsense. Her husband signed it because he was afraid politically about what would happen if he didn’t sign it. It has nothing to do with a constitutional amendment. He signed it because it was politically necessary to sign it. And I understood that. The Republicans threw it on his lap three months before the election. [Liberal, gay-supportive Senator] Paul Wellstone [D-Minn.] voted for it. He was up for re-election that year and he was afraid of it. It had nothing to do with stopping a constitutional amendment. And the fact is it does not mean anything. And no good lawyer will tell you it has any meaning whatsoever. This is a matter of the Constitution. It would be like if Congress passed a law saying the 14th Amendment doesn’t mean this or that. No, it’s none of our business what it means or not. We can decide for ourselves what it means, and I can govern my vote. But whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause compels marriage recognition or not is entirely up to the Supreme Court. And clearly up until now they have said it doesn’t.
Blade: Do you have any predictions of what the Supreme Court might do if the Proposition 8 case gets there?
Frank: I think that’s not a good case. I think the better case is Mary Bonauto’s case [the attorney with the LGBT litigation group in Boston, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, which is challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, in court on behalf of a same-sex couple.]
Blade: In your 1992 book, “Speaking Frankly: What’s Wrong with the Democrats and How to Fix It,” you said some liberal Democrats unnecessarily alienated voters by being reluctant to “demonstrate that liberals are patriotic supporters of the free-enterprise system who think that hard work should be rewarded and violent criminals severely punished.” Do some of these things still apply today and do they have any relevance to the gay movement?
Frank: Yes, I still believe it’s a mistake, for example, to insist that every Democrat be for gun control. That’s a great loser for us in most of the country. I’ll vote for gun control. But it’s a great loser. I also believe it has to do with – I’ll go back to marriage in New York and the non-discrimination bill in Massachusetts. Yeah, it’s very, very relevant still. You have to be smart about it, that you engage in political activity to advance your goals, not to feel morally superior.
Blade: Everybody’s talking about the presidential election. Are the Republican presidential candidates as horrible as a lot of gay activists are saying they are on LGBT issues?
Frank: Yes – they are. Romney is a total faker, having said he was going to be more pro-gay rights than Ted Kennedy and he’s moved against us on everything, not just on marriage. And Gingrich was the leader of homophobic stuff when he was here. Gingrich was the man who put the Defense of Marriage Act on the agenda in 1996 when he was the Speaker. I don’t know where Huntsman is, but he is irrelevant. It’s the whole Republican Party. On ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ you saw the overwhelming majority of Republicans vote against the defense bill in the House because it included the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ They ordinarily all vote for the defense bill. We did get a couple of votes in the Senate. [Senator] Susan Collins’ [R-Maine] support was very important in that. But in general the Republicans have become a 90 plus percent anti-gay party. By the way, [President George W.] Bush didn’t undo stuff. He wouldn’t do anything good. But I’m not at all confident that a Republican president won’t reinstate ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’
Blade: Is there a chance that the Congress would block that, even if there’s a Republican-controlled House?
Frank: Well Congress couldn’t reinstate it because they would never get it through the Senate and the president would veto it. But if the Republicans win the presidency they don’t need the Congress. The president could reinstate it by executive order.
Blade: Is it completely settled now that every gay civil rights bill will include gender identity and expression protections or it won’t be introduced, whether it would be ENDA or another bill?
Frank: I think it’s unlikely that it wouldn’t but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will pass. I think you’ll see transgender protections included. We’ve made progress on transgender. But my view is the same in that we still have the problem with the situation where people get naked together. But short of that, I think the next time we have a Democratic House, Senate and president – remember, we can only pass pro-LGBT legislation when we have a Democratic House, Senate and president. We’ve only had that twice since Jimmy Carter left office—two years under Bill Clinton and two years under Barack Obama. That’s the exception, not the norm. So the next time we get a Democratic House, Senate and president we’ll be able to pass a transgender-inclusive ENDA. But like the Massachusetts law, probably not allowing full and unrestricted access to locker and shower rooms
Blade: We get emails and calls from some activists saying the Democrats should have been held to a higher standard, that they should have done more on LGBT legislation during the period that they did have the House and Senate and the presidency under Obama.
Frank: Which was?
Blade: Among other things, ENDA.
Frank: We had a transgender inclusive hate crimes bill and a repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ I think that’s pretty good. I wish we had done ENDA. But part of the problem was the community refused to accept the kind of compromise that Massachusetts did. If we had that – one of the things the [House] leadership was worried about was … what are we going to pass the bill for if some of the people who are going to be the beneficiaries are attacking us? So what’s the point of that? People are holding us to a higher standard? Whose standard? Where did you become the standard setter? What we got, as I said, was the president coming out against DOMA and very importantly elevating the level of scrutiny that’s needed for ending discrimination. And we got hate crimes through and we got ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ repealed. I think that’s pretty good.
