Meet the Candidates: The Only Out Person of Color in Congress, Mark Takano

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 Cook Political Report's list of solid Democratic seats includes the district of the first and only out person of color in Congress: Mark Takano in California's 41st district.

Takano, who is Asian, was elected during the last cycle in 2012 with 58 percent of the vote. It was the third time he'd run. He finally won, in part, because the congressional district boundaries were redrawn. When Takano first ran in 1992, his Republican opponent outed him, and he'd go on to lose by fewer than 600 votes.

A Harvard graduate, the former high school English teacher (for 24 years) and gay-straight alliance adviser is a reliable voice for LGBT issues in Congress, and he's talked frequently about how the struggles of minority groups are all connected. When his district suffered the San Bernardino terrorist attack, for example, it had Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump calling for a ban on all Muslims entering the country. Takano stood up against the idea.

"As victims of discrimination, LGBT people aggressively support the principle that America is strongest when we are upholding our pledge of liberty and justice for all," Takano wrote in an op-ed for The Advocate at the time. "As an openly gay member of Congress and a Japanese-American, I feel a special responsibility to give minority groups a voice."

In that op-ed, Takano connected his family's story to a greater principle regarding discrimination.

"In 1942, my parents and grandparents were relocated and interned along with more than 100,000 other Japanese-Americans," he wrote. "Their only crime was looking like our enemy at the time. I am appalled to see that terrible policy being referenced as a model for today. With the whole world watching, we must live up to the standard we've set for ourselves and learn from our past mistakes. Any discussion of treating Muslims in this country differently based on their faith puts us at risk of writing a similarly dark chapter in America's history."

Takano blasted Congress on gun control after San Bernardino and again after Pulse. "Gun violence cannot be considered the cost of freedom," he said. "It is the cost of inaction."

Takano also stood up for a gay ambassador who Catholic leaders in the Dominican Republic had tried to get ousted over his sexual orientation. And when the U.S. Supreme Court upended Proposition 8 and sent marriage equality to California, Takano joked with The Advocate, "I feel every gay word I can think of." Ahead of the vote, he'd joined members of Congress who had their portraits taken with tape over the mouths as part of NOH8 protest. And he joined a video message from Congress on the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, telling people worldwide, "You have a right to be safe, you have a right to be respected, you have a right, basically, to be who you are."

Most recently in Congress, Takano has been an outspoken voice against the so-called clawback of bonuses to members of the California National Guard. Service members had been given enlistment bonuses without knowing they were improperly awarded, and accountants somewhere started asking for the money back even after vets had long left the military, causing some to sell their homes or worse.

Even before Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced in October that the Pentagon would stop asking for money back from veterans, Takano told MSNBC that he sensed "a growing bipartisan consensus that this needs to be dealt with." It's Congress that must act if it truly wants to stop bonuses from being reclaimed over the long term.

Takano had joined a similar effort in 2015 when Social Security Administration had been trying to collect overpayments from same-sex couples who it had mistakenly counted as single. After the Supreme Court struck down a provision of the Defense of Marriage Act, the administration ought to have started counting these couples as married but delayed, resulting in overpayments that Takano said would be wrong to try to take back months later.