Sam Alleman, national LGBTQ+ engagement director for the Harris-Walz 2024 campaign, talked with the Washington Blade last week for an exclusive interview about his work building and strengthening coalitions within the community in hopes of winning in November.

On the Democratic side, organizing LGBTQ voters for a presidential campaign goes back at least a decade, he said, to 2012 when Jamie Citron — currently the deputy assistant to the president and principal deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement — helped to lead these efforts on behalf of then-President Barack Obama’s reelection bid.

On Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Alleman said, it was Dominic Lowell working in close coordination with Sean Meloy, director of LGBT engagement for the Democratic National Committee, who now serves as vice president of political programs at the LGBTQ Victory Fund and Institute.

“Something that we’re very proud of as the little crew of folks who all are friends,” Alleman said, “is really building off each other’s work to continue scaling this and building out infrastructure to organize within the community.”

He added that in 2020, Reggie Greer, who led LGBTQ engagement for the Biden-Harris campaign and is now the State Department’s senior adviser to the U.S. Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons, “was dealt the very difficult hand of a global pandemic.”

He explained, despite the challenges, Greer and others managed to build “a wonderful program that’s very much virtual, put forward from folks that did this work and were online,” which has shaped efforts through to this day as the Harris-Walz campaign seeks to “really get people back in person” as they focus their push in, especially, the seven battleground states.

The goal, Alleman said, is “not losing the virtual component, but complementing it” to “get people back on board, back to the event, back to the rally, back to the business that is a presidential campaign in 2024.”

“That’s a question and a piece of this work that is not necessarily unique to the LGBTQ+ portfolio,” he said. “But then it’s been something that we’ve worked through, and I think getting that from 2020 and rebuilding and fleshing that out has been a top priority.”

“We have wonderful working relationships with Liam Kahn over at the DNC right now,” Alleman said, referring to the committee’s director of LGBTQ+ coalitions, “and then, of course, my counterpart in finance, James Conlon, we work hand in glove as a team to execute on all of this work,” together with “my deputy, oh my gosh, he just started, I’m so excited, Cesar Toledo — who is like an absolute force and really runs the day to day of the organizing program.”

For his part, Alleman’s career has taken him from organizing work as a college student for then-Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis to campaign work for Clinton to the center of the reproductive rights movement at Planned Parenthood to the White House and, now, the Harris-Walz 2024 race.

“I started on the campaign in April of 2024,” he said, working on behalf of what was then the Biden-Harris ticket, while before that, “I was at the DNC for two and a half years. So I started over there as the LGBTQ coalitions director in October of 2021 and helped to manage all their LGBTQ+ programming through the midterm elections.”

Alleman continued, “I was also the regional coalitions director for the Midwest. We affectionately called it the “snow belt,” but [it was] our Great Lakes and Northeast states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire in 2022 as well, working in that pod in tandem with all of our state programming.”

When transitioning into the new role, Alleman said “it was keenly important” for him to facilitate the continued investment in building “infrastructure for our community at the DNC” which is something the organization has shown is a priority focus.

“At the DNC, the work is very infrastructure focused,” he said, through the vehicle of coordinating with “our state parties” and “making sure that they have the resources to do this work to mobilize voters.”

Alleman added that a few dozen state Democratic parties have LGBTQ caucuses, so at the DNC he was working to “make sure that they were getting organized” in coordination “of course, with the partners, too.”

Asked to compare his experiences working in similar roles for the committee and then the presidential campaign, Alleman said “The party has a bigger responsibility, I should say, to think about the totality of the ticket” which means considering questions like “how are we getting resources to [down-ballot] races, like city council members and state reps and state senators?”

He noted “there are a lot of LGBTQ state reps and state senators with big names [who are doing] amazing work in this moment.”

By contrast, “when we’re here on the presidential [ticket] it’s a lot of the same strategies and tactics, but really homed in on our battleground states, really homed in on [the question of] ‘how are we building out capacity to talk to those voters where we know our pathway to victory is?'”

