by MK Scott
It had been 3 years since I last seen
Annise Parker, the former out mayor from Houston and currently the
president of the Victory Party Fund, in Seattle. The last two summer
parties were canceled due to COVID. We chatted a little and made
arrangement for a zoom interview a few days later.
MK Scott: Tell me about some of the
open candidates that are currently running this year.
Annise Parker: So, well, there’s more
than a thousand out LGBTQ candidates running across America.
It’s slightly a larger number
than two years ago. We have endorsed a little more than 300 of those candidates so far,
although we’ll have another batch endorsement as we get close to November. I’m going to give
you two answers: one, you know, there’s some really exciting congressional candidates, but
everybody pays attention to your congressional candidates. And then there are some
interesting down ballot races as well, and we’re really the only national organization that engages
in down ballot races. But for the congressional races, you might want to highlight just a
handful; one, Becca Balint is running for congress out of Vermont. They have only one member of
congress, two senators, but a representative. She is the first woman, and obviously the
first LBGTQ person elected there, but it is a statewide race. So we are fully backing Balint, and
right now she’s in a two way race. She’s the president of the senate, she’s in a
two way race with Lieutenant Geller, also a woman. Vermont will send in their first woman to
congress, which is great, but we want it to be Becca. Daniel Hernandez, who’s a great story
running for congress in Arizona. He is the person who, as an intern, saved Gabby Gifford’s life. He was … after he was an intern for her he
was elected to the school board there. Then he was elected as the
state representative, and now he’s running for congress. It’s a
highly contested race, but he’s contending, and we’re all excited
about Daniel. And then I’ll also highlight Robert Garcia who is the
current mayor of Long Beach running for congress. He should, you
know, they have, California has the
single primaries, and two of them end up in the end, but he
creamed everybody in round one and should be the next member of
congress from our community, we’re very
excited. On the other hand we have both Sharice Davids and Mondaire Jones who had their, who are
incumbents, who had their districts just eviscerated through redistricting and are in tough
battles to return. They’re both really excellent members of congress. There are more than a hundred
out candidates for congress this year. We’ve endorsed about a dozen of those. Lots of them
don’t have really a path to victory, they’re viable candidates, but it’s exciting to see
so many people willing to step up and get out there and put themselves in front of others.
MK: I’m very excited about the
governor’s race in Oregon. You’ve got Tina, Tina Kotek, an Openly
lesbian running, following Kate Brown, who was openly bi.
AP: Yeah, it’s a legacy seat. To be
already at this stage of our movement to have a potential legacy seat
in a governor’s race is astounding and exciting, and Tina’s a
great candidate. It is going to be a very tough race for two reasons;
one, Oregon, like Texas, has unlimited financing. There’s no cap on
what you can contribute to a campaign. So the race could get quickly
really expensive. And you have Tina as the democrat, you have a
republican, and then you have someone running as an independent who
is apparently a republican and then became a democrat and now running
against an independent, who has already been like the statewide. So
you have, and you can definitely be a spoiler in the race. It’s
kind of hard to tell how much of an impact, but Three
wealth financed campaigns sort of covering the waterfront. Tina
has been the, like the speaker of the house for about eight years,
which is a long time for serving a leadership position. Clearly has
the respect of her colleagues, and must have great political skills,
cat hurting skills, I would say, because that’s a tough position.
And she crushed it in the primary, but with the three way race
everybody is going to have to pay attention and show up in Oregon to
get her across the finish line. The other big governor’s race,
Gerry Paul is running for re-election and we’re looking forward to
his re-election, but Maura Healey, Attorney General of Massachusetts is going to be the next
governor of Massachusetts. She is well ahead in the democratic
primary. It’s an August primary. And Massachusetts has elected
several moderate republicans, and the current governor is a moderate
republican, but it looks like Maura should have an excellent shot in
November. And absolutely would be a great governor, but also has, I
don’t know if she has any ambitions, but I can tell you that she’s
a presidential caliber candidate. And one of the goals of victory
after the last presidential campaign we were, we got friendly with
Pete Buttigieg, and he did a good job, but it’s a heavy lift going
from a relatively small city to a presidential contender. So we
absolutely believe it’s imperative to elect more governors, more
big city mayors, more senators, folks who have the, you know,
objective status to move up.
