Make no mistake. The political map changed in Texas last night. Candidates up and down the ballot who ran on pro-equality messages had unprecedented success, and openly LGBTQ candidates across the state made history.
Look at what we accomplished in Texas:
- We elected four new pro-equality members of the Texas congressional delegation, including the first Latinas ever to represent Texas in Congress!
- Don Huffines and Konni Burton, two of the most extreme anti-LGBTQ members of the Texas State Senate, will be replaced by Nathan Johnson and Beverly Powell, senators who will support equality for everyone.
- Eight of the eleven Texas State House candidates we endorsed won, shifting the balance in that chamber toward equality as well.
- And openly LGBTQ candidates blazed new paths all over the Lone Star State, running in more than thirty competitive races and winning thirteen key legislative and judicial races. There are now five openly LGBTQ women in the Texas House: incumbents Mary Gonzalez and Celia Israel, and newcomers Jessica Gonzalez, Julie Johnson and Erin Zwiener.
While we wish Beto O’Rourke were joining the U.S. Senate, there was also plenty to celebrate across the country, including the defeat of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples in open defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court; the huge margin of victory in the Massachusetts statewide ballot initiative affirming transgender rights; and the election of an openly gay candidate as governor of Colorado.
With these results, we are closer than ever before to our goal of ensuring that every LGBTQ Texan has full legal and lived equality.
We’ll share more soon about the hard work ahead to build on these results. But for now, we just want to express our gratitude for all you’ve done to make these victories possible.
Thanks to you, we demonstrated last night that equality is a Texas value.