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A deeply polarized American electorate has given the country its first transgender state senator and its first black gay congressman, but also its first lawmaker who has openly endorsed the unsubstantiated QAnon conspiracy theory.
All four members of the progressive “Squad” of Democratic Congressmen of Color – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib – have been re-elected comfortably, and Sarah McBride’s victory in Delaware has made her the tallest trans. rank. official in the United States.
“I hope tonight shows an LGBTQ kid that our democracy is big enough for them too,” McBride, 30, who easily defeated Republican Steve Washington to represent Delaware’s first state senate district. tweeted after the convocation of the elections.
McBride, a former spokesperson for the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, was a White House apprentice during the Obama administration and became the first trans person to speak at a major political convention when he addressed Democrats in Philadelphia in 2016.
“For Sarah to break a lavender roof in such a polarized year is a powerful reminder that voters are increasingly rejecting the policy of bigotry in favor of candidates who stand up for justice and equality,” said Annise Parker of the LGBTQ Victory Fund , which trains and supports candidates.
In Vermont, Taylor Small, 26, has become the state’s first openly transgender legislator after winning 41% of the vote to reach the House of Representatives, making her the fifth “excluded” trans state legislator in the United States. United.
Small, who is director of health and wellness at the Vermont Pride Center, told the LGBTQ Nation last month that she saw the victory “not as a historic moment for me, but more as a historic moment for the community.”
In Kansas, Stephanie Byers appears poised to become the state’s first transgender legislator by winning a state chamber seat. “We have made history here,” Byers, who is also of Native American descent, said Tuesday night. “We’ve done something in Kansas that most people thought would never happen, and we did it without any setbacks, focusing on the problems.”
Parker said that with so few transgender people in office, almost all the victories “are historic. With every barrier broken, more trans people emerge inspired to do the same. Even pro-equality states like Vermont need trans voices in government. “
Ritchie Torres, 32, a city councilman, will be the first gay Afro-Latino member of the U.S. Congress after comfortably capturing New York’s 15th district, ranked in the Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voter Index as the most Democratic district in the country.
“He was the clear and prominent candidate as the youngest Latino elected to the New York City council, the son of a working single mother from the Bronx and an advocate for essential New York City workers,” said Tony Cardenas, president of Bold Pac, campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Democrat Mondaire Jones, another black gay candidate for Congress, was declared later Wednesday. the winner of his career and will follow Torres inside the House. Jones had a three-point lead over his Republican rival in the race for the seat of New York’s 17th congressional district.
The election also returned its first congressman born in the 1990s. Despite allegations of racism and sexual misconduct, 25-year-old Madison Cawthorn won North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District to become the Republican nominee. youngest ever elected to Congress and the youngest person in any party elected in more than 50 years.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican businesswoman, has become the first far-right proponent of the QAnon conspiracy theory to win a seat in the United States House of Representatives when she was declared the winner of Georgia’s 14th congressional district.
Green has faced national scrutiny for racist and bigoted statements and his support for QAnon, a baseless conspiracy theory rooted in anti-Semitic tropes whose supporters believe Donald Trump is secretly fighting a cabal of Democrats, billionaires and celebrities involved in child trafficking.
While the FBI has described the move as a potential national terrorist threat, Greene received campaign support from groups related to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, the chairman of the board of the prominent conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, and numerous major donors to the Republican Party.
Trump has repeatedly praised the candidate, who distanced herself from the QAnon conspiracy theory in an interview with Fox News in August and consistently refused to denounce QAnon. Greene was among at least a dozen Republican congressional candidates (some estimates put the number at 20) who had expressed some degree of support for QAnon.
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