Blade: Many in the community agree with that assessment.
Frank: In general, the people who are complaining — well, what’s their remedy? They’re complaining, what do they want, sympathy? If they’re saying they wish we had more, I do too. Are they saying that’s a reason not to be supporting Barack Obama? That’s political suicide. The next president will probably appoint another Supreme Court justice or two. I don’t see how people can say, oh, we care about the lawsuit for Prop 8, we care about the DOMA lawsuit but let’s make sure that a homophobe will appoint the next Supreme Court justice.
Blade: It’s hard to argue with that.
Frank: Well you raised it.
Blade: Some bloggers and activists have raised it.
Frank: And the answer is that it is suicidal and dumb and self-defeating. Plus, you focus much too much on this. They are a very small percentage of our community and I think that’s a tendency, whether you’re in the media or whether they blog. That is a very small percentage of the community. Do you think most transgender people – Diego would know better than you or I – What do most transgender people in Massachusetts think about the bill?
Diego Sanchez [Frank’s legislative assistant and longtime transgender advocate]: They support it.
Frank: OK.
Blade: A similar situation occurred this year in Maryland when most transgender leaders, including veteran transgender activist Dana Beyer, agreed to a compromise transgender non-discrimination bill that didn’t include public accommodations protections. Beyer was denounced by other trans activists for accepting the compromise.
Frank: Stop paying so much attention to a handful of people with terrible political judgment who are acting out emotionally. They’re only important to you, to be honest. They’re not important me. They’re not important to anyone in the Maryland Legislature.
Blade: What do you think about the possibility of an executive order by President Obama to require defense contractors or any private companies getting government contracts to have a non-discrimination policy for their LGBT employees?
Frank: I think that’s a reasonable thing to keep pushing for. There are limits to what you can do. You don’t want the president to overreach from what could be required in legislation. I think that’s worth pushing for if it’s carefully done.
Blade: To issue that executive order?
Frank: For contractors, yeah, using race as a model. The problem we do have is this. Racial discrimination is embodied in the Constitution and we’re not. So there is more power where race is concerned.
Blade: In terms of your own plans, can you say a little about what you plan to do when you leave Congress?
Frank: I’m going to teach, lecture for money, and write.
Blade: And did you say you don’t plan to become a lobbyist?
Frank: Oh, absolutely not. Now I will still be a supporter and an advocate, but I won’t lobby for money. I will continue to work on LGBT issues but not as a lobbyist for money.
Blade: Would you consider going on the board of one of the prominent national gay groups?
Frank: No, I don’t want to go to any more meetings and vote any more. I’ll do what I can do but I don’t want to go on a board. I’m just looking for freedom from that kind of responsibility. But I will continue to be an advocate and strategist.
Blade: Will you consider testifying on LGBT issues before –
Frank: Remember that for the year 2013 I will be under an ethics one-year pause. But I will be picking up again in 2014.
Blade: That’s an ethics requirement on the Hill?
Frank: One year – I can’t talk to my colleagues for a year about business.
Blade: We just saw a photo of you with your partner James Ready at a White House holiday party this week. You’ve been taking your partner to functions for quite a while. Has that caused any complications or negative political repercussions?
Frank: I read a book that was very important by a man named Charles Hamilton. It was a biography of Adam Clayton Powell. When Adam Clayton Powell got elected to Congress, while he was the third African American, he was the first to be self-respecting. The two before him had accepted segregation in the Congress. When Adam Powell got here, I think it was 1943, he was not allowed to use the House restaurant. He was told he couldn’t use either the restaurant or the swimming pool. He said ‘Screw you,’ and he did it. And what he then did, and this is what my view was. I should not do anything just to make a point. But I shouldn’t not do something because somebody else was trying to make a point. So I have insisted with the three partners I’ve had, but particularly with Jimmy Ready, we do everything everybody else does. He goes to the spouses’ lunches. We travel together. We do everything everybody else does. Not to make a point but because that’s what we want to do and I think we have come a long way in acceptance. I spoke earlier this year at the Bank of America in New York to a meeting of a couple of hundred LGBT people who are in the financial services industry, many of them younger. And Jimmy and I were there and Jimmy and I talked to them. And a couple of them, a number of them, said, boy, it really means a lot to us because you’re working in this financial industry, it’s somewhat conservative, can I put a picture of my girlfriend up on the desk? That’s what a woman said. I said, well, if the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee can bring his partner there, sure. And there’s also another reason. It’s a little easier for them to think of us other than this abstract embodiment of rights. I want them to think of us as flesh-and-blood people who love each other and are physical with each other.
Blade: In the course of your role as chairman of the Financial Services Committee, you were dealing with nation’s leading financial and corporate leaders. Did you sense any attempt by these people to take advantage of you because you were gay?
