by MK Scott
I always enjoy summers in Seattle, especially when it includes attending the annual Victory Fund Party with local LGBTQ candidates and chatting with Victory Fund’s President, former mayor of Houston, Annise Parker. We chatted on zoom about a week later. I wanted to ask her about what candidates to watch out for and will she ever run for public office again. Here is what she had to to say.
MK Scott: OK, so tell me about the open candidates that are currently running this year.
Annise Parker: Well, we have a lot of candidates running for reelection. And so that’s always our priority is we want the people who are there and serving to go back. But then our next favorite candidates are the ones that are starting to move up. So, Danica Roem is running up from the State House to the State Senate. Sarah McBride in Delaware is trying to move up from State Senate to the U.S. House of Representatives. One of our congressional candidates, first ever endorsed trans congressional candidate. She didn’t have an easy route, but if there is any trans elected official out there that is ready to move up, Sarah’s the one and she will make it a very spirited campaign. We do have Other congressional candidates, which is, you know, everybody focuses on the congressional candidates and those are important. But so the new ones would be Sarah, Will Rollins in California, Jamie McLeod Skinner up in Oregon. But, you know, and then our new incumbents, We’re not worried about Robert Garcia down in California and new incumbent, Eric Sorensen. And then the ones in swing seats like Angie Craig (MN) and Sharice Davids (KS) and Chris Pappas (NH)that are always going to be competitive. So those are exciting. But then where we do the most work, because even though we love endorsing congressional candidates and we can get excited about them, Everybody pays attention to those races. So the races that no one else pays attention to are the fun ones for us. My favorite candidate right now, His primary was in August (He Won!). It’s Fabian Nelson, who ran to be the first out state legislator ever in the state of Mississippi. There’s two states left. Mississippi and Louisiana. Louisiana still baffles me. But Fabian is running in the area around Jackson, Mississippi, and we’ve been very involved in his race and trying to get him across the finish line. I’ll tell you a funny story about Fabian. One of the reasons that he’s my favorite, he’s a He wasn’t excited about running. He was tempted and we had to go down and kind of lay out the opportunity and help him explore whether there was a path to victory because, you know, we want to see the path to victory too. And then we jumped in the race and then Jackson, Jackson’s been having a lot of problems lately. It’s where the state came in and took over their judiciary. You know, trying to do a lot of state control of local government. but they let their trash pickup contract lapse. And so on his own, Fabian went out and he rented a big trailer, hitched it to his pickup truck and started going door to door in his new, you know, his district, picking up trash for senior citizens and people with disabilities, not knowing how long the garbage, you know, the lapse was going to be. And, you know, he just, bumping cans and then asking if he could put a sign in their yard, of course. And the story got back to him. One of his opponents went up to a house and knocked on the door and pointed to Fabian’s sign and said, you know, that guy is gay. And the woman said, I did not know that. Absolutely didn’t know it. And she was a little shocked. And he goes, well, are you still going to support him? And she goes, well, son, 80 years A straight politician has never picked up my trash. So yeah, I’m going to support it.
You know, that’s the kind of that’s the kind of hustle. You know, one of the things that we know very well about our candidates is and this is something that hurt us during covid. And I mean, Danica won on the doors. Yeah. Fabian’s going to win on the doors. We have to have those We have to get in front of them. We have to humanize ourselves. They have to see us. You can’t campaign on Zoom and by mail if you’re a non-traditional candidate. Other than Danica and Adam Eban, who’s running for re-election in the Senate in Virginia, we have six House candidates who are running, including the first black LGBTQ men who would be elected. They all, all six of our house candidates won their primaries, including Rosie Henson and Josh Cole. We’re excited about Virginia is let’s go toe to toe with Yonkin. You know, Mr. I want to be president, but I’m going to pretend I don’t on the backs of trans people. So, um, The Senate is barely in Democratic hands. The House is barely in Republican hands. And our candidates can help tip it in the progressive direction there.
MK: I’m glad that Jane McLeod Skinner is rerunning again. That’s great. She came close. What do you think her chances are this time?
AP: Well, we wouldn’t have endorsed her if we didn’t think that she had a path to victory. We were frustrated. She’s a hard campaigner. She works hard. She engages in a presidential year with a little bit of a Democratic boost. This should be a better year for her.
MK: Well, it also is nice that you didn’t have just one Gay Governor, but you had two. or actually maybe more governors. You got the Massachusetts one and then you got the Oregon one.
AP: Well, we already had Jared Polis (Colorado), so now we have three. The results came in earlier in the clock, but also earlier in the evening because Maura had a commanding lead and just crushed it. Tina had a much tougher race, a three-way race. Mara had a two-way race and it was clear early on. So the fact that Tina was able to navigate it and pull it out is remarkable.
MK: Also, I’m very excited about the Seattle City Council. There are several LGBT candidates. There are. We haven’t had an LGBT candidate since Tom Rasmussen when he retired.
AP: Joy Hollingsworth is one for Seattle District And I think in my notes is top fundraiser in any city council district. There were a number of other candidates that applied to us. We’ve been looking at their races to see a path to victory.
MK: Now in regard to what was really surprising is that we even have, turns out that Idaho is like, is red, very, very red. In fact, Idaho has just been working with or trying to get medical records of their residents that are, or to get help from Washington State to prosecute their own residents on abortion.
AP: Yeah, like Washington state’s going to help. And this is you know, this is why when you know, you. I spent a long time in government, I spent 18 years in government, and I believed in the work that I did, and I tried very hard to get up and do the right thing every day. And These are a lot of these legislature, and I think there is a difference in municipal government, because you actually get up and do things every day. A lot of legislatures, a lot of legislators, they can just muck around and stuff. They don’t actually have responsibilities. But these initiatives, they have real consequences on people’s lives, but they also are making it very stark and clear that Handmaid’s Tale is a book, but there are people in government in the United States, including Idaho, including Texas, that would like to see a world like that. And if these kinds of initiatives don’t galvanize voters, I don’t know what will. In my years in politics, I have learned that you want to excite and motivate people, but fear is the most powerful motivator. And people ought to be scared in what the American Taliban is trying to do in state legislatures. We did have a candidate last year in Idaho. We had a Republican candidate, Dom Gelsomino, but unsuccessful. We only had two Republican candidates last year. He was one of them.
MK: You were mayor of Houston. Do you have any plans to run for higher office?
AP: Not any longer. After I left the mayor’s office, I was contemplating making a lateral move and running for county executive position. I liked and respected the Republican incumbent. And he was planning on running for one last term. And I thought, I said, I’m just going to wait. He actually got taken out in 2018 by someone who shouldn’t have been able to win, I’m just going to say. But then I went to work for Victory and have not looked back. until last year, and I thought about I got so frustrated with my state leadership. And I thought about making a statewide race. I’m not interested in being in Congress. I’m not interested in like the House or the Senate. I am. I am wired to be an executive. Yes. And so I was looking at actually land commissioner and state comptroller. The Land Commissioner oversees all public lands in the state and beaches, borders, beaches for coastal resiliency. And they also administer disaster recovery funds and so forth. But I couldn’t see a path to victory for a Democrat. I used the same consulting team three times, or three times same consulting team I had for nine races. And I met with my brain trust, and they said, you can’t win. So, then I actually went and talked to two other different political consulting teams, and they all said, no, Democrats going to win. All right. So so I said, I don’t need to run to make a point. I like what I’m doing at Victory.
To inquire more about the key races or give to the Victory Fund, please visit victoryfund.org.
