HRC Announces Senate Endorsements in Effort to Achieve Pro-Equality Majority

by HRC staff

Post submitted by Lucas Acosta (he/him), former Deputy Director of Communications, Politics

HRC endorses five Senate incumbents and challengers in top-tier races in effort to achieve a pro-equality majority.

HRC announced multiple endorsements of candidates and incumbents in their bid for seats in the U.S. Senate.

Last year, the U.S. House passed the Equality Act, historic and crucial federal legislation that would finally guarantee explicit, permanent protections for LGBTQ people under our nation's existing civil rights laws. But rather than giving LGBTQ people a fair shot, Sen. McConnell has blocked the bill from coming up for a vote. With a new pro-equality Senate majority, we have the opportunity not just to pass the Equality Act, but ensure access to quality, affordable health care is protected, common sense gun safety legislation can be considered, voting rights can be advanced, and anti-equality judges are not put on our federal courts and the Supreme Court.

HRC-Endorsed Candidates for U.S. Senate

  • Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL)
  • Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI)
  • Jaime Harrison (D-SC)
  • Mark Kelly (D-AZ)
  • Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM)
  • Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN -- previously endorsed)

“Across America, LGBTQ people are fired from jobs, refused essential services like health care, and vulnerable to violence because of Senator McConnell’s failure to bring the Equality Act up for a vote,” said HRC President Alphonso David. “When these candidates are elected as part of a pro-equality majority, the U.S. Senate can pick up where the House left off and finally pass the Equality Act. HRC is working to mobilize 57 million Equality Voters nationwide to turn out this November and ensure our candidates win because lives are on the line.”

In the 2018 midterms, HRC helped register more than 32,000 voters and recruited more than 4,200 volunteers, who worked over 8,500 shifts and clocked more than 30,000 volunteer hours. In the critical final four days of the campaign, HRC staff and volunteers in get-out-the-vote efforts alone knocked on more than 80,000 doors, and held 36,400 conversations with voters at their doors and by phone on behalf of our endorsed candidates. HRC's unprecedented grassroots mobilization represented an investment of approximately $26 million to recruit volunteers, mobilize constituents, register voters and grow the organization's grassroots army in an all-out effort to pull the emergency brake on the hateful anti-LGBTQ agenda of the Trump-Pence administration and elect a Congress that would hold them accountable.

 

 Paid for by HRC PAC (www.hrc.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee