More than sixty LGBTQ+ candidates are on the ballot during Pride month in a new 'rainbow wave'

For an entire generation of LGBTQ+ political candidates, election is not just a personal victory, but a historic one. All 50 states have elected openly LGBTQ+ people to political office in some capacity, but representation is still lacking in a number of positions from local to federal levels of government.

In the 2020 election cycle, at least 850 LGBTQ+ candidates have appeared or will appear on ballots in the United States, according to the LBGTQ Victory Fund, almost twice as many as the 2018 election cycle. And for at least 68 of them, Election Day will fall during the month of Pride, which celebrates the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots against police treatment of LGBTQ+ people.

“An unprecedented number of LGBTQ candidates are running for office this cycle, which provides us the opportunity to elect a historic number come November,” said Annise Parker, President and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund and former mayor of Houston, in a release. “We are intensely focused on state legislative candidates in particular – as LGBTQ people are running for key seats that can block the flood of anti-LGBTQ bills and determine control of state legislative chambers. Our LGBTQ candidates can have an enormous impact on American politics in 2020. If they win, the country will be better off for it.”