MK: And then also speaking of previous
candidates. We chatted about about the chances for Beto O’Rourke.
AP: Beto is an excellent candidate. He
came close to taking out Ted Cruz. His presidential ambitions hurt him,
the race for president. He jumped out there and kind of fizzled out. But his campaign is
ramping up here in Texas, with
a lot of money and this is a republican leaning state for the
statewide election. But, you know, don’t discount’s Abbott's ability to do something stupid, or us,
unfortunately, you know, we’ve had three of the most horrific mass shootings in American
history in Texas with the Uvalde
shooting the most recent. But we had a shooting in the
Santa Fe school which is just outside of Houston. We had the big Walmart shooting in El Paso. So
an election could turn on something like that. Hopefully it won’t happen.
MK: One thing about Texas, it’s
pretty much like the center point of everything. You’ve got gun control, you’ve got abortion,
you’ve got the anti-trans bills, you’ve got, you know, the anti-gay bills and all that all in the
state of Texas....
AP: You know the thing about Texas is
the big cities, three of the largest cities in America are, three of the top ten cities are in
Texas; Houston, San Antonio and Dallas, and you know, Austin somewhere not far behind. So, and El
Paso, and they’re all blue islands in the big toxic red sea. So Texas is not a monolith, but the
rural vote is stronger, often times than the urban votes, and it’s the sort of suburban women’s
vote that will decide this election. And I hope they’re terrified because the Supreme Court is lost for
another generation as it stands. And if they care about access to abortion, if they care about
the attacks on schools and what’s being taught in schools, if they care about their LBGTQ family
members then they need to show up and vote out the turn offers of which Greg Abbott is one.
MK: Beto, he went to that press
conference and going after Abbott. Do you think that helped his
chances or hurt his chances?
AP: I don’t think it hurt his
chances. I don’t know if it helped it very much because I don’t
think he, I don’t think it was as effective
as it could’ve been, but it certainly inspired democrats who feel like, you know, Abbott … Abbott
is in his bunker. Beto is out there talking to people, he goes everywhere, he campaigns
everywhere. That was a strength of his, the last time he ran statewide against Cruz, his willingness
to go to the small town diners and have real conversations. Abbott stays in his
bunker and doesn’t expose himself to that. So, you know, Beto being there and calling him on it
was important, but it was a game changer for the campaign, and he, you know, I think he
could’ve been, I think it could’ve been orchestrated a little bit better.
MK: Do you think gay rights in marriage
will be protected by the Equality Amendment?
AP: Well, I don’t know that the
equality act will pass, but the Marriage Equality act, Senator Baldwin is whipping that as we speak.
And I have every reason to believe that the democrats will be able to pick up, considering
the number of republicans who voted for Marriage and Health that
they will be able to put at
least ten to get us there. The alternative is, you know, I know that
there are some other riders
saying, oh, you know, it’s not really an issue, we shouldn’t have
to deal with it. When you have a
sitting Supreme Court justice say; this is what we need to do next,
and we need to take away
marriage, we need to take away this and that. Then you have someone
like Ted Cruz, Senator Cruz saying; yeah, we need to do this, and
other senators jumping on, it is an issue that needs to be addressed
because just like in a similar way, but also standing on its own to
the abortion issue,
where we are now because the Supreme Court really has states where
you can get an abortion and
states where you can’t, we’re going to end up with states if they
proceed because all these, you
know, Griswold, Bergenfield and Lawrence were all under guarded a
right to privacy. If that goes away then you’re going to end up
with states where you can get
married, it’s very much like before Obergefell, but what do
you do with a million people who have been married since then
and are full faith and credit clause as interpreted in the constitution. We recognize marriages
from other states. This will codify that. It won’t standardize our relationships and our
ability to marry across the country. There will still be state differences, but it will force all
states to recognize marriage. And it will affirm that the federal government, as it did after the Windsor
decision, will recognize marriages. It’s not perfect, but it’s a really important step. Because
it’ll be chaos if you just assemble marriages that way; well, I’m married, but my friends over here
can’t be. How do you deal with that? So, apparently Justice Thomas
doesn’t care, but some people do.
MK: Do you think in order to be able to
rectify Roe V. Wade do you think they could probably do an amendment
on that?
