The Victory Fund is closely monitoring the ballot count still coming in from last Tuesday’s US midterm election races of 225 LGBT candidates across the country. Many races are still too close to call, with more LGBT candidates likely to win. You can follow along as the Victory Fund regularly updates its 2018 results map.
So far, a record-setting 153 winning LGBT candidates has amounted to what The New York Times and other major media sources are calling the “Rainbow Wave.”
Along with the candidates, at the forefront, notes the New York Times, are the Bay State voters who overwhelmingly “chose to uphold a two-year-old state law protecting transgender people from discrimination in public places like bathrooms, locker rooms and hotels. The law, which was signed in 2016, was challenged by conservative activists who collected enough signatures to put a repeal measure on the ballot.” The decision set a national precedent for protecting important basic civil rights for transgender people specifically, and for all people—LGBTQIA and everyone—broadly.
And as for those winning LGBT candidates, according to The New York Times:
More openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were elected Tuesday night than in any previous election, signaling a shift in cultural attitudes even as the Trump administration has chipped away at L.G.B.T. rights.
The results are still rolling in, but at least 153 have won so far, said Elliot Imse, a spokesman for the Victory Fund, a nonpartisan political action committee devoted to electing L.G.B.T. candidates. The group endorsed 225 candidates in this election cycle, nearly all of whom were Democrats.
L.G.B.T. candidates ran for office in record numbers this year. “Success breeds success,” said Annise Parker, the president and chief executive of the Victory Fund and former mayor of Houston.
“We’re not going out and pleading with people to run,” she added. “These are people who say, ‘I want to go out and do this and bring my whole self to the campaign.’”
