LGBTQ+ congressional candidates could deliver a historic rebuke to MAGA Republicans at the ballot box

Weeks before her congressional primary, Marni von Wilpert received a call that upended every campaign calculation. Doctors had detected early-stage breast cancer.Her first response, she recalled, was that she didn’t have time. She was running for Congress to represent her California district.Surgery followed. Sitting in hospital waiting rooms, the San Diego City Council member thought about the security of knowing she could afford the care that might save her life — and the Americans who could not.“And the person who wins my election will have the power to vote on who has access to health care in this country and who does not,” von Wilpert told The Advocate.In Michigan, state Sen. Jeremy Moss describes the connection between identity and governing through a different encounter. When someone demanded to know why he focused on the “gay agenda” instead of fixing roads, he had a ready answer.“I said, well, part of my gay agenda is fixing the roads because actually gay people drive on them too,” Moss recalled.Their campaigns are part of an effort to expand LGBTQ+ representation and help Democrats reclaim the House. In separate interviews with The Advocate, von Wilpert, Moss, and Equality PAC co-chairs Reps. Mark Takano and Ritchie Torres described the electoral strategy, legislative ambitions, and personal stakes behind that effort.“We have the potential to elect up to 17 openly LGBTQ members of Congress, the gayest Congress in U.S. history,” Torres said.Equality PAC’s endorsement roster lists 16 candidates. Together with Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, whose term runs through 2031, victories across the slate could produce a 17-member LGBTQ+ contingent.Related: 27 groundbreaking LGBTQ+ politicians & public officials who are moving equality forwardVon Wilpert: Health care and equal rightsVon Wilpert faces Republican Jim Desmond in California’s 48th Congressional District, seeking the seat being vacated by Darrell Issa.She said Equality PAC’s fundra