Who Has the Power
The Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, is investing $15 million to target Republicans in battleground districts in the midterms after a series of setbacks in recent years. The Washington-based organization is putting that money into advertising, events and canvassers, with eight congressional districts in play that could help determine control of the U.S. House. It is also supporting Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas.
Kelley Robinson, the organization’s president, said in an interview with The Associated Press, “I think that this is the election that’s going to be the sea change, not only for getting to a pro-equality majority but for changing the momentum on this fight for equality. This movement is ready for its next wind, its second wind.”
Who Gets Crushed
The LGBTQ+ movement has been reckoning with a wave of defeats on the campaign trail and in the courtroom that have left Democrats struggling to regain their footing. President Donald Trump’s Republican administration has rolled back protections for transgender people, including banning them from serving in the military and cutting off gender-affirming care for children. The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority has upheld Republican states’ restrictions while striking down bans on “conversion therapy” practices in Democratic states.
That is the hierarchy on display: executive power, court power and state power all moving downward onto people whose lives are treated as political bargaining chips. The costs land on transgender people first, while the institutions above them argue over messaging, majorities and momentum.
Robinson said, “I believe that our movement made ourselves believe that we were closer to equality than we actually are. The last few years, we’ve been doing an incredible amount of listening, of learning, also of repositioning this work.”
What They Call Strategy
After the 2024 presidential election, Democrats were divided over the role that LGBTQ+ rights played in their party’s losses. The Trump campaign ran a series of advertisements mocking Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting medical gender transitions for incarcerated people and highlighting the issue of transgender people playing on women’s sports teams. In one national ad, a voice-over said, “Kamala Harris is for they/them.” Another said, “President Trump is for you.”
Robinson argued that the ad was effective because of an implicit economic message, not for its critiques of the policy toward transgender people. Conservative activists and some moderate Democrats have argued such stances are too unpopular with swing voters. Leor Sapir, a fellow with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, said, “There’s a real disconnect between most voters and the party elite.” He added, “If I’m a Democrat consultant, my advice would be: Do everything in your power to keep this issue off the public agenda.”
That advice says plenty about how the political class manages conflict: not by confronting the conditions people live under, but by burying the issue when it becomes inconvenient. The election machine keeps turning, and the people affected are expected to wait for the next round of messaging.
Robinson said her organization has been soul-searching on how to best craft winning messages on LGBTQ+ rights. “Our job is to move away from the fireballs that our opposition wants to talk about and instead find a way to get back to the things that are impacting folks every day,” she said.
In January, the Human Rights Campaign published a guide to blunting conservative attacks on LGBTQ+ issues, citing the successful campaigns of Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. Although the guide encourages candidates to “lead with your values” and “address concerns directly,” it also encourages them to “go big” and quickly pivot to issues like cost-of-living concerns.
What People Are Told to Do
Robinson said, “I think the number one way to shut out a voter is to try to make them believe that their fears are not real. So what we coach candidates on doing is listening. For folks who have questions about the issues, that’s OK. We’re in a moment where the stakes in front of us are too high to look away.”
Listening, in this setup, is still routed through candidates, campaigns and consultants. The guide’s language about values and direct answers sits beside the familiar pivot to cost-of-living concerns, a reminder that even rights struggles are being folded into the logic of electoral survival. The Human Rights Campaign is spending $15 million to shape that terrain, while the institutions with the most power continue to decide which lives get protected, which get targeted, and which get used as campaign material.