With members of the LGBTQ community and Florida facing a drastic roll back in rights the 2018 Midterms are very important for issues ranging adoption, to healthcare, to same sex marriage this election is a game changer.
Cosmopolitan magazine profiled some of the top members of the LGBTQ community who are running for office and Florida had more than their share of women stepping up. One of the most impressive candidates is Lauren Bauer who has an amazing resume as she is running Republican Brian Mast in the race for District 18 of the Florida House of Representatives.
The Bauer – Mast race is one that a number of national political observers see as a toss-up. You may recall that Mast was elected to replace Democrat Patrick Murphy in 2016 and is presently serving in Congress. The Florida GOP see it as a good chance for them to hold the seat.
They point to the fact that in 2016 returns candidate Donald Trump carried the18th District by 53% to Hillary Clinton’s 44%. Mast (R) defeated Democratic businessman Randy Perkins by 54% to 43%.
But Baer, is a former senior advisor to Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, and to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. That is a very impressive resume and she is a local girl who grew up in the area and lives there with her family.
Earlier this year she said that “I felt our values and institutions were under threat, and I knew I needed to stand up and fight,” she told Cosmopolitan earlier this year. Baer is rallying for affordable health care, gun safety measures, and job creation, as the key points of her campaign to get a big turnout of the Democrats in hopes of beating Mast.
Mast is a retired vet who served in Afghanistan and was a weapons specialist. He lost both legs and finger after a bomb exploded during one of his inspections. He supported an assault rifle ban, the rising of the age limit to own guns, as well as tighter background checks and said so in an op-ed he penned for The New York Times, shortly after the school shooting at Parkland.
President Donald Trump has offered to campaign for Mast and he has not yet accepted the invitation. Bauer has plenty of star power and money raising help coming her way from the Democratic National Committee.
The areas that Bauer may have over Mast is on healthcare, repealing Dodd-Frank, giving the go-ahead on cross-state concealed carry gun laws. In short he voted for President Trump backed legislation over 92 percent of the time. Here is his voting record that you can see for yourself. HERE
This is a big year for the LGBTQ and there are currently more than 400 non-incumbent LGBTQ candidates running for office at all levels of government, according to the Victory Institute, an organization that supports LGBTQ people running for office. That’s more than at any other time in American history—and up from the approximately 250 that ran in 2016. While some face deep-pocketed opposition, and others have early polls on their side, all of these women could help change history if elected.
