Today, the Human Rights Campaign announced its endorsement of eight pro-equality candidates in the Florida State Legislature.

Florida is one of 29 states in the country that lack explicit state-level protections for all LGBTQ people. Of the endorsed candidates, all identify as LGBTQ and all but two are people of color. The slate also includes Shevrin Jones who would become the first black queer person elected to the Florida State Senate after he made history becoming the first black queer person in the Florida House of Representatives.

“Right now, over 770,000 LGBTQ Floridians live in a patchwork of protections,” said HRC Associate Regional Campaign Director Ryan Wilson.“Driving from Miami to Pensacola, an LGBTQ person would have different rights in every town, city or county they drove through. That must change, and while the Bostock ruling has provided some workplace protections, LGBTQ Floridians are still at risk of discrimination in housing, education, public accommodations or businesses. In the coming weeks, HRC will mobilize the over 3.9 million Equality Voters across the state to ensure we have the strongest slate of pro-equality candidates to elect in November as possible..”

Today’s endorsements include:

• Shevrin Jones (SD-35)
• Joshua Hicks (HD-11)
• Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (HD-49)
• Rep. Jennifer Webb (HD-69)
• Michele Rayner (HD-70)
• Jasmen Rogers- Shaw (HD-95)
• Javier Estevez (HD-105)
• Ricky Junquera (HD-118)

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 worked 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. In 2020, our engagement and mobilization efforts will only deepen. HRC will have at least 45 full-time staff in seven priority states (AZ, MI, NV, OH, PA, TX, and WI) and an additional 20 staff focused on a second tier of states and districts.