In between the Clinton campaign and the DNC was a long stint at Planned Parenthood, Alleman said, an opportunity that found him via a friend who reached out after Trump’s victory in 2016.

Packed into the Javits Center, where the Clinton team had organized what they — and most Americans — expected to be a victory party, Alleman said “everything changed from that point on” as “things that had felt so certain and so set in terms of what I was planning on doing, just sort of all changed.”

“I feel like it was that way for so many of us, both in terms of work, our personal lives, everything that happened in 2016,” he said. “And so I got a call from a friend — a good friend of mine who’s still one of my best friends, actually, I just officiated her wedding.”

The personal is political

“Everything really just sort of clicked there,” Alleman said, adding, “I worked at Planned Parenthood for five or six years, doing various jobs,” starting with the Metropolitan Washington affiliate where he worked to “plan the logistics and busses for the Women’s March” in 2017 to protest Donald Trump’s election.

Reproductive rights, he said, is “a big part of my story and why I’m in the work.”

Alleman is a Texas native. In college, he worked for the campaign of then-state senator Wendy Davis, who famously held a 13-hour-long filibuster in 2013 to block legislation that would have imposed harsher abortion restrictions.

“I’m originally from Plano,” he said. “By virtue of being from Texas, these things that feel like very big issues now have sort of always been litigated, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, in our state based off just conservative extremists,” adding, “we would call them MAGA Republicans now.”

While he was always supportive of reproductive rights, Alleman said that as a young man who was grappling with his sexuality and on his own coming out journey, he did not fully understand “the totality” of those freedoms and how they intersect with other core American values.

“A very important part of my story, and a big part of why I do this work, is my sister,” Alleman said. Just seven months after getting health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, he said his sister was “diagnosed with breast cancer at a Planned Parenthood health center via a breast exam.”

While she “is now cancer free and in remission and doing very well,” Alleman said, “I don’t know what my family would have done if we had not been able to access health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.”

“It would have bankrupted my family,” he said, “and I would have dropped out of college. I wouldn’t be sitting here today, right? Like, nothing that happened would have happened, would have been possible. She very well may not be alive, you know?”

Alleman continued, “And so, the importance of healthcare and access to affordable healthcare, and then the ability for us to have bodily autonomy and then control of our own decisions and destinies, has always just been something that has been critically important for me.”

“We talk about all the accomplishments that we’ve seen from the Biden-Harris administration,” he said, like “the Affordable Care Act and what that means, but my story is an example of the impact of that, [of] what this actually means for people to have access to health care and health insurance, what this actually means for people to be able to go to their Planned Parenthood health center and feel safe in accessing reproductive health care in its totality, from abortion to breast exams.”

He described falling “in love” with the work at Planned Parenthood as well as with the movement for reproductive freedom. “I moved up to the national office about six or seven months after starting at the affiliate on their political team,” he said, “and ended as their national political manager before moving over to the DNC.”

From there, Alleman said, “I worked at the DNC for two and a half years managing the LGBTQ coalition work” during which time “we were really proud of the Biden-Harris administration, but it always felt [like] it was so clear where we would probably be in terms of who we were running against, right, where we are today in 2024.”

So the focus remained, he said, on “what was at stake, not only in the work that we needed to get done politically to, you know, get infrastructure done, get the Inflation Reduction Act done, make sure that we help the Senate and House as best we could in the midterms, so that we can continue achieving things like the Respect for Marriage Act — but as well, to put us in as best a position as possible to take on what was the looming threat to our democracy, and what is the looming threat to our democracy, that is Donald Trump.”

Alleman added, “And we see now” from “Project 2025” what “things will look like should he win — though we have, I think, a pretty good plan to keep that from happening.”

Storytelling and organizing go hand-in-hand

“I consider myself first and foremost an organizer, and there’s nothing more powerful for an individual than knowing your story and being able to tell that and stand in its truth and what that means for you and your power,” Alleman said.