Frank: No, they didn’t dare. I don’t think most of them wanted to be. But early on, Jimmy and I went to in 2007 or 2008 into Manhattan. We had a series of meetings and Tim Geithner was then president of the New York Federal Reserve. And Jimmy went up to take a nap on Tim Geithner’s couch in his office while I had a meeting with him. But at the time, some guy said the Fed doesn’t yet have an affinity group for gay people. So we fixed that up that day. No, I’ve never sensed any problem.
And Hank Paulson, the then Secretary of the Treasury, to his credit, in his book, in the index, you can find Jimmy’s name. We’ve been out to dinner with him and his wife a couple of times. He and I get along very well. He said at one point the negotiations were breaking down, he was worried. And he knew that if he talked to me we could make a deal. And so he sent his two top guys to find me. He said they went looking for Congressman Frank and they found him on the third floor of the Capitol having dinner with his partner Jim Ready, which was just a gratuitous nice reference. But I’ll also tell you what I said. We had the [House Democratic] caucus [meeting] on hate crimes in 2008 when Judy Shepard [mother of Matthew Shepard, who was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime]. And they asked me about some of the African Americans who were being told by ministers that if we passed a hate crimes bill they would be criminally liable if they said homosexuality was against the Bible, which, of course, is nonsense. So I said let me address this because this has nothing to do with free speech. It’s only a crime if you hit somebody and harm somebody when you commit a crime. So I said let me put it this way. If this bill became law tomorrow it would still be entirely legal to call me a fag. I just wouldn’t recommend it if you were in the banking business. And that was my way of getting it across to my colleagues.
Blade: Is there anything else you’d like to bring up?
Frank: Well there’s one last thing. I think we’re winning. And the public opinion is on our side. But some people say if you’re winning you can take it easy. I say no. When you read military history they say sometimes military leaders make a mistake that they ease up at the point where they’re winning. That’s when you crack down. That’s when you’ve got them on the run. You have to continue to press, because I think we’re on the verge of winning this fight.
Blade: The opponents seem to be saying now, in response to the marriage fight, that society will be seriously harmed if the gay side prevails and gays are allowed to marry. How do you address that?
Frank: And the mainstream media always lets them get away with it. They’re always making these stupid predictions. They never come through. By the way, I give credit to the commandant of the Marine Corps, General [James] Amos, who just admitted that his gloom and doom predictions of six months ago aren’t true. Remember, he’s the guy who opposed repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ He said he was wrong. It was a non-event. But I think we ought to do a better job on that, to get the stupidities that they’ve predicted and show that they weren’t true. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve heard those same predictions about the Equal Rights Amendment for women, about protecting people with disabilities, about gay rights, about race. Any time you talk discrimination they say, well, I don’t dislike those people but it’s going to be chaotic. And it never is. The fact is, unfortunately, given the nature of things, anti-discrimination laws are hard to enforce. The bigots are sophisticated. It’s hard to catch them.
National
Democrats are trying to disqualify trans candidates. Here’s how
Jordan Korgood suspended Mass. Governor’s Council candidacy after opponent questioned residency
Uncloseted Media published this article on July 14.
By HOPE PISONI | Jordan Korgood has come a long way. In 2023, she ran into financial difficulties while studying at Northeastern University in Boston and ended up unhoused. Ordinary shelters are hotbeds of discrimination and mistreatment for transgender women like her, and the only trans shelter was full. So for five months, she slept in her car, in public libraries and anywhere she could find in order to continue her studies and campus activism.
Korgood, now 24, started a bid in March for a seat on Massachusetts Governor’s Council, a state board tasked with approving judicial candidates. Despite running against an incumbent who has been in office for 41 years, she secured key endorsements from local Democrats and racked up more than 7,000 Instagram followers, the equivalent of nearly one-tenth of primary voters during the last election cycle.
But last month, her momentum was ripped away. It started when Ronald Iacobucci, one of her opponents, noticed that she was still registered to vote in the 2024 election with an old New York address. He proceeded to file an objection with the state, alleging that Korgood didn’t meet the five-year residency requirement. While Korgood has lived in Massachusetts since 2019, she didn’t have a valid address to register in the state while she was unhoused. So she used her mother’s address, where she had lived before moving.
In an email to Uncloseted Media, Iacobucci wrote: “Because serious questions have arisen concerning compliance with those requirements, an objection was appropriate so the matter can be reviewed through the lawful process established by the commonwealth. This objection was nothing personal, it was always about the integrity of the process.”
While most residency challenges like this fail in Massachusetts, the State Ballot Law Commission disqualified Korgood on June 18. While she initially attempted to appeal the decision, the financial and logistical burden became too much — she estimates it drained about 40 percent of her campaign funds. So on July 10, Korgood suspended her campaign.
“I am incredibly frustrated that this is what I have to do at this point,” Korgood told Uncloseted Media. “I’ve spent thousands of hours, I’ve sacrificed my own mental health, my social life, friendships, my professional aspirations and advancement to work on this campaign, and this is how they’re ruling.”
