Meet the Candidates: Arizona's Matt Heinz

The Victory Fund is working to elect dozens of LGBT candidates to higher office and we're featuring the stories of several of these men and women as the election nears.

The doctor is out. Matt Heinz, the Democratic candidate in Arizona's Second Congressional District, is an emergency room physician in Tucson, a former state legislator, a former federal health official, and an out gay man.

And soon he may be in -- in Congress, that is. His race in a battleground district offers the Democrats a good opportunity to pick up a seat in the U.S. House. The district, in the southeastern corner of Arizona, is almost evenly divided among Democrats, Republicans, and independents, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is backing Heinz through its "emerging races" program.

Heinz sought the seat in 2012, losing to Ron Barber in the Democratic primary. Barber won the general election that year, then was ousted by Republican Martha McSally in 2014 in the nation's closest congressional race, with McSally's margin of victory being less than 200 votes.

In announcing his intention to challenge McSally this year, Heinz cited her votes to ban abortion after 20 weeks and to repeal the Affordable Care Act, along with her opposition to marriage equality. "I've watched as Martha McSally has, in my opinion, rejected the values of southern Arizona repeatedly," Heinz told The Arizona Republic in July. "That is not something I can stand for." In her first term, McSally has a 48 score out of a possible 100 in the Human Rights Campaign's Congressional Scorecard.

Heinz helped health care providers implement the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, as director of provider outreach for the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In that post, which he held from June 2013 to March 2015, he also helped coordinate the federal government's response to the Ebola virus.

He has also served two terms in the Arizona House of Representatives, and he has been an attending physician at the Tucson Medical Center since 2003.

He's racked up a long list of endorsements, including many labor unions and medical groups, along with several out public officials, such as U.S. Reps. Jared Polis, Mark Takano, Mark Pocan, and Sean Patrick Maloney. The HRC has endorsed him as well, and he's a Victory Fund spotlight candidate.