He sees this as an important part of not just his work and career but also a focus of the campaign.

“So storytelling is absolutely, to me, one of the most fundamental things we do as organizers — it’s helping people find their voice and how they want to use that to benefit their communities, to turn out voters, and really just participate in our democracy,” he said.

Storytelling is also an important element of communicating about our intersectional identities, Alleman said. “We talk about these communities sometimes in such different lanes, but in reality, we’re all creatures of narrative.”

He added, “We’re all sort of experiencing life in that more qualitative, narrative way. And those stories are where people not only are able to sort of synthesize all the things that they are, but also provide the actual emotion and the human aspect of these issues in life.”

Far-right anti-LGBTQ North Carolina lieutenant governor and Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson enjoys transgender pornography, according to a report published by CNN on Thursday.

The controversial official has made deeply offensive and incendiary remarks about trans people, but privately on the message board of Nude Africa, an adult site, he said, “I like watching tranny on girl porn!”

Robinson denied the report, but CNN linked the anonymous account to Robinson via a slew of matching biographical details and a username and email address he has used in the past.

“This is not us. These are not our words. And this is not anything that is characteristic of me,” Robinson said. “I’m not going to get into the minutia of how somebody manufactured this, these salacious tabloid lies.”

The lieutenant governor, who is Black, also made racist comments on the forum. Responding to news of then-President Barack Obama’s dedication of the national monument to Martin Luther King, Jr., Robinson wrote, “Get that f*cking commie bastard off the National Mall!”

“I’m not in the KKK,” he added. “They don’t let blacks join. If I was in the KKK I would have called him Martin Lucifer Koon!”

Additionally, CNN reports, “Robinson also used homophobic slurs frequently, calling other users f*gs” and “in a largely positive forum discussion featuring a photo of two men kissing after one returned from a military deployment, Robinson wrote the sole negative comment.

‘That’s sum ole sick a** f*ggot bullsh*t!’ he wrote.”

Along with the Republican Party of North Carolina, Robinson’s uphill candidacy against Democratic state attorney general Josh Stein is supported by Donald Trump.

Delaware State Sen. Sarah McBride, who is favored to become the first transgender member of Congress after winning the Democratic primary this week, received a congratulatory call on Wednesday from a powerful friend and ally: President Joe Biden.

The president shared details about their conversation with the Washington Blade during an exclusive interview in the Oval Office on Thursday, which will be available to read online early next week.

“I called her and I said, ‘Sarah,’ I said, ‘Beau’s looking down from heaven, congratulating you,’” Biden said, referring to his late son, who had served as attorney general of Delaware before his death from cancer in 2015.

McBride had worked on Beau Biden’s campaign in 2006 and on his reelection campaign in 2010. Two years later, when she came out as transgender, the AG called to say, “I’m so proud of you. I love you, and you’re still a part of the Biden family.”

The president told the Blade that McBride welled with emotion — “she started to fill up” — as she responded that the “‘only reason I’m here is because of Beau. He had confidence in me.’”

When the two worked together, “[Beau] was getting the hell kicked out” of him because “he hired her,” Biden said, but “now she’s going to be the next congresswoman, the next congresswoman from Delaware.”

Later, when asked how he will remain involved in the struggle for LGBTQ rights after leaving office, the president again mentioned McBride. “Delaware used to be a pretty conservative state, and now we’re going to have — Sarah is going to be, I pray to God, a congresswoman.”

In the presidential debate hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris put Donald Trump on the defensive over issues from foreign policy and the ongoing criminal prosecutions against him to his record and moral character.

The 90-minute exchange featured no discussion of LGBTQ issues, apart from a baseless accusation by Trump that his opponent “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”

The remark echoed statements Trump has made recently on the campaign trail, for example in Wisconsin on Monday where he said that children are, however implausibly, returning home from school having underwent sex change operations.

