The gay mayor of California's second largest city — San Diego — breezed through Super Tuesday's primary ballot and is poised to be reelected in November.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria led a field of five candidates for the city's top office. At deadline Wednesday morning, the San Diego elections office showed Gloria with 50.88% of the vote, based on preliminary returns.
"When we launched this campaign a year ago, the goal was clear: to finish the vision. Tonight, San Diego has spoken loud and clear—they're rooting for us to keep up the fight in the general election, to keep pushing for that vision," Gloria told his supporters Wednesday morning in an emailed pitch for donations.
He will face off in November against the second highest vote-getter, police officer Larry Turner, who had 24.3%, according to unofficial results. Although the city race is nonpartisan, Gloria is a Democrat and Turner is an independent. The big issue in the campaign has been what to do with the city's large population living on the streets.
A supporter of Gloria's reelection campaign filed a lawsuit challenging Turner's residency requirement to run for office. The judge overseeing the case had put off a decision until after the primary.
In national election news, a Republican-backed group spent more than $950,000 to promote a Black lesbian prosecutor bid for the Democratic nomination to be North Carolina's next attorney general.
Meanwhile, one of three out women in the U.S. Senate announced this week she was leaving the job "at the end of the year" rather than run for reelection.
And a Log Cabin Republicans leader said he expects there could be "six or seven" gay Republicans from California as Donald Trump delegates to the party's presidential nominating convention in Wisconsin in July.
A lesbian Democrat came out well ahead in a field of 10 candidates seeking to represent Texas Congressional District 32. And with 50.1% of the vote, based on unofficial returns, state Representative Julie Johnson appears to have just barely squeaked through without the need for a runoff.
The LGBTQ Victory Fund, the national group that promotes out candidates for office, had endorsed more than 50 LGBTQ candidates on the ballot in Tuesday's primary — 32 in California, 13 in Texas, four in North Carolina, two each in Tennessee and Vermont, and one each in Colorado and Arkansas.
In Texas, bisexual candidate Molly Cook appears to have forced a runoff for a state Senate seat in the Houston area. Cook came in second with 20% of the vote to the frontrunner's 39%, based on preliminary returns.
In one of the more bizarre developments, the News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina reported Saturday that a Republican-funded super PAC spent almost $1 million in independent expenditures promoting black queer attorney general candidate Satana Deberry. It likely helped Deberry land in second out of three candidates in the Democratic primary for the North Carolina attorney general position. Deberry earned 33% of the Democratic votes Tuesday night, falling too far behind frontrunner Congressmember Jeff Jackson, who had 55%, according to unofficial results.
Meanwhile, bisexual U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) announced March 5 that she will not seek reelection this year. Sinema won election as a Democrat. But she turned independent two years ago and appeared to be struggling for early support ahead of Arizona's U.S. Senate race this year. Sinema cited rancor in Congress for her departure: "Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done," Sinema stated in a post on X, "I will leave the Senate at the end of this year."
A message for Arizonans from Senator Kyrsten Sinema pic.twitter.com/1XWFSWgGdh
— Kyrsten Sinema (@SenatorSinema) March 5, 2024
Senator Laphonza Butler (D-California), a Black lesbian who was appointed to replace the late senator Dianne Feinstein after Feinstein died last September, will leave the Senate when California elects its new senator in November. Butler had decided not to run in the Senate race, which will see Congressmember Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) face off against Republican retired baseball star Steve Garvey.
Lesbian Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) will run for reelection in November, against a Republican candidate to be chosen in August.
And Charles Moran, president of the national LGBTQ Log Cabin Republicans, predicted there would be "six to seven" gay delegates from California, alone, supporting Trump in July at the Republican National Convention. Moran said the "overwhelming majority" of Log Cabin members — in "informal polling" — are endorsing Trump for president.
Updated, 3/7/24: This article has been corrected to state that Texas legislative candidate Molly Cook identifies as bisexual.
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