The 30 Most Influential Out Washingtonians
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The 30 Most Influential Out Washingtonians
By National Journal StaffJanuary 23, 2014
This town has always been a (sometimes ambivalent) home for ambitious, closeted gay men and women. But now ballot measures, state legislatures, and federal judges are advancing LGBT rights by the day; more openly gay members join Congress every cycle; the issues they and their allies champion occupy pride of place on the political agenda; and even Washington culture has become entirely habituated. A change like this reaches beyond the surface topography, deep into the tectonic architecture of Washington. These shifts have brought about the rise of an entirely new class of D.C. power players. Here are the most influential.
Tammy Baldwin: U.S. Senator, D-Wis.
The ink was barely dry on her college diploma, Baldwin says, when she watched Geraldine Ferraro walk across the stage in July 1984 to accept the nomination for vice president. "I remember thinking, 'Wow, I can do anything,' " says Baldwin. She certainly took that thought and ran with it: In 2012, Baldwin became the first openly gay candidate elected to the U.S. Senate, and the first women to represent Wisconsin there. Raised by her grandparents in Madison, she was valedictorian of her high school class and double-majored in government and mathematics at Smith College. Now 51, Baldwin scored her first elected position (on the Dane County Board of Supervisors) when she was a 24-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin Law School. She served in the Wisconsin state Assembly before being elected to the House of Representatives. Throughout her 14 years in Congress, Baldwin has built a reputation as a soft-spoken but urgent advocate for LGBT equality, affordable health care, and the middle class.
Jeremy Bernard: Social Secretary, White House
Bernard is both the first man and the first openly gay person to do this job, but he's not one to reflect on historical achievements. In almost three years since his appointment, he has not given a single interview. That hasn't kept friends of the 52-year-old San Antonio native from voicing their pride in seeing a gay man on the job, overseeing everything from the Easter Egg Roll to elaborate state dinners. They noticed when Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, was seated with his date, Jerome Fallon, at the head table with President Obama at one such dinner. "Who is invited sends important political messages that are sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle," says Richard Socarides, a longtime friend of Bernard's who was an adviser on gay issues in the Clinton White House. One of the few times Bernard has spoken about the job was last February, at an event convening his White House team and the social secretaries from several embassies. "The work we do is to bring people together," he said then. Before his appointment, he was on the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Paris. In the 2008 campaign, Bernard and his then-partner Rufus Gifford raised tens of millions of dollars for Obama from the gay community, according to OpenSecrets. He was a superdelegate for Obama at the 2008 convention.
David Brock: Founder, Media Matters and American Bridge
Brock has a somewhat peculiar perspective on gay identity. Until the mid-1990s, he identified as a Republican, keeping his sexual orientation a secret. Since then, Brock, 51, has experienced changes not just in his own politics, but also in the city's. "Politics in Washington has always attracted a number of gay people, but it's become much easier to be yourself now," he says.
When he came to Washington in 1986, Brock was a conservative writer leading a dual existence as part of an underground network of gay conservatives who met in private residences. "It was a somewhat fearful and paranoid way of living," he recalls. "It was not easy to date. It was impossible to go out socially to have a drink in a gay bar—that was something you just didn't do for fear of being found out." Brock attracted the national spotlight for, among other things, breaking the "Troopergate" story, which later led Paula Jones to file a lawsuit against Bill Clinton. The story was published in the conservative magazine The American Spectator in 1993, bringing its author personal scrutiny along with public praise. Under pressure, Brock came out in an interview with Howard Kurtz published in The Washington Post in 1994 and hasn't really looked back. "I ended up in a place where who I am personally came into alignment with my politics," he says. He became a Democrat, in part thanks to what he saw as the party's principles of social tolerance.
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