to LGBTQ Voters
I can’t tell you how pleased I am that we finally got the DNC to reach out directly to the LGBTQ Voter. I have been working on campaigns for LGBTQ media for 30+ years and each election since then we’ve reached out to all that we could to seek election campaigns and while I never met resistance, we never got a buy. Finally, in 2016 we got really close to getting that direct reach out and while we patiently awaited the approval, at the last minute we were told they (The Hillary Clinton campaign) needed to redirect those dollars elsewhere. Now hindsight is 20/20 as they say and with that small margin, I knew it would have made a difference and perhaps the course of history would’ve been changed.
I remember waking up the day after the election in 2016 and telling my husband “we just didn’t do enough.” I vowed I would never let that happen again, so in 2020 I did more and while sadly, we did not get a campaign for LGBTQ media again, President Biden crossed the finish line with the help of all the people like me that said and did the same thing.
To show you how real it was in 2016, after the dust settled, I found out my mom and my gay brother voted for Trump. I was shocked and mortified, not so much by my brother but by my mother as we had never discussed it previously because I grew up in a household that was anything but conservative. My mother is a first-generation immigrant to this country, and she has 8 grandchildren that are girls! On top of that, her being educated and reading the New York Times regularly, I was left in complete shock. My gay brother only said he “felt” his vote was the right choice and mentioned that the Democratic Party never even asked for his vote, and as the leading expert in LGBTQ media I knew that was true and proof to me just how important it was to ask! I should have known better because one of the statistics I often quote is that LGBTQ+ consumers want to be marketed to and asked for their business. My brother’s logic had merit even though it defied common sense.
In 2024 we doubled our efforts first with the Joe Biden campaign, then the Kamala Harris campaign and to cover our bases the DNC and the latter finally brought success. Yes, I would love to say it is because of our terrific sales team, but in truth it was made possible first by President Joseph Biden appointing a gay spokesperson who advocated on behalf of LGBTQ issues. Additionally, the team at the DNC now had a Director of LGBTQ+ Coalitions! Imagine that! A major political party with staff that has LGBTQ+ in their official title! So, there were advocates from within the Executive Branch and the DNC that also made this possible. It’s worth mentioning there were plenty of other allies along the way advocating and now lost to history, yet it still would not have happened without our years of hard work paving the way.
The DNC’s “I Will Vote” campaign was lovely because they had LGBTQ people on staff who understood they were not experts and listened and then did all the things that made sense. I hate to say it, but a lot of clients just don’t do all that is recommended on their campaigns, either because of budget constraints or because they think they know better. The DNC advertised in big and small LGBTQ+ titles, their digital extensions (eblasts and Social) and websites around the country. They also targeted every platform they could in those hard-to-reach places like Ohio and the Virginia suburbs placing ads in small niche email lists and then also leaving no stone unturned with a programmatic overlay to make sure they got it all. In the end, we estimate they reached 10 million LGBTQ+ Voters.
I must tell you, to be included feels great! Years and years of advocacy for the Democratic Party did pay off, not only to help the cause but also raise the energy and get people excited and that my friend, is what is going to carry us forward. Sure, we did not win this one, but I feel heard and as we booked those ads across all the various LGBTQ+ mediums, I could literally feel the excitement and the feeling of gratitude, that finally we were no longer being taken for granted. The DNC did ask for our vote, and we answered the call. I feel grateful to be one small part of this process.
The proof of the DNC’s direct ask to our community is that the headline today in the Washington Blade was “LGBTQ voters moved away from Trump as other Americans embraced him. This positive ripple created will go far and wide and friends, the future looks bright despite this horrible loss. Someday we are going to look at those citizens and companies that dumped us because some wackos didn’t like their reach out to diversity, and we are going to say “who cares!” By then, we will have moved on to better friends and companies and brands that do share our values and support equity and inclusion, and those others will be a distant memory of uneducated people and bad business practices and opportunities long lost.
We are not going to go anywhere, we are going to do just as Kamala said, roll up our sleeves and stand up for equal rights and equal justice under the law. We are going to learn from this and RISE to the occasion and fight another day, peacefully of course, but fight nonetheless.
