Dear friend,
BREAKING NEWS: American voters have just elected the most pro-equality ticket in history — President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris! The Human Rights Campaign has been integral to that decision and to helping grow the LGBTQ Caucus in the House of Representatives, welcoming new members of color. This is an historic moment for our movement, but more work lies ahead in Georgia, and we’re ready to roll up our sleeves.
After four long years, we can finally celebrate — our voices were loud and clear, and together, we have elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House, by more than four million votes and counting! Their election proves once again that equality is a winning issue, and reflects both the incredible work of this organization and the strength of our shared unity.
The Biden/Harris White House will be the most pro-equality in history. President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris are not just our allies, but they are true advocates for LGBTQ equality. These leaders have a clear vision: a vision where LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination; a vision where transgender and gender non-confirming people don’t fear for their lives walking down the street; a vision where LGBTQ children are loved, embraced and protected from bullying.
In this election, voters embraced this more just vision of America — not just for LGBTQ people, but for every single person in this nation. And the Human Rights Campaign has been investing in this moment for three and a half years. In the lead up to the 2018 election, we made a $26 million investment in the largest grassroots expansion in our history. Together, you helped us pull the emergency brake on Trump and Pence — and in the process, build and strengthen the infrastructure we would need to secure victory in 2020. Since 2018, we have not slowed down, and in the last few months, we sprinted through the finish line towards victory. Your support fueled the most sophisticated campaign operation in our history.
- HRC staff on the ground recruited more than 5,800 individual volunteers who completed more than 29,000 hours of voter contact.
- We sent over 2.7 million person-to-person text messages — up from the roughly 500,000 texts sent in 2018 — sent 2.7 million mail pieces, had over 930,000 phone conversations with voters and engaged more than 200,000 voters through HRC’s online voter dashboard.
- We activated our community of HRC members and supporters with 7.2 million text messages and more than 31.6 million email messages to get-out-the-vote and organize this election.
Together, we reached voters from every corner of this nation — and particularly in the crucial battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — empowering and energizing people to make their voices heard. Now the people have spoken — and they have spoken for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Because of this organization, because of our partners, because of people of conscience from every corner of this nation — we have voted to advance equality, and quite literally to save our democracy.
Today, we also celebrate crucial wins at the federal and state level. In the U.S. House of Representatives, we have retained a crucial pro-equality majority and re-elected some of our greatest openly LGBTQ champions. And with the trailblazing wins of Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones, we now have the largest, most diverse LGBTQ caucus in our history. We will now have a more inclusive Congress — one that better reflects our diversity and better protects our interests. We also celebrate the history-making victory of HRC’s own Sarah McBride. Sarah brings the kind of leadership our nation urgently needs. We were proud to be a part of this chapter of her journey, and we know she will have many amazing chapters ahead.
With Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris, with Sarah, Ritchie and Mondaire’s wins — along with the countless trailblazing victories across the country — we are giving hope to the next generation of our community, and building the bench that will take our movement into the future. Because of these leaders, and because of your support, the future of equality is bright.
As we look to what comes next, the fate of the Senate is still in our hands. John Hickenlooper and Mark Kelly both won their races, flipping two critical seats and leaving control of the Senate in play. In Georgia, HRC-endorsed candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock are heading into a run-off election against Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively, in January. Their historic races will be our highest priority in the coming weeks and months.
I also want to acknowledge in this moment of celebration, that there is also hurt and disappointment. After all that we have seen from Trump and his cadre — from failure to acknowledge and address racial injustice to ineptitude in addressing COVID-19 which has taken more than 230,000 lives, to the blatant homophobia and transphobia reflected in their policies to the negligence in managing the economy — it is both heartbreaking and infuriating so many people in this country would still vote the way they have. But cultural change is never easy. We are here today because generations before us fought and sacrificed to get us here. It is our struggle to carry forward — not just for one election, but for our chapter in history. We are in the business of transformative change — dismantling brick by brick the systems of oppression that have existed since before the founding of this nation.
There is more work for us to do. That was true before this election, and it is true now. Trump, Pence and anti-equality forces left us with unlawful and regressive policies that have stripped away protections marginalized communities have had for years. In the coming days, the Human Rights Campaign will release our Blueprint for Positive Change charting the path forward for equality under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Together, we will work to repair our communities, defeat the forces of oppression and injustice, and transform our systems so that they truly serve all of us.
I am so proud to have fought alongside you all, and so grateful for all that we have accomplished together. I believe with our resistance and resilience, we will continue to create the change our community and our country need. We are on a path again to hope and progress, and we will walk that path together.
United, in victory, we rise.
In Unity,