Similarly, during the debate the former president asserted without evidence that Democrats favor abortions up to and following delivery, which would amount to infanticide.

“There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” interjected ABC News anchor Linsey Davis, a moderator, who then allowed Harris to respond.

“Well, as I said, you’re gonna hear a bunch of lies, and that’s not actually a surprising fact,” the vice president replied before addressing the question at hand, which concerned abortion.

While Harris did not address the matter of “transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” viewers on X were quick to mock the comment.

she was in the prison doing transgender operations on illegal aliens right before she died pic.twitter.com/sjDycEO3Mq

— soul nate (@MNateShyamalan) September 11, 2024

transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison pic.twitter.com/FNhKekSm1S

— Half-Shirt Radical (@EricShethar) September 11, 2024

You’re laughing. They’re doing transgender operations on illegal aliens who are in prison and you’re laughing.

— Cartoons Hate Her! (@CartoonsHateHer) September 11, 2024

Democrat Lisa Middleton is the first openly transgender person elected to a non-judicial office in California and is currently running to represent the 19th Senate District in a tight Inland Empire race.

She is one of more than 21 out LGBTQ candidates running for a U.S. congressional, state Senate or state Legislative seat in 2024.

As a longtime leader of the LGBTQ community, Middleton works to protect and advance civil rights. She serves on the Equality California Institute’s board of directors and would become the first openly trans person to serve in the California State Legislature.

Middleton began her transition 30 years ago, but her reputation in politics, fraud investigation and governance started long before. Middleton, 72, is the former mayor of Palm Springs after serving as mayor pro tempore from 2020 to 2021 and then becoming the first openly trans mayor in California, succeeding Christy Holstege in December 2021.

Middleton is the child of blue-collar union workers.

In addition to supporting LGBTQ rights, she also supports projects such as renewable energy using wind and solar, stating that these are win-win solutions that help labor workers and combat climate change.

Middleton is running against GOP Latina Rosilicie Bogh, 52, a former elementary school teacher, school board member, and realtor.

Bogh has publicly opposed bills that boost gender-affirming health care services and protect trans children and their families from being criminalized for seeking treatment in California.

Bogh has also abstained from voting on gay marriage rights in the state constitution and recognizing Pride Month.

She gained attention earlier this year when she stood up to oppose a law that protects educators and school staff from forcibly outing trans children to their families.

Assembly Bill 1955 went into effect earlier this summer after getting support from Gov. Gavin Newsom and backlash from Elon Musk, leading him to withdraw X and SpaceX from California.

The race for this seat is stimulated by newly redrawn district boundaries that now include thousands more registered Democrats.

The new 19th Senate District now spans from Coachella Valley to the San Bernardino Mountains and from the San Jacinto Valley to the High Desert, including highly visited places like Big Bear City, Joshua Tree, and Palm Springs.

The redrawn district includes San Bernardino County, which has Republican strongholds, but also includes the more liberal areas of Riverside County and Palm Springs, totaling around half a million voters.

A Report of Registration released earlier this summer shows that the district is now nearly even in terms of Republican and Democratic support, with 35 percent and 36 percent respectively.

In the March primary election, Bogh won 54 percent of the vote, while Middleton secured 46 percent.

In the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump won the district by a narrow margin.

Both candidates are trailblazers, so who will win over the majority vote in the upcoming election that is only 57 days away?

Both candidates say they’re avoiding culture war clashes to focus on bread-and-butter issues.

For Middleton, the bread-and-butter issues are protecting reproductive care, fixing roads, creating jobs, increasing neighborhood safety, demanding accountability for taxpayers, and building housing to address homelessness.

Middleton markets herself as a neighborhood advocate who provides “common-sense solutions” to the region’s challenges.

Her track record includes working as an auditor for California’s State Compensation Insurance Fund, working her way up to becoming senior vice president of internal affairs and serving as chair of California’s Fraud Assessment Commission.

