Sarah McBride: First transgender person in a state Senate
In the state of Delaware, Democrate Sarah McBride has secured a seat in the local Senate. This makes her the first (openly) transgender ever to hold a position of that caliber in the history of the US. Her victory is not really surprising, because the district in which she emerged is predominantly Democratic.
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Sarah McBride.
AP Images
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McBride is the national press officer for the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT advocacy group in the US. At the 2016 Democratic Convention, she was the first (openly) transgender person ever to speak at a major party convention.
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“We did it, we won the election,” McBride writes on Twitter. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope that tonight shows every LGBTQ child that our democracy is big enough, also for them.”
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Currently there are also four other (openly) transgender people in the House of Representatives of a state. These are Danica Fame in Virginia, Brianna Titone in Colorado, and Lisa Bunker and Gerri Cannon in New Hampshire.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene: Supporter of QAnon in the United States House of Representatives
For the state of Georgia, Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene now sits in the (federal) House of Representatives in Washington DC. She is an indisputable figure who subscribed to parts of QAnon’s philosophy in the past.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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QAnon is a controversial conspiracy theory that states that an elite form a world government and is guilty of child abuse and satanic rituals. For supporters, President Donald Trump is the savior who exposes and fights this elite.
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Watch a report that our US correspondent Björn Soenens made about QAnon in August here (and read more below the video):
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Taylor Greene has also disparaged blacks, Jews and Muslims in the past. For example, she indicated that Muslims do not belong in the government and that blacks are “slaves” of the Democrats.
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President Trump called Taylor Greene a “future Republican star” in August. “She is strong in everything and never gives up,” he wrote on Twitter. “A real winner”.
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David Andahl: A corona dead in the North Dakota House of Representatives
In North Dakota, Republican David Andahl has secured a seat in the local House of Representatives. Only: Andahl died on October 5 from a covid infection. However, his name remained on the ballot paper and with 35 percent of the vote, the seat for his district goes to him posthumously.
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The electoral authorities have not yet decided what to do with Andahl’s victory and what will happen now to his place in the local House of Representatives.
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Ritchie Torres: First gay Afro-Latino in the United States House of Representatives
In New York’s 15th district, Democrat Ritchie Torres has won the battle for a seat in the (federal) House of Representatives in Washington DC, even though it was written in the stars that he would make it in this predominantly blue district.
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Ritchie Torres
Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Yet his gain is remarkable: he is the first (openly) gay African-American to make it to the House of Representatives and only the second non-white (openly) gay man after Mark Tanako, a Democrat of Asian origin who died in 2013. secured a seat for California.
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Torres grew up the son of a Latino father from Puerto Rico and an African American mother in a poor neighborhood in the Bronx, a borough of New York. “Thank you”, he wrote on Twitter. Tonight we made history. It is the honor of my life to represent the essential borough of the Bronx.
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