“These are cherry-picking remote issues to target specific individuals,” Eliot Tracz, assistant professor of law at New England Law Boston, told Uncloseted Media. “They’re legitimate laws, but what they’re looking for is a selective application.”
Korgood isn’t the only trans candidate facing barriers. While a 2025 report by the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute found that trans representation among elected officials has increased by over 700 percent since 2017, candidates still face major hurdles.
Uncloseted Media found examples of trans candidates running for public office in Ohio and Michigan who have been threatened with disqualification over challenges to their eligibility. Often, the challenges come from their primary opponents: fellow Democrats.
“It should be voters, not political opponents, who decide who represents them,” Daniel Hernandez, vice president of political programs at the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, a nonprofit supporting queer candidates for public office, told Uncloseted Media. “This is not a legitimate way to fight — if you have a disagreement on policy, that’s one thing, but to try and target trans people just because of who they are is completely unacceptable, especially in a Democratic primary.”
A growing strategy
The first widely publicized eligibility challenge against a trans candidate Uncloseted Media identified took place in Stark County, Ohio, in 2024. The Stark County Board of Elections, which has the same chairman as the county’s Democratic Party, disqualified Vanessa Joy, a trans woman who was running for a seat in the state legislature. The board cited an obscure state law requiring candidates who changed their name in the last five years to list their former name on candidacy petitions — in Joy’s case, her deadname.
“The original spirit of the law I kind of agree with,” Joy told Uncloseted Media. “But there’s hardly any information about this law ever being enforced.”
Days later, Arienne Childrey and Bobbie Arnold, two other trans candidates, had their eligibility challenged based on this law. While both candidates were cleared to run, that wasn’t the case for Joy, who never made it on the ballot.
Tom Sutton, a political science professor at Baldwin Wallace University, told Spectrum News 1 he had never seen this law enforced in his 30 years of study. At the time, the relevant forms didn’t include a space to list former names, an omission that has since been corrected.
“The only way to find out about it was to dig deep into all of the additional documents on their website,” says Joy. “They used this law against me.”
Similar challenges cropped up in Michigan this year. Joanna Whaley, a trans woman running for a seat in the state legislature, faced a legal complaint from her Democratic primary opponent Frank Liberati, who claimed in April that she should have filed campaign paperwork under her deadname.
“Because both the original and amended affidavits of identity filed by ‘Joanna Michelle Whaley’ contain FALSE statements, she/he cannot be certified to appear on the Aug. 4, 2026, primary election ballot,” the complaint argues.
The county clerk denied the challenge, which deadnames Whaley, because she had legally changed her name. Liberati’s complaint was widely condemned, with the Michigan Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus calling it “meritless” and “transphobic.”
“It completely backfired on him,” Whaley told Uncloseted Media. “We tripled our cash on hand within a week because of the support that we’ve gotten from our community, and actually are in a stronger position now to win this race.”
While Whaley benefited from the challenge, that’s not the norm. Toni Mua, a trans woman running for a seat in the Michigan legislature, received a complaint from political activist Robert Davis in April who alleged that she also should have run under her deadname.
One of Mua’s opponents, Democrat Arthur Harrington, had discussed the challenge with Davis before it was filed, according to DeNiro Jones, Harrington’s former campaign manager. Jones told Uncloseted Media he sat in on a meeting between the two where they discussed the plan.
Jones also sent Uncloseted Media a screenshot of what he says is a text thread that Harrington sent him. In the screenshot, Davis tells Harrington, “The transgender candidate will be eliminated,” and Harrington responds that “Toni also won’t have the money to fight it.” Those texts were from April 22, two days before Davis filed the challenge.
In an email to Uncloseted Media, Davis called this story “baseless and meritless” and referred to Mua as “an illegitimate candidate seeking attention.”
“A candidate who happens to identify as transgender clearly violated Michigan Election Law and should not have been allowed to appear on the ballot,” Davis wrote. “A person’s sexual orientation nor identity played no part in the litigation seeking to have the person who filed a false affidavit of identity properly removed from the ballot.”
Arthur Harrington did not reply to multiple requests for comment. But in a June statement to Michigan Advance, he denied allegations that he was involved in Davis’s challenge.
These legal fights cost a lot. Korgood paid her lawyer $5,000. And while Mua defeated her challenge, she also had to use an estimated 40 percent of her campaign funds, or $10,000, to fight it.
In its opinion rejecting Davis’s challenge of Mua’s candidacy, the state court of appeals wrote, “Plaintiff misreads the statute … The Court of Claims did not err by concluding that Mua complied with the law or that the Wayne County Clerk did not err in rejecting plaintiff’s challenge.”
“I had to leave my job to run for this open seat,” Mua told Uncloseted Media. “It truly pisses me off, because [Democrats] have always said that they were better than this, and it’s showing truly where their support lies.”
