Political historians may one day agree that the final years of the 20th-century's budding LGBT equality movement were mightly propelled by the brilliant mind and guardianship of Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who came out in 1987. A perpetually tousled star of the House floor, he often spoke about gay issues from the heart, which gave his testament depth and authenticity. Long before his departure from Congress in 2013, a toned-down, sophisticated version of Gilbert Baker's rainbow flag could be seen flying over even "low-equality" states like Texas ushering in what some observers have dubbed the Age of the Out Candidate.
It's late in the evening when I arrive at the home of former San Antonio City Councilwoman Elena Guajardo. There's a large package on her doorstep. When she greets me, I offer to hoist it in, and like a child on Christmas day, she tears open the box the moment it lands on her dining room table. Guajardo is serving her last term as co-chair of the Stonewall Democrats of San Antonio. Inside the box are hundreds of freshly printed copies of the group's highly anticipated endorsements for the November 2014 election.
Guajardo is a shuffling playlist of campaign wisdom who's been referred to as the elder stateman of the local Democratic party and the "Harvey Milk of San Antonio." "Whether you are gay or straight," she begins over a hot cup of tea, "you better have the fire in your belly to be a good candidate."
Out of the handful of openly LGBT candidates who ran in the March primary, only one was able to pass through the small but influential voting population's wall of flames - Rosa Maria "Rosie" Gonzalez, who was running for Bexar County Court at Law Number 13. Defense attorney Therese Huntzinger lost her primary race for Bexar County District Attorney by a razor-thin margin to Nico LaHood, who would go on to defeat incumbent Susan Reed November 4. Her out candidacy was a media non-issue.
Forty-six-year-old Allen Castro fell short in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Bexar County Clerk. He says his campaign was influenced by Guajardo, who represented District 7 at City Hall from 2005 to 2007. She was defeated in her scandal-plagued quest for a sophomore term by the dangerously dapper Justin Rodriguez, who later won a seat in the Texas House. "She was the first, true, openly gay elected official in Bexar County that I know of," Castro says via phone.
Castro, who finished third in the primary, says he was "devastated" when he lost because he "internalized the outcome" of the results. "When I lost the vote, I thought, there's something wrong with me, [something] flawed. That wasn't helpful to me, psychologically."
Castro is surprised Rosie Gonzalez was the only out candidate on the Bexar County ballot this fall. "I didn't realize that we hadn't broken that glass ceiling," he said. "[But] I think the more civic-minded the LGBT community becomes, the more opportunity we'll have to endorse LGBT folks and see them win. Rome wasn't built in a day." The question of whether he would run again was met with noticable hesitation. Finally, after long pause, he says, "Yes, I would."
Castro suspects he would have run the same campaign were he straight, but Guajardo faced a hostile environment when she first ran for office. "The guy who was in a runoff with her sent this really hateful letter to all the voters about how she was bad for children because she was gay," Castro, a resident of D7, recalls. "Compare Elena's experience with my experience and it's like night and day. She went through hell."
Guajardo was a magnet for supporters as well as haters. She remembers the words of a woman who hinted that she would organize a grassroots campaign on her behalf: "You're intelligent. You have a degree. You don't have a partner so you don't have to worry about someone losing a job. You don't have to insulate any children from the backlash that will come...and you don't look like a toolbelt dyke. You're perfect. You would be the first."
A toolbelt might've come in handy. During her first campaign, "There was this gay agenda thing," Guajardo says. "Bush was running on a platform of fear of the gays. That's always been a tool that straights will use, have used." During a low point, Guajardo remembers someone telling her, "You have to call Anisse Parker."
At the time, Parker was the out City Comptroller of Houston. She suggested Guajardo attend a "campaigning 101" workshop offered by the Victory Fund. The workshop covered candidate essentials such as how many votes a candidate would need to win. One lesson the Victory Fund imparted is that some people are great campaigners but they run out of money the last two weeks of the race. Guajardo remembers writing down: "You have to fundraise for your needs. You don't need trinkets. You have to fundraise for your mail drop."
Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez, who was first elected in 2004, served as additional inspiration for Guajardo. But Guajardo still wondered, "What do you do with the gay?" Her coaches told her honesty is the best policy - her opponents were probably planning to attack her on that issue anyway. But Guajardo wanted a strategy in writing; when the questions came, she wanted to be ready. Her coach grabbed an envelope and wrote on the back: "My parents raised me with the values of being open and honest and those are the values that are needed in our city government today." "I kept that envelope," Guajardo says with a smile. "It was amazing when I had to use it."
Last spring, two of the four Democratic primary candidates for County Clerk were openly gay men: Castro and Chris Forbrich. Forbrich previously ran for the District 1 City Council seat as an out candidate in 2009 and 2011. He says being out didn't hurt him among the general voting population, but it didn't help, either. "Telling the gay community that you're gay maybe attracted some of your friends or some people who are diehard activists, but it hindered me in the gay community because they became divided," he says. He's since broken off friendships with activists like Guajardo "because of their radicalism towards a single issue." "City Council is about dogs and trash and streets. "
"I think that just might be sour grapes from Chris," says Ruby Krebs. Krebs, who was the first and to date only transgender candidate to run in Bexar County, maintains that her 2009 candidacy did not divide the community in the least. Krebs and Forbrich lost the primary to incumbent Councilwoman Mary Alice Cisneros, wife of the former mayor and HUD secretary. Forbrich lost by fewer than 1,100 votes. Krebs drew 398. "I think he mistakenly believes that if I wasn't in the race that he would have won."
"If someone were to tell me to modify my being transgender, I would have told them to shove it, "Krebs says with a laugh. "I identify as female, but people want to call me transgender." She says the only advice she was given in two precinct-chair races and her Council contest was to dress properly and watch what she says in public. "You're on the record 24/7."
