A national organization that says it is dedicated to electing LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary candidates to public office, has made endorsements to various New Jersey candidates whose sexual identity was not disclosed and who seem to be wealthy straight Democrats.
LPAC called itself “the only organization whose mission is to elect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer women and nonbinary people” and a handful of contenders in New Jersey have fit that description, but the highest profile candidates endorsed by the groups are wealthy straight centrists who have backed austerity measures and corporate interests.
Joeigh Perella, a Democrat running for a seat on the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners and a practicing dentist, would be one of just a few openly transgender women serving in elected office in New Jersey.
Woodbury Councilperson Jo Miller became the first known transgender person to serve in elected office in South Jersey on April 17, 2023. In November, the Camden County Democratic Committee deputy executive director became the first transgender Democrat elected to partisan office in New Jersey.
In 2018, Julia Fahl, whose wife, Kari Osmond, acted as her campaign manager during the race, took on a 27-year incumbent for mayor of Lambertville, and she won. Then a 27-year-old political fundraiser, Fahl’s victory made her one of the youngest mayors in New Jersey, and one of the state’s few openly gay elected officials.
Carol Rizzo was the first LGBTQ woman mayor of Neptune Township, a diverse town of more than 28,000 residents in Monmouth County, in January 2016, when she replaced Eric Houghtaling after he was elevated to the state Assembly.
Sue Fulton, a member of the first class of women to graduate from West Point, is the head of New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle Commission, She ran for Monmouth County’s board of freeholders in 2016 but lost in the general election. Fulton and her wife, the first same-sex couple to be married in West Point’s Cadet Chapel, live in Asbury Park.
Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, Governor Phil Murphy, U.S. Senator Cory Booker, and Rep. Josh Gottheimer are leading centrists whose financial advantages have allowed them to overwhelm better-qualified Democrats, but they had each been endorsed by Project LPAC.
“Sherrill, Murphy, Booker, and Gottheimer do not reflect the values and agenda supported by the working-class electorate and none of them publicly identify as a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender candidate,” said a Democrat who remarked that “if these issues were the least bit controversial they would be hiding.”
After Gina Genovese won election to the Long Hill Township Committee in 2004, homophobes lashed out but that did not stop her Republican colleagues from appointing her mayor in 2006, which made her New Jersey’s first out mayor but LPAC never endorsed her.
Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora also never got LPAC support in addition to holding office as the chief executive in the State Capitol, he previously served in the New Jersey General Assembly, where he represented the 15th Legislative District.
There are no federal protections for LGBTQ people in the workplace or housing, and state-level protections are erratic. Same-sex marriage is legal federally, but 13 states still prohibit it at the state level, making Americans one conservative Supreme Court decision away from disaster.
The wealthy straight candidates supported by LPAC have not made LGBTQ Americans fully equal under the law.
Reproductive choice and maternal support are non-negotiable values – full stop – but with the ongoing assault on these rights at the federal and state levels, it’s more important than ever to elect politicians who will put women’s protections front and center of their platforms.
All people in America — regardless of race, sexual orientation or gender identity, class, geography, or immigration status — deserve a fair shake and to be treated with dignity and respect.
LPAC says it endorses candidates who put this intersectional perspective into practice in their campaign platforms and political actions but the most prominent New Jersey .