Pete Buttigieg had an inkling that voters would mostly shrug at his sexuality. He was right
an awkward first-date conversation. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend in Indiana, recalls that he and Chasten Glezman talked about how he would be seeking higher political office. How would his boyfriend-to-be—now husband—feel about the public scrutiny? And how might voters respond to a same-sex couple on the campaign trail?
It is much the same story in Chicago, where Lori Lightfoot, a 56-year-old African-American woman married to another woman, won a landslide victory in a run-off election to become mayor on April 2nd. “I’m an out lesbian, married with a child, running in this city, the first to ever make the ballot from thecommunity,” she says. Recalling her arrival in Chicago in the 1980s, she says such a thing was “not even remotely possible back in those days.
As mayor of America’s third-largest city she can help to shift perceptions of gay politicians some more. Annise Parker was mayor of Houston from 2010 to 2016 and now leads theVictory Fund, which helps to advise other out politicians. She praises Ms Lightfoot’s disciplined campaign and expects the success will further move “the national imagination”, deepening acceptance of gay politicians and giving the city something to cheer.
Americans have had 45 years to get used to gay people in public office. Kathy Kozachenko, a student in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was the first successful gay candidate anywhere, winning a city council seat in April 1974. But opinion has shifted quickly more recently, along with popular acceptance of gay marriage. It amounts to a quiet, welcome and probably irreversible turn in social attitudes.
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