Her goal in the Legislature is to eliminate wasteful spending of tax dollars.

As mayor of Palm Springs, Middleton led the city’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic by helping small businesses reopen and creating well-paying jobs.

Prior to that, Middleton was appointed to the Board of Administrators of the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), which aims to build health and retirement security for California’s state and local school employees. Currently, she serves as chair of the Finance and Administration Committee and vice chair of the Risk and Audit Committee.

Middleton married her wife Cheryl, a now-retired nurse, in 2013, shortly after moving to Palm Springs. Together they have two children who are educators.

Middleton was also included in the 2016 Pride Honors Award at Palm Springs Pride, receiving the Spirit of Stonewall Community Service Award.

Organizations like Planned Parenthood, Reproductive Freedom For All California, National Union of Healthcare Workers, California Women’s List, and others support Middleton.

A list of openly LGBTQ candidates on the California ballot can be found below:

U.S. House of Representatives:

• Congressional District 16: Evan Low
• Congressional District 23: Derek Marshall
• Congressional District 39: Mark Takano
• Congressional District 41: Will Rollins
• Congressional District 42: Robert Garcia

California Senate:

• Senate District 3: Christopher Cabaldon
• Senate District 11: Scott Wiener
• Senate District 17: John Laird
• Senate District 19: Lisa Middleton
• Senate District 25: Sasha Renee Perez
• Senate District 31: Sabrina Cervantes

California Assembly:

• Assembly District 24: Alex Lee
• Assembly District 47: Christy Holstege
• Assembly District 51: Rick Chavez Zbur
• Assembly District 54: Mark Gonzalez
• Assembly District 57: Sade Elhawary
• Assembly District 58: Clarissa Cervantes
• Assembly District 60: Corey Jackson
• Assembly District 62: José Solache
• Assembly District 72: Dom Jones
• Assembly District 78: Chris Ward

In an era of social and political uncertainty, the importance of LGBTQ representation in corporate leadership has never been more critical, according to diversity experts.

Despite increasing visibility, LGBTQ+ individuals continue to face discrimination and challenges in the workplace. A recent study by GLAAD found that 70% of non-LGBTQ adults believe in the importance of inclusive hiring practices. However, representation in top corporate positions remains inadequate.

“Having LGBTQ+ individuals in C-suite positions is more than an issue of fairness — it drives real cultural change,” said Aidan Currie, Executive Director of Reaching Out MBA.

According to Gallup data, 7.6% of all U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ, with the percentage rising to 22% among Gen Z adults. This demographic shift underscores the need for diverse leadership in corporate America.

The impact of LGBTQ+ representation extends beyond social progress. McKinsey & Company’s 2020 report found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were 25% more likely to see higher profitability. Similar principles apply to LGBTQ+ representation.

However, challenges persist. The FBI reports a 19% increase in hate crimes targeting LGBTQ+ people, highlighting ongoing societal issues.

To address these challenges, organizations like Reaching Out MBA (ROMBA) are working to increase LGBTQ+ influence in business. ROMBA’s annual conference brings together LGBTQ+ MBA students, recruiters, and business leaders.

This year, ROMBA is introducing PRIZM, a multi-day event for experienced, mid-career LGBTQ+ business professionals. The event aims to equip participants with skills needed to advance to C-suite roles.

“It’s incumbent upon us to make sure our community is prepared to lead, and it’s incumbent upon corporate leaders to stand behind their commitment to inclusion,” said Zeke Stokes, former Chief Programs Officer at GLAAD.

As the business landscape evolves, the push for greater LGBTQ+ representation in corporate leadership continues. Experts argue that this representation is not just a matter of equity, but a crucial factor in driving innovation, profitability, and positive societal change.

For more information on ROMBA and PRIZM, visit https://reachingoutmba.org/

Written By AIDAN CURRIE and ZEKE STOKES

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CHICAGO — Closing out the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a rousing acceptance speech in which she laid out the case against Donald Trump and touched on a number of high-priority policy issues.

