Today, the Human Rights Campaign announced the endorsement of champions of equality running for the Colorado State Legislature.

Decades of advocacy and hard work by One Colorado, LGBTQ rights advocates and elected leaders have made Colorado a national leader on LGBTQ equality. Today’s endorsement of 12 candidates for the Colorado State Legislature mark the next step of our efforts to support continued progress and elect as many pro-equality allies as possible to ensure all LGBTQ Coloradans have full legal equality.

“With LGBTQ protections under threat by the Trump administration and in state houses across the country, now is not the time to let up,” said HRC Deputy Campaigns Director Hope Jackson. “We need to ensure the Colorado General Assembly remains a friend to the LGBTQ community and a national leader in advancing equality. Between now and November, we are laser focused on mobilizing the 200,000 LGBTQ Coloradans and 1.4 million Equality Voters throughout the state to ensure these and other pro-equality candidates up and down the ballot are elected.”

HRC Endorsed Candidates include:

• Karl Hanlon (SD-08)
• Rachel Zenzinger (SD-19)
• Jeff Bridges (SD-26)
• Chris Kolker (SD-27)
• Lisa Cutter (HD-25)
• Brianna Titone (HD-27)
• Lindsey Daugherty (HD-29)
• Dafna Michaelson Jenet (HD-30)
• Tom Sullivan (HD-37)
• David Ortiz (HD-38)
• Bri Buentello (HD-47)
• Barbara Hall McLachlan (HD-59)

In the 2018 midterms, HRC mobilized our grassroots army of 3.2 million members, supporters, and volunteers to work on behalf of pro-equality candidates and engage pro-equality voters primarily in six key states: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This unprecedented grassroots mobilization worked to recruit and train volunteers, register and mobilize voters and grow the organization's political organizing efforts in order 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 have only deepened. In addition to our expansive volunteer network, HRC will have at least 51 full-time staff in seven priority states (Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin) and an additional 26 staff focused on a second tier of states, including Colorado. While in person organizing has been limited by the COVID-19 pandemic, HRC has embraced digital organizing, launching a new tool called TEAM allowing our broad network of volunteers and steering committees to engage their networks personally and hundreds of virtual phone banks and text banks to engage pro-equality voters even without the ability to interact in person.