Today, HRC reacted to Assemblywoman Christy Smith’s strong performance in her bid for California’s twenty-fifth congressional district.

“Tonight’s results show that voters in California’s twenty-fifth want a strong, pro-equality ally in Congress, said HRC President Alphonso David. “Smith’s message of fairness and equality and her track record championing LGBTQ equality resonated with voters and brings us one step closer to ensuring we maintain our pro-equality majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. HRC was proud to endorse Assemblywoman Smith and will continue our work to mobilize the thousands of Equality Voters in her district in her special election on May 12.”

The Human Rights Campaign proudly endorsed Christy Smith earlier this year. Smith has been an ardent supporter of LGBTQ equality while in the California State Assembly. While serving in the Assembly and as a member of the Newhall School District Board, Smith has advocated on behalf of LGBTQ students, working towards creating a more fair and welcoming education system in California. If elected, Smith has committed co-sponsoring and supporting the Equality Act, crucial federal legislation that would finally guarantee explicit protections for LGBTQ people under our nation's existing civil rights laws.

In the 2018 midterms, HRC helped register more than 32,000 voters and recruited more than 4,200 volunteers, who worked over 8,500 shifts and clocked more than 30,000 volunteer hours. In the critical final four days of the campaign, HRC staff and volunteers in get-out-the-vote efforts alone knocked on more than 80,000 doors, and held 36,400 conversations with voters at their doors and by phone on behalf of our endorsed candidates. HRC's unprecedented grassroots mobilization represented an investment of approximately $26 million to recruit volunteers, mobilize constituents, register voters and grow the organization's grassroots army in an all-out effort to pull the emergency brake on the hateful anti-LGBTQ agenda of the Trump-Pence administration and elect a Congress that would hold them accountable.