Harris began by describing her immigrant parents and their family’s middle class life in the Bay Area, detailing how a formative experience in her girlhood — helping a friend who was being sexually abused — had shaped her decision to become a prosecutor.

From the courtroom to the San Francisco district attorney’s office to the California attorney general’s office to the Senate and vice presidency, Harris detailed her journey to become her party’s presidential nominee — explaining how she was serving the people every step of the way.

“Kamala Harris for the people,” she would tell the judge each day in the courtroom, while Trump, by contrast, has only ever looked out for himself, she said.

In keeping with the theme of many speeches during the convention this week in Chicago, Harris explained how she would chart a new, brighter way forward as commander-in-chief, working to uplift Americans regardless of their differences.

“With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past,” she said. “A chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”

She repeatedly made the case against Trump, detailing how he is not only “unserious” but also dangerous — a threat to world peace, America’s democratic institutions, the rule of law, women’s rights, and more.

The vice president presented another argument that had been a throughline in remarks by other primetime speakers, the “fundamental freedoms” at stake in this election, and how she would protect them while Trump has vowed to take them away.

She ticked off “the freedom to live safe from gun violence — in our schools, communities, and places of worship” as well as “the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride” and “the freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.”

Harris noted that the “freedom to vote” is “the freedom that unlocks all the others,” retreading some of her earlier remarks about Trump’s efforts to undermine American elections.

The vice president’s second reference to LGBTQ rights came with her proclamation that “America cannot truly be prosperous unless Americans are fully able to make their own decisions about their own lives, especially on matters of heart and home.”

CHICAGO — Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz rebuffed Republican attacks against the LGBTQ community, reproductive freedom, and other foundational, fundamental liberties in an electrifying speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night.

“While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours,” said the former teacher and football coach, who agreed to serve as faculty advisor to his high school’s gay-straight alliance club in 1999.

“We also protected reproductive freedom, because in Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make, even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves,” Walz said. “We’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business. And that includes IVF and fertility treatments.”

The governor discussed his family’s struggles with infertility. He and his wife had children through IVF.

“Some folks just don’t understand what it takes to be a good neighbor,” Walz said, pointing to the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees. “Take Donald Trump and JD Vance: Their Project 2025 will make things much, much harder for people who are just trying to live their lives.”

“They spent a lot of time pretending they know nothing about this,” he said, “but look, I coached high school football long enough to know, and trust me on this, when somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re going to use it.”

Walz added, “here’s the thing, it’s an agenda nobody asked for. It’s an agenda that serves nobody except the richest and the most extreme amongst us. And it’s an agenda that does nothing for our neighbors in need. Is it weird? Absolutely. But it’s also wrong, and it’s dangerous.”

“We’ve got 76 days,” he said. “That’s nothing. There will be time to sleep when you’re dead. We’re going to leave it on the field. That’s how we’ll keep moving forward. That’s how we’ll turn the page on Donald Trump. That’s how we’ll build a country where workers come first, where health care and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of your bedroom.”

“That’s how we make America a place where no child is left hungry,” Walz said, “where no community is left behind, where nobody gets told they don’t belong. That’s how we’re going to fight. And as the next president of the United States always says, when we fight [crowd: we win!] When we fight, [crowd: We win!] When we fight [crowd: We win!]”

CHICAGO — During a powerful speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg drew a stark contrast between the Republican and Democratic presidential tickets to illustrate the choice voters will face in November.

The openly gay former mayor of South Bend, Ind., has emerged as among the most high profile surrogates for the Harris-Walz campaign.

Buttigieg said Donald Trump’s decision to choose, as his vice presidential candidate “a guy like JD Vance,” the U.S. senator from Ohio, sends the message “that they are doubling down on negativity and grievance, committing to a concept of campaigning best summed up in one word: darkness.”

