Mark Leno, left, and Dean Trantalis
Lisa Keen | Keen News Service
lisakeen@mac.com
This year’s crop of LGBT candidates got off to a good start this month, with strong primary victories in a gubernatorial contest and several Congressional races and a mayoral match up in a city with a growing LGBT population.
Dean Trantalis won office on Tuesday, March 13, as mayor of Fort Lauderdale, a mid-size Florida city just 30 miles north of its more famously gay sister, South Beach. Trantalis won the special election despite some tactics by his opponents aimed at deriding him over his sexual orientation.
Here in Texas, as we reported last week, openly-lesbian former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez came out on top in the nine-candidate Texas Democratic Primary for governor. Four out of nine openly LGBT candidates for U.S. House seats from Texas advanced their races to runoffs set for May 22, while one gay candidate won the Democratic nomination in his race for the state Senate and eight LGBT candidates either had no opponent or advanced to either the runoff or the general election.
Fort Lauderdale
In Fort Lauderdale, Trantalis won his mayoral seat with 64 percent of the vote. He will be sworn in March 20.
Among the nation’s mid-sized cities, Fort Lauderdale has, in recent years, become the one with the highest proportion of same-sex households compared to households overall.
But the previous two mayors of that city have been less than supportive of equal rights for LGBT citizens.
Trantalis, 64, a real estate attorney and member of the City Commission, was involved with passage of a Broward County law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. And then decided to run for mayor.
According to the Sun-Sentinel, the campaign was unusually ugly for Fort Lauderdale. Opponents of Trantalis distributed campaign flyers with images of Trantalis photo-shopped to make it appear he was wearing flamboyant clothing and makeup. Trantalis’ opponent in the runoff, Commission Vice Mayor Bruce Roberts, essentially admitted responsibility for the flyers though he claimed they did not convey any anti-gay intent.
The Sun-Sentinel said voters at the polls on Tuesday preferred Trantalis because “they were convinced Trantalis would help guard against further over-development, and would ensure the city is prepared with sewer pipes and other infrastructure to accommodate it.”
Another openly gay man, Steve Glassman, won a seat on the Fort Lauderdale City Commission Tuesday, with 61 percent of the vote.
California
The results bode well for LGBT candidates in the rest of the country, including in San Francisco, where an openly-gay candidate is running for mayor.
Among the nation’s largest cities, San Francisco has the highest percentage of same-sex households compared to all households.
Mark Leno, a former state senator and former supervisor, is up against seven other candidates, all seeking to fill the remaining two years left in the term of Mayor Ed Lee, who died suddenly last December. The special election is slated for June 5.
Six hours drive south of San Francisco, the incumbent mayor of Long Beach is gearing up for re-election. The local paper, the Press-Telegram, called openly-gay Mayor Robert Garcia’s bid for a second term a “fait accompli.”
His primary is April 10.
Texas wrap-up
In Texas, Lupe Valdez has been a prominent figure since becoming the first lesbian sheriff of Dallas County in 2005. She was re-elected three times but resigned in December, the day of the filing deadline, to run for governor.
Valdez won 42.9 percent of the Democratic Primary vote, so must face her closest competitor, Andrew White, son of former Gov. Mark White (who won 27 percent) on May 22 to secure the party’s nomination.
A second openly-gay candidate in the Texas Democratic gubernatorial primary March 6, Dallas businessman Jeffrey Payne, garnered 4.8 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott won more votes in his primary than all the Democratic candidates combined.
Four out of nine openly-LGBT candidates for U.S. House seats from Texas advanced in their primaries March 6 and will face run off contests on May 22. They include attorney Lorie Burch (3rd Congressional District, Dallas), minister Mary Wilson (21st District, San Antonio and Austin), Iraq War veteran Gina Ortiz Jones (23rd District, San Antonio to El Paso), and public affairs liaison Eric Holguin (27th District, Corpus Christi and Gulf Coast).
Four other Democrats and one Republican LGBT candidate for the U.S. House from Texas lost their primaries.
In Texas State Senate primaries, three out of four openly LGBT candidates advanced, as did eight of 11 State House candidates (though five were unopposed).
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