Politics

The US state of Mississippi has elected an openly gay person to its legislature for the first time ever.

Fabian Nelson’s victory this week left Louisiana as the only American state never to have elected an LGBTQ+ person to its legislature. And it served up a salve of sorts to a wave of laws passed in Republican-controlled state legislatures that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, including a ban in Mississippi on gender-affirming hormones or surgery for anyone aged 17 or younger.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, Nelson, a Democrat, called his election to the Mississippi house “a dream” and “shocking”. But Nelson, a foster father, also said: “Ultimately what won this campaign is the fact that I’m in touch with my community and the issues my community is facing.

“At the end of the day, I put my suit on the same way every other person who walks in that statehouse does. I’m going to walk in there, and I’m going to be a sound voice … in the state of Mississippi.”

Nelson, a 38-year-old realtor, won his seat by triumphing in a Democratic primary election runoff on Tuesday over Roshunda Harris-Allen, a local alderwoman and a professor of education at Tougaloo College, a historically Black institution. Tuesday’s race was necessary after neither Nelson nor Harris-Allen had secured a majority of the vote in a three-way primary on 8 August.

Republicans did not run a candidate for the general election scheduled for the fall. So, by virtue of his win on Tuesday, Nelson has clinched the statehouse seat that had been up for grabs. He is scheduled to be sworn in ahead of Mississippi’s next legislative session in January.

His district encompasses an area south of the state capital of Jackson. As he has told media outlets such as the Los Angeles Blade and LGBTQ Nation, Nelson’s priorities include pushing for an expansion of Mississippi’s Medicaid program as well as developing the economy and infrastructure for his district’s underserved areas.

He is also hoping to impede Republicans’ anti-LGBTQ legislative measures and efforts to disenfranchise voters in and around Jackson, which is mostly Democratic.

Nelson said his election accomplishes a goal he set for himself the day that he visited the state capitol building on an elementary school field trip and told his teacher he would eventually earn an office in the house.

“I’m still trying to process it and take it in,” Nelson said.

The state director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Mississippi chapter, which endorsed Nelson, said the election “sends a real message in a time when we are seeing attacks … against the LGBTQ+ community”.

“The majority of people reject that kind of animus,” the director, Rob Hill, told the AP. “I think a lot of youth around the state who have felt like their leaders are rejecting them or targeting them won’t feel as lonely today.”

The president of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, Annise Parker, added: “Voters in Mississippi should be proud of the history they’ve made but also proud to know they’ll be well represented by Fabian.”

Though Louisiana now stands as the only state to have never chosen an LGBTQ+ person for a seat in its legislature, it did elect its first openly gay Black man to public office late last year.

Davante Lewis won a New Orleans-based seat on Louisiana’s Public Service Commission in December after defeating a three-term incumbent