“The other side is appealing to what is smallest within you,” he said. “They’re telling you that greatness comes from going back to the past. They’re telling you that anyone different from you is a threat. They’re telling you that your neighbor or nephew or daughter who disagrees with you politically isn’t just wrong, but is now the enemy.”

By contrast, he said, “I believe in a better politics, one that finds us at our most decent and open and brave, the kind of politics that [Vice President] Kamala Harris and [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz are offering.”

Buttigieg explained that when he and his husband Chasten are struggling to get their young children seated and ready for dinner, “It’s the part of our day when politics seems the most distant — and yet, the makeup of our kitchen table, the existence of my family is just one example of something that was literally impossible as recently as 25 years ago, when an anxious teenager growing up in Indiana wondered if he would ever find belonging in this world.”

“This kind of life went from impossible to possible, from possible to real, from real to almost ordinary in less than half a lifetime,” he said — adding that it was, at least to some extent, thanks to politics.

“So this November, we get to choose,” Buttigieg said. “We get to choose our president. We get to choose our policies, but most of all, we will choose a better politics, a politics that calls us to our better selves and offers us a better everyday.”

He continued, “That is what Kamala Harris and Tim Walz represents. That is what Democrats represent. That is what awaits us when America decides to end Trump’s politics of darkness once and for all.”

The transportation secretary concluded his remarks by urging Americans to “embrace the leaders who are out there building bridges and reject the ones who are out there banning books.”

CHICAGO — U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D), Vermont’s first woman and first LGBTQ member of Congress, spoke exclusively with the Washington Blade shortly after her remarks before the second LGBTQ Caucus meeting on Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention.

“There’s so much energy and light,” this week, “and I think people understand that we are starved for connection,” she said. “We’re starved for connection — And it’s not just in our community.”

“It is across the country that people don’t want to live in a hateful, cynical place. They just don’t. And we have a special part in helping people to not just see the joy, but channel the joy. And I think that’s a huge part of our community.”

It was “super fun,” the congresswoman said, when she got a shout-out for her teaching background during the ceremonial roll-call vote on Tuesday, which officially made Vice President Kamala Harris the Democratic presidential nominee.

Asked to share her thoughts on her experience as an LGBTQ educator at a time when schools have become the nexus of Republican-led attacks against the community, particularly targeting queer and transgender young people, Balint said “our students across this country need us, and I mean all of us adults, to show up for them.”

“Educators are under attack” too, she said. “Librarians are under attack. And they believe — by them, I mean the MAGA, the folks who are supporting Project 2025 — they believe that somehow they can stifle who we are by going after teachers and educators and [it’s] not going to work.”

Balint continued, “We are who we are. We’re going to keep being who we are. But we, we need to show up for those teachers. We need to show up for those librarians, because they are the ones day in and day out who are standing up for our kids.”

Harris is “tremendous,” she said. “The day that [Joe] Biden endorsed [her], I endorsed [her]. I believe that she is the exact right leader we need at this moment. She has been very, very good for our community for a very long time.”

“And, you know, she’s the real deal,” Balint said. “She’s the real deal. She she shows up, she does the work, and that’s what we need.”

During the LGBTQ Caucus meeting, writer and LGBTQ activist Charlotte Clymer had noted the absence of trans Democrats in the convention’s primetime lineup featured at the United Center, arguing that congressional candidate and Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride, who would be the first trans member of Congress, should have been invited to speak.

“We have to continue to work within the Democratic Caucus and the Democratic National Committee to make sure that the face that we’re putting forward to Americans truly represents all of us,” Balint said.

“There are other groups, too, that I know feel like they wish that they were more represented as well,” she said. “And this is a work in progress.”

Balint added that “it’s one of the reasons why I am extremely excited that Sarah McBride is going to be my colleague. She’s going to win in Delaware. She’s going to do it. She’s a star, and I can’t wait to welcome her.”