Quinn Allred, executive director at Let Us Lead, a youth-focused voting rights nonprofit, finds these eligibility challenges from Democrats “despicable.”
“Instead of saying ‘trans people shouldn’t be running,’ [they’re entering] into this respectability politics and saying ‘oh, it’s actually because the names don’t match up, or it’s because of this residency law,’” Allred told Uncloseted Media. “[It’s a] special brand of cowardice that it takes for a Democrat to target a queer person who is also running for office.”
Uneven enforcement
While challenges to candidates’ residency aren’t uncommon in Massachusetts, they usually fail, according to Western Mass Politics & Insight, a long-running blog by local political and legal analysts.
The blog says most officials with authority over elections have a “great reluctance … to remove an individual from the ballot.” This makes Korgood’s removal unusual.
And while the State Ballot Law Commission says it considers many factors when determining a candidate’s residency and “no factor standing alone can be dispositive,” it largely cited Korgood’s voter registration in its decision despite other evidence that supports her eligibility, including apartment leases and membership in city programs.
“While there’s an undertone of legitimacy to some of those claims, it’s very selective,” Tracz says. “Most of us, when we move to a new state, don’t bother to go through the process of getting rid of our registration to vote in the prior state.”
Throughout history, Massachusetts candidates who faced similar challenges have been left on the ballot. These include former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who received a tax credit in Utah reserved for primary residences, and Brockton, Mass., mayoral candidate Hamilton Rodrigues, who had gotten his voter registration in Brockton removed and hadn’t voted in the city for over 10 years.
Months after Joy’s disqualification in Ohio, the Mahoning County Board of Elections struck down a similar challenge against Republican Tex Fischer, a cisgender man who changed his legal name. They allowed him to stay on the ballot.
Tracz says a judge would likely find selective enforcement like this questionable.
“[That rule is] applicable to any candidate, and the question then becomes ‘Is this only being enforced against a select group of candidates?’” he says. “Why are we only investigating a specific type of candidate? I think that will give some courts pause.”
Making existing challenges worse
Trans candidates face hurdles beyond eligibility challenges. A June report from the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute found that nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ candidates face in-person harassment and nearly 80 percent of them face online harassment.
“Whether it’s threats of violence, coordinated harassment campaigns, attempts to remove people from the ballot, the cumulative effect is the same: public service becoming more difficult and less accessible to the LGBTQ community,” says Hernandez of the Victory Fund.
Whaley says the increased attention from Liberati’s challenge brought even more harassment her way. She says she reports death threats to the police weekly and has a security detail at every public appearance. Security has become her second-largest campaign expense, and for good reason; in October, her team intervened when a man wearing a Make America Great Again hat followed her around with a gun at a No Kings rally.
“At the end of the day, I want to get home to tuck my kids in bed,” Whaley says. “We could be using that money for other things, but we’re having to use it to just keep me alive.”
Eligibility challenges distract from the candidates’ policies. Childrey remembers one woman telling her she couldn’t vote for her because she’s “only about the rainbow people.”
“Most of what [I’m] talking about is affordability, funding for our public schools … bread and butter issues,” Childrey told Uncloseted Media. “There is an assumption, because we’re trans, that that’s all it is.”
Barriers also pile up intersectionally. Nearly one-third of trans people experience homelessness at some point in their lives, a rate eight times higher than the general population. This means barriers for unhoused people disproportionately affect trans candidates.
“Trans youth, trans people of color, students, those who are unhoused like [Korgood] was, or who are disabled or low-income — those barriers only compound,” Allred says.
What could change?
Zein Murib, a political science professor at Fordham University, says these incidents demonstrate the need for more leniency with official documentation, arguing that a candidate’s deadname or legal sex aren’t relevant information. Today, 45 states accept common-law names, or the name a person uses in everyday life regardless of their ID, for other legal procedures, and Whaley says this should apply to campaigns as well.
Besides these policy changes, Allred says LGBTQ advocacy groups should allocate more funds to defend trans candidates from eligibility challenges. And Hernandez says that more people should condemn these tactics and show support for those targeted.
“We need to make sure that we set the expectation that everyone … is rejecting these tactics that are disproportionately burdening our trans candidates,” he says. “We have to call it out when we see it, and we have to make sure that we are not just letting candidates fight these fights themselves.”
Mua says that she doesn’t see a future for herself or other trans people with the Democrats unless the party stands up for them. “I refuse to put myself into a party where I don’t see my safety and protection being vital.”
While Korgood says she is saddened by this outcome, she doesn’t intend for her political career to end.
“I’m incredibly proud of what we were able to accomplish, and while I am beyond disappointed and frustrated that this is how this is ending, I am so grateful that I earned the support and the attention of thousands of people in this race.”
Uncloseted Media also reached out to the Stark and Mahoning County Boards of Elections as well as the office of the Secretary of State in Ohio, and the Elections division of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, under which the State Ballot Law Commission serves. None replied.
