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Right now, the United States has only one senator, six U.S. representatives, and one governor who identify as LGBTQ. That may change in November.

There are currently more than 400 non-incumbent LGBTQ candidates running for office at all levels of government, according to the Victory Institute, an organization that supports LGBTQ people running for office. That’s more than at any other time in American history—and up from the approximately 250 that ran in 2016. While some face deep-pocketed opposition, and others have early polls on their side, all of these women could help change history if elected. Here are 16 LGBTQ non-incumbent candidates running for governor or Congress.

Alexandra Chandler

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Alexandra Chandler for Congress


Former military intelligence analyst Alexandra Chandler came out as transgender in 2006 and expected to be asked to leave her post when she told her supervisor. Instead, she told the Advocate, he and the Office of Naval Intelligence supported her decision to transition and gave her the greatest gift: “Treating me like everyone else.” Now she’s running on a platform of progressive ideals including paid family leave and affordable health care.

“Being a transgender woman has taught me a few things about the divisions in our society,” she wrote in the Washington Post last year. “Many people believe fear and hate in the United States have risen to such levels that these challenges are impossible to overcome. But my story demonstrates that good is possible when you look across our divisions as I have.”


Lupe Valdez

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Lupe Valdez, a four-term Dallas County sheriff, clinched the Democratic nomination for Texas governor back in May, and if she wins in November, she will be the state's first Latina governor and first openly gay governor. Though she came under scrutiny while sheriff—she was named in a Department of Justice lawsuit accusing one of the jails she oversaw of human rights violations, and an inmate in her jurisdiction died after an altercation with authorities in 2015—Valdez has portrayed herself as a “compassionate cop” during the race. After Texas’s current governor, her Republican opponent Greg Abbott, failed to condemn the Trump administration "zero tolerance" policy on illegal border crossings, Valdez called him "Trump's puppet" in a news conference. She said, “We need to go back to who we are as Texans, as Americans, as human beings.”


Lauren Baer

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After Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, Lauren Baer, a former senior advisor to Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, and to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, moved with her wife and daughter back to Palm Beach County, Florida, where she grew up and where her family owns a furniture business, to run for office in her home district. “I felt our values and institutions were under threat, and I knew I needed to stand up and fight,” she told Cosmopolitan earlier this year. Baer is rallying for affordable health care, gun safety measures, and job creation, in hopes of unseating Republican Brian Mast.


Gina Ortiz Jones

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The former Air Force intelligence officer nabbed the Democratic nomination in March when she beat out four other candidates. Jones grew up in the district, and when asked why she decided to put her name on the ballot, she told HuffPost, “There’s a point where you just ask yourself the question, ‘Can I afford not to do this?’ I think like a lot of women, you’re done assuming that somebody is going to do for you that which you can do yourself.” If she wins in November, Jones will represent a slew of firsts for a Texas congressperson: first lesbian, first Filipina-American, and first Iraq War veteran.


Angie Craig

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Angie Craig, a former newspaper reporter and Fortune 500 executive, is back for another election in Minnesota’s second district. She lost her race for the same seat to Republican talk show host Jason Lewis in 2016 by only two points. Now Craig’s district is one to watch: the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has made it one of their top targets to flip this year. “There is energy like I’ve never, ever seen before here,” she told the Twin Cities Pioneer Press after she won the Democratic nomination in April.


Cynthia Nixon

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The actress and activist best known as Miranda from Sex and the City will go up against well-funded incumbent Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic nomination in September. Nixon, who has made the New York City subway one of her main issues, is also championing causes like marijuana legalization, income disparity, and public education. “We want our government to work again, on health care, ending mass incarceration, fixing our broken subway,” she said when she announced her campaign. “We are sick of politicians who care more about headlines and power than they do about us. It can’t just be business as usual anymore.”


Katie Hill

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After Donald Trump won the presidency, a friend joked that Katie Hill, who runs a homeless-services nonprofit, should run for office against Republican incumbent Steve Knight in an attempt to flip the House. But 30-year-old Hill took the comments seriously and entered the race. The national Democratic Party also had their sights set on CA-25 (Hillary Clinton won the 25th in 2016) and the race has since attracted national attention. “I’m young, I’m a woman, I’m LGBTQ. I’m one of the California seats that’s going to be getting tons and tons of attention and I’m a new face for politics,” Hill, who identifies as bisexual, told The New Yorker. “We’re providing an inside look into what politics looks like in this post-Trump moment.”