"You're gonna get a little Rubyism here. As far as I'm concerned, the psychology of losing is to not take yourself seriously in the first damn place. If you do, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. It's easy to lose your focus on the issues and worse, the campaign," she says. "In my campaign? I was not a loser. I was a winner in that campaign because I got 400 votes. For a first-time transgendered person in a major race? That's damn good. I broke new ground and I did it right." Cisneros' chief of staff thanked Krebs for running "a nice campaign." "I didn't attack her. I didn't attack anybody. That's not my style."
Rosie Gonzalez, now 49, doesn't buy into the be-more-like-Tammy-Baldwin makeover suggestions often given to female LGBT candidates. Her voice is low and authoritative. Her hair is slicked back, dramatically, for a "cleaner" look because her gray hair is coming in "wiry." She's been cautioned about the pitfalls of "being too aggressive" or "too manly." When she was advised to ditch the ties - those ties that bring Oscar Wilde to mind - she drew the line. "I love ties. Why do men only get to wear ties?" she says. "They're beautiful pieces of clothing that accent your outfit. People get tied up in these labels and preconceived notions of what someone should sound like or look like. I don't think I need lipstick to accent my presence, my presentation to you."
Gonzalez thinks MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is one of today's best LGBT "personas," but she hasn't been deeply inspired by any particular LGBT politician over the years. "I think a lot of times, for lack of better words, some of the LGBT candidates that I've known across the country get caught with their pants down," she says. "That's a play on words, especially for male candidates."
Gonzalez - who was one of more than two dozen Democratic judicial candidates who lost to their Republican opponents in the 2014 midterm sweep - says she doesn't think judicial races should be partisan. She immediately raises her index finger and amends: "For me it's important to know where your base of thinking is," she says. "For the public, I think it gives them some insight about what their core values are on the bench. That's going to affect how they make a decision, their perception of justice."
Gonzalez recently tied the knot with her partner of six years in the nation's capital, where same-sex marriage became legal in 2009. She believes successful political marriages and partnerships boil down to the "constitution of the partner. Do they have a self-identity that isn't codependent on your identity? Are they confident enough in their existence that they can step back and push you, the candidate, the politician, into the limelight and not have insecurities?" she asks over a pair of neglected breakfast tacos. "Are they going to be OK when people from all walks of life, with all -unknown intentions, approach you and want to be close to this candidate?"
Gonzalez urges candidates to beware of the "cult of personality," individuals who pursue charismatic people, like political figures, for sport. She suggests that folks who are drawn to the perceived lifestyle of public personas may end up being unsuitable partners, and not the Eleanor Roosevelt prototype a political aspirant might hope to land.
Gonzalez maintains that the current political atmosphere has opened up new freedom and honesty for LGBT candidates and officeholders. "You can be yourself, " she says with a thoughful clasp of the hands. "I was brought up with the belief that if you live a life where you serve other people, you can pretty much be who you want to be."
Guajardo came out the same year she ran for office, throwing herself into a simultaneous crash course on politics and relationships. "And whether you're straight or gay, if you don't have a good relationship, you don't take anyone through that, " she says admonishingly. "It isn't about a couple. It's about an 'I' statement, the whole time of the campaign. It is a selfless journey for the partner. Sometimes I think I'm ready to gear up for another [campaign], [but] the last thing I would ever want to do is put someone though that who didn't understand politics."
Austin's Glen Maxey holds the distinction of being the first out representative in the Texas Legislature. His decade-plus tenure, from 1991-2002, paved the way for Mary Gonzalez of El Paso, who was elected in 2012 and became the first out woman to serve in the Pink Dome as well as the first woman to represent her district. (In January, Texas State Representative Celia Israel of Austin became the second out woman elected to the Lege when she won in a special runoff.)
"I would love to be honest and say that there hasn't been any resistance or negativity, but the truth is there has been," Mary Gonzalez said. Gonzalez, 31, has famously identified herself as pansexual. "I think like any community, there's still a process of being inclusive, so pansexuality, or even bisexuality, and even recognizing transgender identity, these are identities that we are still trying to work to be inclusive in the overall LGBT movement."
Gonzalez was unopposed in the November 2014 general election. "If you look at 2004, where there was a lot of anti-LGBT legislation, to last session, where you see less anti-LGBT focus and more pro-equality focus, that is an indicator of how things have changed in the last decade, including [the number of] out elected officials and candidates," Gonzalez says.
Gonzalez trusts that her vision resonates with younger voters. "I think young people have energy and optimism about the possibilities of transforming the world. I believe in the indigenous proverb that says, "The land was not given to us by our ancestors but lent to us by our children.' Young people embody that proverb. Engaging them is very necessary for the future of Texas," she says.
Mary Gonzalez's father is her campaign treasurer - and a Republican. "The good thing about having a Republican father is that he humanizes the other side," she says. She sees her role as an LGBT legislator and a Latina with a rural background as "a bridge to all of these worlds that sometimes get disconnected in policy-making."
"Sitting at the table of power is still the best way to make sure our voices are heard," Denis Dison, senior vice president of programs at the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and Institute, said. "And if we aren't at the table, we're probably on the menu." In the November election, his organization endorsed 166 out LGBT candidates across the country- more than 60 percent won their races. Ten of them ran in Texas, although none of them were on the ballot in San Antonio.
"But where do we go from here?" Guajardo asks. "Each [LGBT] person that runs has to work harder than any other candidate. If they get elected, it's in their hand to do good. We take the baton and we try to make [the world] a better place." She looks at the endorsement list and sighs, in a mostly hopeful way.
"I've been out there asking people, "Who's the next? Who's going to be the next - and win?"
