Washington, DC – Today, the Human Rights Campaign PAC (HRC PAC) announced its endorsement of the nine openly LGBTQ+ members of the House of Representatives – David Cicilline, Angie Craig, Sharice Davids, Mondaire Jones, Sean Patrick Maloney, Chris Pappas, Mark Pocan, Mark Takano, and Ritchie Torres.

These members played key roles in promoting, advancing, and eventually passing critical legislation like the Equality Act during the 117th Congress – a comprehensive nondiscrimination bill that would add the categories of sexual orientation and gender identity to federal civil rights laws, in addition to protections for women, people of color, and people of all faiths.

Their fight to expand civil rights comes at a time when we’re seeing more than 340 anti-LGBTQ+ bills under consideration in state legislatures across the country.

Human Rights Campaign Interim President Joni Madison released the following statement:

“The 117th Congress has more openly LGBTQ+ Members serving than ever before. These Members represent the diversity of America and are role models to LGBTQ+ people of all ages who aspire to positions of leadership.

“They have advocated not only to advance the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, but also are serving their constituents with honesty, integrity, hard work and courage. Each has been a leader on a range of issues that will make our country better and advance equality for women, people of color, and other marginalized communities. We urge their constituents to return them to Congress for another term.

“In 2018 and 2020, millions of people of all backgrounds and races showed up to cast their votes in record numbers, electing a historic number of women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ leaders. We must once again mobilize in even larger numbers to re-elect these members of Congress that will champion equality. The Human Rights Campaign is ready to get out the vote.”

Across the country, HRC PAC works every day to elect pro-equality leaders who will advocate for policies that will support the rights and lives of LGBTQ+ people. During the 2020 election cycle, HRC staff on the ground recruited 5,800 individual volunteers nationwide who completed 28,500 hours of voter contact in more than 2,650 volunteer events. HRC engaged in robust digital and online GOTV efforts, including sending over 2.7 million person-to-person text messages, a massive increase from 2018 when approximately 500,000 texts were sent. HRC sent over 2.5 million mail pieces, had over 930,000 phone conversations with voters, and engaged more than 200,000 voters through HRC’s voter dashboard at hrc.org/vote.

Endorsed Candidates

David Cicilline, RI-1

Angie Craig, MN-2

Sharice Davids, KS-3

Mondaire Jones, NY-10

Sean Patrick Maloney, NY-17

Chris Pappas, NH-1

Mark Pocan, WI-2

Mark Takano, CA-39

Ritchie Torres, NY-15