AP: Well, I mean, clearly you get
through the house, but you can’t get it through the senate. Marriage is a much easier issue in a
lot of ways, I mean, marriage is a contract law. And it’s not, while there are certain people who are
offended by same gender marriage others recognize it as both an emotional issue but a contract
law issue. So it’s fundamentally different than abortion. And I’m fairly hopeful that at least
this, again, it’s not, it won’t make it, you’ll still have, if
the Supreme Court goes where we think it’s
going to go, you’ll still have states where you can’t get married, but if you want to get married
you can just go across state lines and take care of that. Been there, done that. I had to go to
California to get married when I couldn’t get married in Texas, so.
MK: There were some people that were at
the party that were important including Danica Rohm. Your thoughts on Danica?
AP: You know, Danica is an amazing
person. She is an inspiring candidate and a very capable elected official. She is running for,
she’s been a state representative, she’s been running for state senate in Virginia. And Danica would be
the first to say this, what is important about candidates like Danica, she was the first, not the
first trans person elected, but the first elected to a state house here in the United States, but
the important thing is she’s not going to be the last, and she wasn’t. The next cycle, I think we
elected three more, and then we elected more, and she would only be the, she would be the second
trans state senator after Sarah
McBride of Delaware, so that’s the important message of
Danica. You need people to stand up and be the first as long as
they’re not the last. And she’s a great example of that, and she
doesn’t, she’s amazingly generous in going around supporting other candidates and
supporting the community. And it is more important to have trans candidates when they’re at the
tip of the spear of anti-LBGTQ legislation. The culture war folks are targeting the trans
community. Trump did it when he kicked trans service members out of the military. Betsy
DeVos, the Education Secretary stripping away the Obama era
support for trans students. Now you see republican
legislatures across the country with a plethora of anti-trans bills. We’re never going elect;
you’re not going to have a legislature where the LGBTQ community is in the majority much less
than trans elected representatives. We always need allies. But the ability to be in the
chamber and speak to your own life experience and your own reality is transformative. And it may
not make a difference the first time, but over time, and we at Victory play the long game, it
absolutely matters.
MK: There was also our two local
lesbian senators, Emily Randall and Claire Wilson.
AP: You know, I think Claire is in good
shape. I think Emily, just again, the
issue of redistricting and being what happens is
a little bit more of an uphill battle. But they do a great job. They’re real constituents and
they’re exciting candidates. We’re going to miss Kate Brown.I mean not only is she a very capable
and effective public servant, she’s a heck of a nice person. And she cares deeply about her
constituents, but she also, again, understands the power of representation, her willingness to be
open about her sexual orientation, even though married to a man in a very, you know, from the
outside, a very mainstream relationship, being willing to embrace that she’s bisexual. And I’m
leaning into that, it has opened the doors for many candidates in other places, and
certainly the excellent job that she has done, I mean, Tina Kotek doesn’t have an easy path, she is,
you know, she doesn’t have to run to say I’m going to rescue the state. She could run to say I’m
going to continue the great policies and we’re going to continue to get better.
MK: My last question. I wanted to know
does Kate Brown, was she one of the victims of a recall campaign? And also Jenny Durkan was
also, they were trying to do a recall campaign for Jenny Durkan as well, and I know they did one
for Sam Adams down in Portland as well.
AP: Some of my constituents wanted to
do one for me too. It didn’t get off the ground.
MK: So the question is why do they
usually target the LGBTQ candidates for recall campaigns?
AP: Okay, I think you’ve answered
your own question. It’s because we are LBGTQ. And there are certainly folks who, you know, but
are offended by our very existence. The organizer behind, the person
behind most of the anti-LGBTQ, the organizer here in Houston, is
obsessed with, I mean, literally he says things like I pollute the
gene pool. So they target us. Again, if you look at, you know, we’re
not … better or worse as public officials. I mean I happen to think
that there’s so few of us that we actually tend to over perform
because it’s harder for us to get there. But we are targeted simply
because of who we are. That’s just … yeah, so …Clearly, if we
do things that offend people, and Adams had some legal issues that
are, some issues that came to light that she had to address. But
there were no scandals in my a administration, there were no scandals
that I know of in Kate Brown’s administration. Durkan was attacked
because it was a Catch 22 situation, she was attacked from the left
and the right. Protests. That’s the nature of the job.