Congress
Political drama in Angie Craig’s Minn. Senate race heats up
Lesbian lawmaker running to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Tina Smith
After an historic and expensive July 4th fireworks display capped Donald Trump’s self-indulgent commemoration of America’s 250th birthday, voters are now watching state races explode into political pyrotechnics as Democrats fight to win majorities in Congress and Republicans plan to keep buying power.
With the midterm elections just over three months away and several primary races still undecided, most pundits predict the decline in Trump’s approval ratings will result in Democrats winning the House, if infighting doesn’t turn off voters.
Democrats’ dream of taking the U.S. Senate, however, turned into a nightmare with the scandalous Graham Platner debacle in must-win Maine. Energized party leaders hope to put on a master class in democracy as they pick a new candidate before July 27.
The hike to Senate victory is still steep. Republicans have a 53-47 advantage — meaning Democrats must win eight of 11 competitive races, including defending seats currently held in Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Georgia, for a net gain of four seats.
LGBTQ people intent on reversing Project 2025’s prolific erasure might focus on lesbian U.S. Rep. Angie Craig’s race in Minnesota.
With the retirement of Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, The Cook Political Report’s out guru Amy Walter labeled the open seat “likely” Democrat but with only a +3-point advantage.
New York Times Polling data reporter Alex Lemonides notes that “Trump lost Minnesota by four percentage points in 2024, and Minnesotans have not sent a Republican to the Senate since the 2002 midterms, so a Republican win in the general election would buck the trend.”
But this whole election cycle is about bucking trends. With so many Democratic Socialists defeating establishment candidates, “socialist” is no longer a slur, forcing Trump to switch to the old Cold War charge of Communist!
In Minnesota, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)-backed candidate Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is out-polling Craig, a more centrist Democrat who flipped a battleground House seat in 2018. Their primary is on Aug. 11.
Republicans are salivating over challenging Flanagan for her administrative role in the scandal that forced Gov. Tim Walz to forgo a third term and deal with widespread fraud in social programs.
Former NBC’s Sunday Night Football sideline reporter and current political podcaster Michele Tafoya has a built-in “bro” audience. The announcement of her Republican candidacy was featured on ESPN.com.
“As Minnesota’s senator, I will clean up the system, fighting corruption, ending the fraud, and protecting your tax dollars,” Tafoya said. “I will protect what’s fair and safe, standing with our law enforcement officers, deporting dangerous criminals, and keeping female sports for female athletes.”
Craig responded quickly. “Trump’s hand-picked candidate just jumped in the race for U.S. Senate,” she said on social media. “Minnesota needs a Senator who will stand up and fight for our state – and we know it won’t be MAGA Michele.”
Craig tells LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters that she has been happy to represent Minnesota’s Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2019. Now she wants to represent the entire state as a U.S. senator.
“The state of Minnesota has been so good to me and my family,” says Craig, who chose to move to the state because it would accept her family.
Craig grew up in a mobile home park in Arkansas, one of three children of a single mother. She worked her way through the University of Memphis, earning a degree in journalism, and became a reporter with the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
She has a long history of fighting for LGBTQ rights, including her own. In the late 1990s, while living in Tennessee, Craig and her then-partner, Debra Langston, adopted their first son, Joshua. Under Tennessee law at the time, only one of them could be recognized as an adoptive parent; Craig was listed as Langston’s roommate.
The birth mother wanted the couple to have Joshua, but her parents intervened, seeking to adopt him. The courts had to decide if Langston and Craig were “fit” parents. One appellate court judge objected to the boy being raised by “open, practicing lesbians,” but his two colleagues disagreed, and Langston and Craig won the precedent-setting case in 2000, albeit with lots of caveats.
“The issue in this case is not whether the members of this court approve the homosexual lifestyle or the adoption of children by homosexuals, but rather whether the adoption of this child by this prospective parent is in the child’s best interest. As in any adoption case, the determinative issue was and remains what is in the child’s best interest,” wrote Judge Alan E. Highers in his opinion concurring with the majority in ruling In re: ADOPTION OF M.J.S. in the Tennessee Court of Appeals.
By then, Craig was working in corporate communications for Smith & Nephew, a multinational maker of medical equipment, and the couple had another son, Jacob, born to Craig through alternative insemination. She and her family moved to London, where the company was based, in the early 2000s. They returned to the U.S. in 2005; Craig went to work for another medical equipment company, St. Jude Medical, in the suburbs of Minneapolis. She later said it was the least lucrative job offer she had, but she took it because she knew the area was welcoming to LGBTQ people.
Craig and Langston separated in 2006, and Craig married Cheryl Greene in California in 2008. They have four sons and three grandsons, with a fourth on the way. Greene is a former middle school teacher still involved with youth programming.
Craig worked for LGBTQ equality within her company and for statewide marriage equality in Minnesota. She also fought against an anti-marriage equality constitutional amendment in 2012, which voters rejected. The state legislature passed a marriage equality bill the following year that Gov. Mark Dayton signed into law.
