David Chiu:
For the past six years, I have served as President of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors. During that time, I have been honored to work with residents across our city from all backgrounds, including our wonderfully diverse LGBT communities, to build consensus and deliver innovative solutions for the toughest challenges facing San Francisco.
When I was elected to office in 2008, San Francisco was at a crossroads. City Hall was dysfunctional; the Great Recession brought double-digit unemployment rates and large budget deficits; housing construction had ground to a halt. Since then, I’ve worked with two Mayors and our Board of Supervisors to champion economic policies that helped to create 70,000 diverse jobs; San Francisco now has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation. We now have a stable budget, the largest in our city’s history with a significant social safety net for our most vulnerable residents. I’ve also worked to move forward a pipeline of 50,000 new homes to be built in the coming years, including public housing and affordable housing for low-income and working families.
During these times, we’ve made sure City Hall continues to deliver for our LGBT communities. As President of the Board, during difficult budget times, I supported local funding to backfill federal cuts to HIV/AIDS programs, to shore up the finances of the LGBT Community Center, and to assist vulnerable LGBT youth at nonprofits like LYRIC and Larkin Street Youth Services. I also authored legislation to guarantee greater diversity on our city’s boards and commissions, advocated for the reunification of LGBT immigrant families, and have been proud to appoint a number of stellar LGBT city commissioners.
But San Francisco still faces real challenges. We are in the midst of an affordability crisis that is making living in San Francisco increasingly difficult for our most vulnerable residents, including LGBT tenants and seniors who have lived here for decades. I want to go to the State Assembly to fight for the resources San Francisco needs to address this crisis. For too many years, we have seen repeated cuts to state funding for the things San Franciscans need the most: to build more affordable housing, fix our broken transit system, and improve our public schools. I want to take my record of effectively delivering for San Franciscans to Sacramento to make sure our City gets its fair share.
As a lifelong LGBT ally who fought against the passage of DOMA as a Congressional staffer in the mid-1990s and later was a co-founder of Asian Pacific Islander Equality, I have been incredibly humbled by the support our campaign has received from many local LGBT leaders. I am also proud to be endorsed by the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, Bayard Rustin LGBT Coalition, Supervisor Scott Wiener, former City Treasurer Susan Leal, and San Francisco’s other major LGBT newspaper, the Bay Area Reporter. I hope you will join them, along with over 100 endorsements from 4 San Francisco Mayors, elected officials, newspapers, Democratic, labor and advocacy organizations supporting our campaign. Please visit www.
VoteDavidChiu.com or our Castro campaign headquarters to learn more.
David Campos:
In this final week leading up to the November election, it is critical that we, as members of the LGBT community, ask ourselves the following question: Which candidates on the ballot are going to champion—and not just support—LGBT rights?
There is much at stake. At the state level, it is going to be vital to implement and enforce AB 1266, passed by Assemblymember Ammiano, which addresses the exclusion of transgender students from classes and activities, and clarifies existing anti-discrimination law to provide clear protections to transgender students. We must also push for new protection against bullying in schools, and work to defeat discrimination in jobs, housing and health care against our trans brothers and sisters.
This is why I believe it is important that authentic LGBT voices are elected to the State Assembly. The Assembly District I am running for, the one sought by Harvey Milk, has a long tradition of electing LGBT representatives. Since 1996, we have been represented by Carole Migden, Mark Leno and Tom Ammiano.
This is more important today than ever because LGBT representation in Sacramento is being threatened by term limits. As LGBT Caucus Chair Rich Gordon has said, the LGBT Caucus in the State Legislature is in jeopardy of shrinking by 25%. Already, the LGBT Caucus is smaller than the Women’s, Black, API and Latino Caucuses. With both Speaker Perez and Tom Ammiano termed out, it could shrink to just six members—a scant 5% of the state legislature.
In the past decade, Equality California has tracked legislation of critical interest to the LGBT community. Of the 114 bills it tracked, over 55% were authored and sponsored by members of the LGBT Caucus. The strength of the LGBT Caucus is vital to our community.
In San Francisco, as an openly gay elected official, I have worked with the community for our shared values. Together, we are working to make the HIV prevention medication PrEP available to all. We fought back and won when Facebook tried to change their name policy blocking transpeople and drag queens from accessing their pages. We passed first of its kind equal housing legislation incentivizing developers to implement national LGBT policies.
We are also working hard to create the first-ever LGBT homeless shelter. We created an LGBT Senior Task Force. We helped keep the LGBT Center financially afloat and open, fought to protect HIV and AIDS funding, and worked to restore funding for community organizations such as LYRIC, El/La Para Trans Latinas, Aguilas, and Community United Against Violence.
San Franciscans have led the nation in the civil rights movement of our time, and we should be proud of our achievements, but there is so much left to do in order to create full equality for the LGBT community. It is hard to imagine that with two representatives in the Assembly, San Francisco would not have a member of the LGBT Community as one of them. We need LGBT elected representatives who are going to be committed to full equality for our community, and I look forward to doing that with your support. http://www.davidcampossf.com/
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