Today, HRC announced its endorsement of Assemblywoman Christy Smith in her bid to represent California’s twenty-fifth congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Christy 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, more welcoming education system in California. Smith has committed that should she be elected, she would co-sponsor and support the Equality Act, crucial federal legislation that would finally guarantee explicit protections for LGBTQ people under our nation's existing civil rights laws.

“Christy Smith has a demonstrated track record of standing up for LGBTQ people throughout her history in public service,” said HRC President Alphonso David. “As a former school board president, Smith brought her unique experience to the California Assembly and became a champion for LGBTQ students. HRC is proud to endorse her bid and will work to ensure she joins the pro-equality majority in the House of Representatives.”

“I’m incredibly honored to have earned the support of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation’s leading LGBTQ civil rights and advocacy organizations,” said Assemblywoman Christy Smith. “In Congress, I will continue to be a dedicated fighter working to tear down barriers facing the LGBTQ community and build a more equal, fair, just and inclusive society. I look forward to working shoulder to shoulder with HRC in the weeks and months ahead.”

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.