In 2016, when she ran for Congress in Minnesota’s 2nd District, a Republican stronghold for more than a decade, she told the Twin Cities Pioneer Press that the fight for custody of Joshua gave her strength.
“Whether I win or lose on Election Day, I know that that won’t be the hardest thing or the biggest challenge that I’ve ever faced,” said Craig, then 44. “When you get up every day and wonder, ‘Am I going to (still) have my child the next day?’ you get pretty good at being focused on the big picture.”
“I’ve always talked about my family openly” on the campaign trail and in office, Craig, co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, tells LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters. Often at events in her district and around the state, she’ll meet someone who mentions they have an LGBTQ family member, she notes. She finds that if she listens to constituents and addresses what’s important to them, her identity isn’t an issue.
What Craig has addressed for constituents includes health care costs, such as capping the out-of-pocket cost of insulin and limiting overall out-of-pocket drug costs for people on Medicare. These came from a bill introduced by Craig and became provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. She also wants a public option for health insurance, an increased child tax credit, and she introduced a bill to eliminate federal taxes on Social Security benefits.
In a June 19 SurveyUSA poll, Minnesotans say their single most important issue is inflation (39%) and cost of living, followed by health care, immigration, gas prices, and the war in Iran.
But immigration may soon jump to the front as more information leaks out about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shooting and killing Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday morning, July 9. Homeland Security says the father, with no criminal record, driving to work, ignored verbal instructions and tried to ram their vehicle. ICE shot him in self-defense — the same excuse ICE used on Jan. 7, 2026, when an ICE agent killed nonviolent protester Renee Good. In both instances, video footage proved ICE lied.
Also caught on tape was Craig’s angry confrontation with Republican Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) on the House floor the day Good was killed after Emmer supported ICE on social media. The story and her response went viral.
But Craig continues to be criticized for voting for the Laken Riley Act, named for a woman who was killed by an undocumented immigrant. It allows for undocumented immigrants to be detained or deported if they are simply accused of crimes, even nonviolent ones. Critics say she has never apologized — but she has.
In a commentary for The Minnesota Star Tribune in May, Craig wrote, in part:
“The text of the bill did not include the word deportation. I made the difficult decision to vote for it. Democrats like Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff — leaders I deeply respect — all came to the same conclusion.
But as I stood side by side with protesters on the streets of Minneapolis and opposite dozens of armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Whipple Federal Building after Renee Good’s killing — and again after the killing of Alex Pretti — I couldn’t help but question whether I made the right call last year … It’s also become clear that supporting any bill that gives ICE new authority in this administration was the wrong decision. And I regret my vote.”
“What happened under Operation Metro Surge was horrific,” Craig tells LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters. The U.S. can secure its borders in a humane fashion while providing a path to citizenship for undocumented people, those brought here as children, and others, she adds.
On LGBTQ rights, Craig says the Equality Act has been a huge priority of hers in the House and would remain so in the Senate.
Since 2019, Craig has introduced the John Lewis Every Child Deserves a Family Act that “would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or marital status in those programs, prohibit the use of federal funds for so-called ‘conversion therapy’ and create a resource center for LGBTQ+ foster and adoptive youth within the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families,” according to a press release.
Another priority is passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for the late civil rights activist and longtime congressman. “I was lucky enough to serve with John Lewis,” she says.
Additionally, Craig supports campaign finance reform. The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that further loosened restrictions was “just another blow to our democracy,” she says. She supports limits on Supreme Court terms.
On foreign policy, she condemns Trump’s war of choice in Iran. “The administration has had zero strategic objectives,” she says, adding that the war has caused “tremendous economic damage,” such as the spike in gas prices.
And though Craig supports a two-state solution to the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinians having their own state, her campaign does not accept direct donations from AIPAC’s political action committee — the pro-Israel group held fundraisers for her before her Senate announcement — another point exploited by primary opponent Flanagan.
On gender-affirming care for transgender youth, Craig says politicians should not interfere with decisions made by young people and their parents. Regarding trans girls and women in sports, she says the matter is best handled locally — and that local conversations can foster understanding.
But Craig has had a strong public reaction to federal transphobia. After that, then-U.S. Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) introduced the Protect Women’s Sports Act in December 2020. Craig released the following statement:
“As a lesbian woman, I am no stranger to prejudice and intolerance — but this legislation is beyond the pale. Plain and simple, the Protect Women’s Sports Act is transphobic — and this type of discrimination has no place in the halls of Congress. Especially at a time when the transgender community is suffering from a tragic rise in suicide rates and experiencing a surge of transphobic violence, such a bigoted and appalling effort is simply unacceptable. Queer and transgender women must stand together in the face of intolerance — and I am proud to do so today by emphatically denouncing this narrow-minded and hateful legislation, which is harmful not only to transgender women but to the LGBTQ community at-large.”
