trudestress
Highlights and lowlights of this week's primaries
Pictured, from left: Ricardo Lara, Katie Hill, Mark Leno, Zach Wahls
The primary elections held in eight states Tuesday produced some good results, some bad ones, and some surprising ones in races of interest to LGBT voters. Ricardo Lara advanced in his race for California insurance commissioner, so in November he could become the first openly gay candidate to win statewide office in the Golden State. The mayor's race in San Francisco, where Mark Leno hopes to become the city's first gay chief executive, remains undecided, with Leno holding a slight lead. Katie Hill, an out bisexual, won the Democratic nomination to run against an anti-LGBT congressman in November. Kayla Moore, wife of the infamous homophobe Roy Moore, failed to win a state office in Alabama, but a white nationalist won a local office in Washington State. Find other important election news on the next pages.
Ricardo Lara
Ricardo Lara, currently a California state senator, advanced to the general election for state insurance commissioner and could become the first out gay person elected statewide in California. Under California's unusual "top two" primary system, the top two vote recipients in the primary, regardless of party, advance to the general election. Lara, a Democrat, received about 39 percent of the vote, while Steve Poizner, a formen insurance commissioner and former Republican running as an indepndent, was first with 43 percent. Other candidates were far behind. Lara supports universal health insurance, which Poizner does not, so that's likely to be a big issue in the general election, to be held November 6. Incumbent Dave Jones, a Democrat, wasn't seeking reelection, instead unsuccessfully challenging Xavier Becerra for attorney general.
Gavin Newsom
Democrat Gavin Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco and current lieutenant governor of California, was the top vote recipient in the gubernatorial primary. Coming in a surprising second, though, was Republican businessman John Cox, who has the support of Donald Trump, a man without a lot of fans in California. Cox's campaign emphasized his wish to roll back California's gas tax and end its status as a sanctuary state, which limits how much local law enforcement officials can assist federal immigration authorities. Newsom is known for his progressive positions, including his 2004 decision to allow same-sex marriages in San Francisco. More than 4,000 couples married before a court shut the weddings down. Only a quarter of California's voters identify as Republican, so Cox is expected to have a tough time in the general election. The winner will succeed Democrat Jerry Brown, who is retiring due to term limits.
Zach Wahls
Zach Wahls, a straight man, endeared himself to LGBT people in 2011 when, as a 20-year-old college student, he addressed Iowa legislators in support of marriage equality for people like his two moms, Jackie and Terry. The lawmakers were debating whether to amend the state's constitution to ban same-sex marriage -- something that would have overridden the 2009 Iowa Supreme Court decision that brought marriage equality to the Hawkeye State. "Our family really isn't so different from any other Iowa family," he told the legislature. The amendment failed, and Wahls went on to address the Democratic National Convention on marriage equality in 2012. Now he's a political candidate himself. Tuesday night he won the Democratic nomination for state senator from Iowa's 37th District, encompassing parts of Iowa City and surrounding communities. Iowa City is home to the University of Iowa, making the district a liberal stronghold, so Wahls is favored to win in November. The incumbent, Democrat Bob Dvorsky, is not seeking reelection, and no Republican is running, although Libertarian Carl Krambeck is seeking the seat. But Wahls appears to be a shoo-in.
Katie Hill
Change appears to be in the wind in California's 25th Congressional District, which includes parts of Los Angeles County and Ventura County. Incumbent Steve Knight is the only Republican congressman from L.A. County, and he's ultraconservative with all that entails, including being anti-LGBT. He's the son of Pete Knight, the late California state senator who authored the infamous Proposition 22, which banned same-sex marriage in the state by statute eight years before Proposition 8 did it via the California constitution -- happily, both propositions have now been consigned to the dustbin of history. Steve Knight has followed in his father's anti-LGBT footsteps, even though he has a gay brother, David. But in the general election this year, Knight will be challenged by a bisexual Democrat, Katie Hill. While Hill won only 20 percent of the vote Tuesday, that was enough to put her in the top two (Knight had 53 percent), so she'll face Knight in November without other opponents to siphon off votes. A former executive director of a nonprofit assisting the homeless, Hill has generated enthusiasm among voters, and her campaign has been featured on HBO's Vice News Tonight. So she could pull off an upset this fall.