Christine Hallquist

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The Victory Fund recently endorsed Christine Hallquist, the former CEO of Vermont Electric Coop, and awarded her the Game Changer designation. If she wins the Democratic primary in August (she’s up against three other candidates), she’ll be the first transgender gubernatorial nominee of a major American political party. Hallquist transitioned while at Vermont Electric in 2015. “I was sure I was going to lose my job,” she recently told CNN. “I was sure I was going to lose respect. But that didn’t happen. This describes the beauty of Vermont. I’m at the point where I can’t do enough to give back to Vermont.”


Lorie Burch

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Lisa Means


Lorie Burch, an attorney in her home district, captured the Democratic nomination in May after a runoff. Her district hasn’t elected a Democrat since the 1960s, but she recently told an NBC affiliate, “I think you see a lot of people who don't feel like they actually have a seat at the table. And so, for the LGBTQ community this is huge to have people that are not only advocating for them, but actually at the table who understand what it is like to walk in their shoes.”


Kerri Evelyn Harris

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Military vet and community organizer Kerri Evelyn Harris is challenging Democrat incumbent Sen. Tom Carper in the Sept. 6 primary. Her policies skew further left than his (she supports universal pre-K, single-payer health care, stricter Wall Street regulation, and a $15 minimum wage). “The average person in Delaware looks like me,” she said in an interview with Splinter. “I know those struggles. I’ve lived those struggles, even now running the campaign. I drive a beater 1999 Volkswagen, and I could fix the car but I don’t have time to fix the car. I know what everybody’s going through, and I’m going through it with them as I’m running the campaign. I am with them. It’s a humbling experience, to say the least.”


Kelly Fryer

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Balfour Walker


A former pastor and CEO of YWCA Southern Arizona, Kelly Fryer said she decided to enter the gubernatorial race after speaking at the 2017 Women’s March in Arizona. “We need leaders who are not just in this for the sake of their career, but who really are putting people first,” she told the Arizona Republic. She’ll face off against two other Democratic candidates in the Aug. 28 primary.


Joan Greene

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Celina Medina


Joan Greene, an Arizona small business owner, is running to unseat incumbent Rep. Andy Biggs, who has previously called gay marriage “an affront to millions of Americans who believe in marriage between a man and a woman.” She’ll face one other Democratic candidate in the Aug. 28 primary. “We have to build our community back,” she told Broadly. “[Biggs] hasn’t done anything positive for it and is ripping it apart.” She’s running on a platform calling for single-payer health care and debt-free higher education.


Sharice Davids

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Shawnee attorney and former MMA fighter Sharice Davids served as a White House fellow in Obama’s administration. Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk nation, will face five other Democratic candidates in the Aug. 7 primary, but if she wins the November election, she could become the first Native woman elected to Congress and Kansas’s first openly gay representative. “Until it got pointed out to me it wasn’t necessarily part of my thinking, but the gravity of it really hit me recently,” Davids told the Kansas City Star. “It’s amazing how long we’ve been in a country, but we’re still having firsts.”


Jamie McLeod-Skinner

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Jamie McLeod-Skinner, the first lesbian elected to the Santa Clara City Council, won the Democratic primary in May and will run against 10-term incumbent GOP representative Rep. Greg Walden and independent Mark Roberts in November. She calls herself a “rural Democrat,” and told The Bulletin, “The first job is to show up. That’s the key to good governance. I think this is a weak point for Greg Walden.”


Kathy Ellis

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Kathy Ellis Campaign


A psychotherapist and addiction counselor, Kathy Ellis decided to run for Congress after attending the Women’s March on Washington in 2017. “I tell people all the time—and in my work—that you have to get into action, you have to do something. So I decided to follow my own advice,” she told Mother Jones.


Brianna Wu

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The queer co-founder of video game developer Giant Spacekat became well known in 2014 as one of the main targets of Gamergate, an online harassment campaign against women in gaming, and joined the race last year. She’ll face two other Democrats, including longstanding incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch, in the Sept. 4 primary. In an interview with Autostraddle, she explained her decision to run: “I was just in shock after Trump won. I kept asking my husband, ‘If I don’t run now, when?’ It’s pretty similar to why I stood up to Gamergate. Something terrible was happening, and it’s not my nature to sit out a fight.”


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Jessica Goodman

Jessica Goodman is the New York Times bestselling author of young adult thrillers They Wish they Were Us, They’ll Never Catch Us, and The Counselors. She is the former op-ed editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, and was part of the 2017 team that won a National Magazine Award in personal service. She has also held editorial positions at Entertainment Weekly and HuffPost, and her work has been published in outlets like Glamour, Condé Nast Traveler, Elle, and Marie Claire.