Craig has been endorsed by prominent LGBTQ groups, including the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, the Human Rights Campaign PAC, Equality PAC, and LPAC. She has also been endorsed by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, plus many nationally known political figures, such as former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Flanagan has the endorsement of Smith and her predecessor, Al Franken, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and, from outside the state, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sanders, among others. U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and the state’s governor, Tim Walz, so far haven’t made endorsements.
“I’m ready on day one” to serve in the Senate, says Craig, noting her four terms in the House, her substantial career before going into politics, and her two votes to impeach Trump. “If we can take the House and Senate, we can put a cap on this administration.”
This is a cross-post from Karen Ocamb’s LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters Substack.
South Carolina
Who might replace Lindsey Graham? The contenders and their LGBTQ records
Long-time SC senator died suddenly on Saturday.
Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has died, and what he has left behind is a power vacuum for his U.S. Senate seat — and within the Republican Party.
The South Carolina senator had been a major part of Republican politics up until his Saturday death at his home in Washington, reportedly of an aortic dissection related to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
Graham has been a fixture in government at both the state and federal level. He began his political career in the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1992, representing the Palmetto State’s 2nd District before eventually moving to the federal government.
He moved up to Capitol Hill after his 1994 run for the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2003 he stepped across the rotunda to the Senate in 2003 following the retirement of longtime U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond.
He consistently opposed LGBTQ rights while alive.
He voted against the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, saying the decision should be left up to state governments, and the 2013 Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and opposed the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
With Graham’s sudden passing, the Republican Party is scrambling to find a replacement who can advance both its goals and those of the president as Republicans’ supermajority in the federal government begins to shrink.
Among those reportedly in the running is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the highest-ranking openly LGBTQ federal official in American history and fifth in the presidential line of succession.
Bessent, a South Carolina native, was formerly a supporter of the Democratic Party and donated to several Democratic presidential candidates before switching parties in 2017 following Trump’s election in 2016. He later donated $1 million to Trump’s 2017 presidential inaugural committee.
On Sunday, Bessent was also fielding calls from people asking him to run, according to a person familiar with the communications. A person close to Bessent told Politico that he is not interested in the seat, saying he is happy in his role as Treasury secretary, a position he has long wanted.
The Washington Blade reached out to the Treasury Department for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.
One of the most anticipated and widely discussed names for the vacant Senate seat is Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette.
Evette is a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump and has gone as far as criticizing Republicans for not supporting the conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Trump also endorsed her gubernatorial campaign, though she ultimately lost to her now-boss, Gov. Henry McMaster.
McMaster has a long history of opposing LGBTQ rights.
During an October 2022 gubernatorial debate, McMaster said that if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Obergefell v. Hodges, he would enforce South Carolina’s preexisting law banning same-sex marriage. In 2022, he also signed legislation requiring student athletes from elementary school through college to compete on teams corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificates.
Other names reportedly being considered include U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who has had a contentious relationship with LGBTQ issues during her time in Congress. She began as a supporter of LGBTQ rights, becoming one of the few Republicans to publicly support the Respect for Marriage Act, before making a complete about-face as transgender issues became a central part of the Republican Party’s political strategy.
As part of that strategy, Mace introduced a resolution to ban trans women from using female restrooms in the U.S. Capitol, a move she acknowledged was in direct response to the election of U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first out trans person elected to Congress.
In a November 2024 post on X, Mace wrote: “We support gay marriage, and voted for the Respect for Marriage Act twice. However, if you think protecting women is discrimination, you are the problem. We don’t care if you’re trans, if you have balls we don’t want you in the women’s bathroom.”
Two other names being floated are U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, who represents South Carolina’s 7th Congressional District, and U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, who represents the state’s 5th Congressional District.
Trump recommended Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, should serve as the state’s temporary senator in a post on Truth Social on Monday.
“This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!” Trump wrote on his social network.
The scramble comes as Republicans hold increasingly narrow majorities over Democrats in both the Senate and House, potentially complicating efforts to advance Trump’s agenda. That agenda includes continuing the war in Iran, securing Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general, and adding $350 billion in defense spending to the SAVE America Act — a controversial proposal deemed a “Jim Crow 2.0” among voting rights advocates.
McMaster is expected to announce Graham’s interim replacement on Monday at 4 p.m.
Mexico’s first openly gay mayor killed
Democrats are trying to disqualify trans candidates. Here’s how
Political drama in Angie Craig’s Minn. Senate race heats up
Suzanne Goode wants efficient spending, better infrastructure for Rehoboth
Aparna Raj expected to become second LGBTQ member of D.C. Council
Ron Singer, owner of popular Mount Vernon gay bar Leon’s, dies
Gay Fla. Democrat Elijah Manley sees opportunity in Trump’s second term
Calendar: July 10-16
Gay librarian to discuss new novel at Green Lantern
