2020 General Election Results

The presidency wasn’t decided last night - and until it is, you can be certain Equality Florida joins the national demand that every ballot be counted.

Yesterday brought big heartbreaking losses and some heroic victories. I wanted to share a few of those bright spots with you and the historic gains you helped make for our community:

• Community hero, Carlos Guillermo Smith, has won his reelection and has become the most senior LGBTQ member of the Florida House! Right next door, pro-equality powerhouse Anna Eskamani also convincingly won re-election. Carlos and Anna’s resounding victories - in what were previously swing districts - show how collective power can be built by being unapologetic progressive leaders.
• Pro-equality champion Daniella Levine Cava has won her election to become the first woman Mayor of Miami-Dade County. Her victory is a sea change in our state’s largest county as she took out another homophobe with a terrible record of opposing LGBTQ equality.
• Shevrin Jones and Michele Rayner have made history by becoming the first Black LGBTQ people to win seats in the Florida Legislature! Senator-elect Jones is now the highest-ranking LGBTQ official in the legislature and Representative-elect Rayner is the first Black queer woman ever elected in the state.
• By ousting anti-LGBTQ lawmakers in the Florida primary, voters sent a clear message: Bigots beware; homophobia comes with real political costs. In the general election, we saw homophobic incumbents try to re-write their records on LGBTQ equality - hoping they wouldn’t meet the same fate. We must keep this pressure on our elected officials and remind them homophobia and transphobia have real consequences.
• We increased the number of openly-LGBTQ school board members in the state to three with the historic wins by Tom Edwards in Sarasota and Jessica Vaugn in Hillsborough - who now join school board member Sarah Fortney in Polk.
• Two openly-LGBTQ powerhouse mayors won their re-elections: Key West Mayor Teri Johnston in Key West and Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis.
• Historic gains were made in North Florida as Mary Alford was elected the first openly-LGBTQ commissioner to the Alachua County Commission.

In total, 12 openly-LGBTQ candidates endorsed by Equality Florida Action PAC won their elections - including municipal candidates: Steve Glassman (Fort Lauderdale City Commission), Matthew Sparks (Oakland Park City Commission), Mitch Rosenwald (Oakland Park City Commission), and Mike Ryan (Sunrise City Commission).

And across the country, we saw a rainbow wave of LGBTQ candidates run and win - including: Sarah McBride who has made history in Delaware as the first transgender state senator in U.S. history; Mondaire Jones and Ritchie Torres have become the first Black LGBTQ men elected to Congress; Mauree Turner was elected as the first non-binary lawmaker in the U.S. and first Muslim to serve in the Oklahoma legislature.

I am so proud of this team and all of you who leaned into this election like never before. With your help, and an army of 400 dedicated volunteers, we turned out over 1 million pro-LGBTQ voters in Florida. We sent more than 1.7 million text messages and made over 700,000 phone calls to help educate voters on how to vote safely and draw a bright line between candidates who support our families and those who’d harm us. We also sent 650,000 pieces of mail and launched digital ads that generated nearly 18 million impressions to help get out the vote.

This was a massive undertaking. And walking into Election Day, this unprecedented effort allowed us to turnout over 109,000 voters who wouldn’t have voted if we didn’t talk to them.

You continue to make a difference. Thank you for standing with us! Our Full Equality Florida Action PAC results will be posted here: equalityflorida.org/2020ElectionsCenter

- Nadine Smith, Equality Florida's Executive Director