Mark Leno
Mark Leno has been a San Francisco city supervisor and was the first openly gay man elected to the California state senate, and now he's trying to become S.F.'s first out gay mayor. The Tuesday mayoral election was not a primary -- the winner will be mayor -- but the vote count is so close that the result likely won't be known for several days or even weeks. As of Wednesday, Leno led London Breed, who is president of the S.F. Board of Supervisors, by 50.42 percent to 49.58 percent. But thousands of absentee and mail-in ballots remain to be counted. San Francisco uses a ranked-choice voting system, in which voters select their top three favorites and the candidates with the lowest number of votes are eliminated over several rounds until a winner emerges. The winner will succeed Ed Lee, who died in December; Supervisor Mark Farrell is currently serving as interim mayor.
Dana Rohrabacher
We can't say yet that we've seen the last of U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, one of the leading homophobes in Congress, but the day could be coming soon. In Tuesday's primary, Rohrabacher, a 15-term Republican congressman from Orange County, Calif., won the largest number of votes in his district, the 48th, and advanced to the general election, but it remains to be seen who his challenger will be in November. As of Wednesday, there was no clear second-place finisher, who under California's system advances to the general election regardless of party, and the vote-counting was expected to last several more days, with mail-in ballots still arriving. Democrats Harley Rouda and Hans Keirstead are in close contention for the number 2 slot. Orange County, located between Los Angeles and San Diego, has long been famously conservative, but that's been changing in recent years. The district is an important one for Democrats to flip as they seek control of the House, and a victory there would also rid Congress of one of its most anti-LGBT members.
James Allsup
Party precinct committee officer may sound like a low-level position -- it involves distributing campaign materials and voting on local party matters -- but it can be a way to take over a party from the grass roots, and having a white nationalist in any position is cause for alarm. So feel free to be alarmed at the news that James Allsup, who marched in the infamous Unite the Right rally last year in Charlottesville, Va., has been elected a precinct committee officer for the Republican Party in Whitman County, Wash., in the eastern part of the state. Allsup, who marched with a group called Identity Evropa at the hate rally, posted on Facebook Saturday that he was certified as a precinct committee officer because no one ran against him, and the party confirmed that to The Daily Beast. However, the Whitman County GOP is already looking for ways to oust him. "The executive committee is going to meet and see if we have the ability to not seat him," the county's Republican state committeeman, Art Swannack told the Inlander newspaper. "My understanding is he won the election, but the party has the right to choose whether or not we have to seat him."
Kayla Moore
Maybe Alabama just wants no more of the Moores -- Roy and Kayla. Roy, the state's notoriously homophobic former chief justice, lost his bid for U.S. Senate last year after he was accused of sexually abusing teenage girls, and his wife, Kayla, a right-wing activist, failed to win election Tuesday to the Alabama Republican Executive Committee. She was trying to unseat Sandra Lasseter, a longtime committee member, but was defeated by a vote of 7,275 to 5,939.
Jazmina Saavedra
Jazmina Saavedra didn't do her campaign for Congress any good by harassing a transgender woman in a Denny's restroom. Saavedra, a Trump-supporting Republican, came in third in the race in the Los Angeles-area 44th Congressional District. Incumbent Democrat Nanette Barragan won 62 percent of the vote, and fellow Dem Aja Brown, mayor of Compton, came in second in the top-two primary with about 17 percent, even though she'd officially dropped out of the race. Saavedra managed a measly 10 percent. She gained some notoriety last month when she filmed a Facebook video of her trying to kick a transgender woman out of a ladies' restroom at a Denny's in L.A., repeatedly calling the trans woman "a man," "sick," and "stupid."
Julia Fahl
Lambertville, N.J., is a small town -- about 3,900 people -- but Julia Fahl scored a big victory there Tuesday, defeating David DelVecchio in the Democratic mayoral primary; he's been mayor for 27 years. There's no Republican running, so Fahl is assured of election in November. "Fahl highlighted themes of inclusion, transparency and the need to modernize in her campaign," reports the New Hope Free Press. Fahl, a lesbian, has worked for various progressive candidates and organizations, including Planned Parenthood, and she was national LGBT fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee during President Obama's second term. Her town, located along the Delaware River, is known for its arts scene and is home to the nation's only two-state Pride parade, with its sister city of New Hope, Pa. Like many LGBT candidates who prevailed Tuesday, she had the backing of the LGBTQ Victory Fund.
Amelia Marquez
Amelia Marquez won the Democratic primary for Montana state representative in Billings-area House District 52. If elected in November, she'll be Montana's first openly transgender state legislator, and depending on other elections, the second openly trans state lawmaker in the nation (after Virginia's Danica Roem). Rodney Garcia won the Republican primary; the incumbent, Republican Jimmy Patelis, is not seeking reelection. Marquez, who currently works for a nonprofit providing mental health services to children, wants to make higher education free or at least debt-free, and expand the availability of health care, with the eventual goal of a single-payer nationwide system.
